The world has started paying attention to Guinea over the past week, following reports that government soldiers killed and raped scores of civilians at a protest in a soccer stadium in Conakry, the capital. The trouble in Guinea goes back to last December, when a military junta led by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, an obscure junior officer, took control of the small West African nation six hours after its longtime dictator, Lansana Conté, died. Camara at first promised his rule would be temporary, but it hasn’t been, leading to the protest on September 28th, which is Guinean independence day. To make sense of what’s going on, I spoke to Richard Moncrieff, the West Africa project director for International Crisis Group, who is based in Senegal. An edited transcript of our conversation follows.
What’s the current situation in Guinea?
The people are pretty shocked at the events of the 28th of September. The violence was very, very brutal—there was sexual violence, and unarmed protesters were simply gunned down by the security forces, who then went into the poorer suburbs of Conakry, where they continued abuses and committed robberies and really terrorized the population.
And it remains tense, because the situation has not been resolved. I think it’s clear that if the army persists in its desire to stay in power, then opposition groups will again go out on the streets as a way of putting pressure on the military junta. The second element is that there are tensions within the military junta itself.
There is considerable tension in the provinces, too, due to the militarization of public administration and the recruitment of ethnic militias by the junta, as well as public unhappiness with the junta’s intention to stay in power. This raises the risk of further instability, which could affect neighboring countries, especially Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Was this explosion of violence unprecedented? Was it unexpected?
It was not unprecedented. In fact, it was remarkably similar to the violence that occurred in February, 2007, when there were protests over how the government handled a general strike. The army went onto the streets and shot at unarmed protestors. Over a hundred people died. Those acts were committed by similar people within the army and security forces, and they did it with the same objectives: to terrorize the population and to maintain power.