MR. COLLY:

Once again, you have produced another brilliant master piece, a piece which
has crossed all Ts and dotted all Is. Compared to the INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
version of the story, your piece has eloquently spelt out in meticulous
details what really had happened. My brother, like KB, you always hit your
targets with pinpointed accuracy. Believe me, you and KB are the JOHNNY
COCHRAN of our struggle, for when ever each of you contribute on the forum,
your individual presentations always give SENSE OF DIRECTIONS to the
struggle. In reading your piece, I have discovered that your story could
have had SERIOUS and FAR REACHING MILITARY, POLITICAL and  FOREIGN POLICY
consequences for both Gambia and Senegal; and more significantly,
considering the persistent changing security environment in the region, the
important facts in your story could have even been used by the opponents of
both countries. But the most disturbing situation of all is the
SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS, IGNORANCE, STUPIDITY and the BIRD'S EYE VIEW foreign
policy of PRESIDENT JAMMEH, who was seriously endangering the lives of the
entire country at the time. After talking to Former President Abdou Diouf of
Senegal for 25 minutes, and in that conversation, President Jammeh had been
given a very HOT INTELLIGENCE information about what was going to happen,
and which if it did happen, will have had devastating consequences in terms
of loss of lives and property, yet the President had the guts to suppress
that very hot intelligence, thinking that it will soon die down. What a
MORON this guy is. And that hot intelligence was that there was all
possibilities that former rebel leader, KUKOI SAMBA SANYANG, was seriously
rehearsing plans to hit The Gambia with fire power, which could have wiped
out the entire town of FARAFENNI, leading to huge loss of lives and
property. That ignorance and unawareness on the part of President Jammeh was
sheer stupidity and total negligence, which could not and must not have been
forgiven, period.

Furthermore, another short-sightedness, and rush to judgment was the FOREIGN
POLICY 101 STRATEGY displayed by Former President Abdou Diouf of Senegal in
handling the entire episode together with President Jammeh. On the part of
Jammeh, we could understand that he is just a MORON, period. As Hamjatta put
it best, his brain cells are of the same capacity of a mosquito; but as
Former President Abdou Diouf, there was no excuse at all, for he has been in
the business for a prolong period, and more importantly, he has experienced
and solved much more complicated and difficult foreign policy issues. He
could have approached the situation with a much broader and genuine picture
than he did. Even a junior in his Foreign Ministry could have handled the
situation brilliantly. The central motive why Former President Abdou Diouf
had acted shorted-sighted, was out of SHEER PASSION against Former President
Sir Dawda Jawara, his former co-partner of the failed CONFEDERATION, which
Senegal needed so badly and in which had invested so much resources, but,
for some reasons better known to both co-partners, things fell apart. The
failure of the confederation between the countries had devastated Former
President Abdou Diouf so much so that this time around, he felt that it was
pay back time against Jawara. Consequently, with President Jammeh coming to
power in The Gambia, former President Abdou Doiuf seized the opportunity to
DISHEARTEN former President Sir Dawda Jawara by cooperating with a MORON,
thinking that this time around his political investment would have yielded a
dividend. But again, the second time around, his political re-investment
became the his worst political nightmare.

President Jammeh had exploited Doiuf's hatred for Jawara and pretended that
Doiuf is in his good books. Diouf's first nightmare came when Jammeh opened
his arms to the MFDC rebels in Cassamance, and even supplied them with arms
and ammunitions, medical benefits extended to the rebels. Even in some
instances, the rebels are awarded accommodations and other basic utilities
in order to facilitate their operations against Senegalese forces. Under
Jammeh's watch, more people died in rebellion in Cassamance than the entire
30 years under Jawara. This has been something which Diouf, though out of
office, will live to regret.

Ansumana Kujabi(THIRD-Truth Telling, Honesty, Integrity, Responsibility and
Democracy)


>From: ebou colly <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: FARAFENNI ATTACK-ONE
>Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 20:20:41 -0700
>
>                                THE FARAFENNI DEADLY
>ATTACK- THE ACTORS
>
>It was about 9.00 am Greenwich mean time on the 6th of
>November 1996 when I first got the shocking news that
>Farafenni Barracks was attacked, captured and occupied
>by armed rebels on a mission to overthrow the AFPRC
>government. The whole thing did not make much sense to
>me because on a reasonable note no Gambian in his
>right mind would want to start with attacking and
>occupying Farafenni military Barracks on an operation
>to overthrow the Gambia government that was basically
>entrenched far away in Banjul.
>I was actually in Brussels that morning as part of a
>government delegation that flew from a mission in
>North Korea via Moscow on our way home. Edward
>Singhateh was still the Minister of Defense of the
>AFPRC and the head of our six-man delegation on that
>trip. He was also devastated by the surprising
>information.
>Harry Sambou was the Deputy Director General of the
>NIA at the time and was the very person who phoned us
>at Brussels about the attack. At that moment, Harry
>did not know what the heck had really happened at
>Farafenni Barracks but as typical of the NIA they had
>already started reporting an inaccurate story that the
>attackers were Sheriff Gomez (ex-lieutenant GNA) and
>the few security detainees who were recently released
>from Mile Two Prisons. After all these poor men were
>with their families after spending almost two years in
>jail for nothing wrong they had done.
>However it was when we landed at Leopold Sedar
>Senghore's Airport in Dakar that evening, that Mr.
>Njogou Bah the former Gambian ambassador in Senegal
>told us what began to sound sensible about the real
>attack and the attackers. The NIA had lied about
>Sheriff Gomez and co as being behind the attack.
>According to Mr. Bah, the little they had gathered
>about them revealed that they were Gambians okay, but
>who throughout spoke English, Mandinka but mostly
>Arabic. They attacked the camp that dawn in an unknown
>number. However they had struck with a murderous
>instinct shooting and killing six unsuspecting
>soldiers and wounding about an equal number before
>finally trying to leave with all the weapons and
>ammunition in the battalion. A combined force composed
>of men from Yundum Barracks and the State Guard were
>deployed through the North Bank Division to go and
>dislodge the attackers. They met them around Kerewan.
>The GNA troops opened fire on the attackers who were
>holding the commanding officer Captain Biran Saine
>hostage. But instead of fighting, they ran northbound
>crossing the border to Senegal. Mr. Bah had assured us
>that the Senegalese government had promised to assist
>the Gambia in every way possible to capture those
>attackers who fled into their territory.
>By the time we touched down at Yundum Airport, the
>whole military activities surrounding the seemingly
>meaningless attack and killing was over. Normalcy was
>restored at Farafenni Barracks but we were left with
>corpse of six young fine soldiers who perhaps died not
>understanding what had gone wrong that day. The only
>thing they may have noticed was the strange presence
>of armed civilians running around their camp shooting
>and killing anyone on sight.
>What nobody knew about at that time was that only Yaya
>Jammeh, Abdou Joof and General Wane had something to
>do with that surprise attack at Farafenni camp. The
>whole operational order mapped out by Kukoi Samba
>Sanyang, Yaya's one time hero was sitting in a drawer
>at the State House with Farafenni being the first
>target. The Senegalese authorities had handed over the
>documents to Yaya about three months before when the
>political game they were toying with between Yaya and
>Kukoi backfired in their hands. Yaya could not deal
>with it; so he decided to sit on the national security
>secret document thinking as he usually does that the
>whole embarrassing matter will quietly fade out.
>If he had acted with a little more commonsense which
>he fatally lacks in this case, he would have warned
>the GNA to be aware of the possible attack. That would
>have put the Farafenni soldiers on a better alert
>footing than how they were found that dawn. But Yaya
>alone knew in The Gambia and kept it to himself.
>For everybody to get the entire implications of that
>political blunder I must take you stage by stage on
>the investigation results that exposed every element
>of it.
>A brief flashback into the early days of the AFPRC
>government might help to refresh our memories on the
>cardinal cause of the political game played between
>former President Abdou Joof and Yaya Jammeh that
>resulted in that disaster. In those early days when
>Yaya began his political rallies aimed at justifying
>the overthrow of the PPP government, his keynote
>speeches were strongly punctuated with
>pro-kukoi-anti-Senegal rhetoric. Yaya had hammered it
>over and over from one platform to another -in Banjul,
>The Kombos, and The Fonis all across the length and
>breath of the nation- that it was the Senegalese who
>actually brought mass graves in The Gambia. That they,
>the Senegalese armed forces in particular had no right
>to intervene in the 1981 abortive coup staged by Kukoi
>Samba Sanyang. That Senegal unlawfully sent their
>troops to rescue the already illegitimatized PPP
>government in which innocent Gambians resisting the
>occupying forces were murdered in uncountable numbers
>and buried in mass graves. Yaya's antagonistic posture
>against Senegal at that time was a major concern to
>those who understood the dent that it could cause to
>the peaceful coexistence of Senegalo-Gambian political
>relationship.
>Actually by then, Abdou Joof in a lengthy telephone
>conversation he had had with Yaya through the efforts
>of the then Senegalese Ambassador in The Gambia
>Mucktarr Kebbeh assured him that Senegal would have
>nothing to do with the coup against Jawara this time.
>That was three days after the coup when word was going
>round that Senegal was planning to intervene as they
>had done in 1981. That telephone chat between Yaya and
>Abdou that day which lasted for about 25 minutes was
>the friendliest conversation one could imagine between
>the two. Perhaps historians would one day lay their
>hands on that tape because I was positive from the way
>the Senegalese put us through the line that they were
>recording every sentence uttered between Yaya and
>Abdou. It was the  first time Abdou Joof and Yaya
>spoke.
>However Yaya all from the blue soon seemed to forget
>about the nice things he had said to Abdou Joof on how
>the new military government was inclined to forge a
>far better relationship between the two sister states
>than Jawara cared to do. It was literally telling
>Abdou Joof all the great things he wanted to hear
>about himself and the entire bad thing he also wanted
>to hear about Jawara and the PPP government. But Yaya
>later started an anti -Senegalese campaign linking
>Abdou Joof to almost all the crimes committed by the
>Jawara government especially the role he played in
>coming to the military aid of the PPP government in
>1981. Those days cannot be forgotten. Yaya gave it to
>Abdou hard and cold on every platform.
>However in early 1996, Yaya suddenly stopped attacking
>the Senegalese and the role they played in the 1981
>abortive coup by Kukoi (let us not forget about the
>part played by Mr. Sorry Cheyassin in that coup).
>Effective journalism may have been able to relate that
>moment to exactly that period when General Wane, Abdou
>Joof's one time most trusted officer, started
>shuttling back and forth from Senegal for special
>undisclosed meetings with Yaya.  Those special
>undisclosed meetings between Yaya and General Wane
>were the deadly secret negotiations Senegal had
>volunteered to initiate to ensure that Kukoi Samba
>Sanyang was pardoned for all the crimes he had been
>accused of committing and allowing him to come back
>home to The Gambia.
>Yaya was thrilled about it. You may remember when Yaya
>announced that Kukoi and all his accomplices in the
>1981 coup were officially pardoned and could come back
>home to help in the new nation building? That was the
>peak of the secret fatalistic moment. Even Yaya's
>closest associates then, for example Edward Singhateh
>the vice-chairman and minister of defense at the time,
>did not know.
>The next thing that happened was Kukoi being invited
>to Senegal where the political game finally backfired
>in their hands.
>CHECK FOR MY NEXT PIECE FOR MORE FACTS.
>
>Ebou Colly.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________
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