How Jammeh’s Dictatorship is Surviving         

By Mathew K Jallow, Associate Editor

In order to understand how Gambians have acquiesced to Yahya Jammeh’s noxious rule and brutal regime, it is very necessary to engage in some mythological de-construction. Agreeably, dictatorships like Yahya Jammeh’s, survive on a complicated convergence of variables, yet it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out and separate the myths from facts. On the surface, Jammeh may seem invulnerable or even unfazed by all the acerbic circumstances that he has created all around him, but looks can often be deceiving. The forces that are at war within Jammeh’s mind, also dictate his character composition and notorious temper fluctuations, whose manifestations have facilitated the unraveling of his drab and dour personality and the puzzling contours of his tactless regime. Does this yet make any sense? No! Then take a walk with me into Jammeh’s and our glib reality.

The other day, I had a prolonged discussion with a former ranking military officer who explained, or better still, confirmed my smattering understanding of the internal dynamics of this regime and the relationship that exists between it and the stifling agencies Jammeh has created and empowered to sustain his rule. What he told me, in a nutshell, jived with most of my long-held beliefs about the operational mechanisms of his distressful regime. Clearly, the genesis of our predicament under Jammeh lies in the phenomenon of power; getting it, nourishing it and maintaining it. Yahya Jammeh did not start off as this cruel, cold and hysterical monster that he has become, instead, along the way, his instincts for survival kicked in, to further color his pungent mind, so that in his judgment, exigencies of the time necessitated reinventing himself into the perverted and callous persona that we know today. However, judging from the reckless daring with which Yahya Jammeh has so often dispatched his perceived enemies to their forlorn deaths, the apparently latent vindictiveness submerged under his grouchy smiles, incline him towards the inordinate use of state sanctioned violence as a necessary disciplinary extension of this regime’s ignoble policy.

The transformation of Yahya Jammeh into the Jola tribal hero he has become was never the overarching priority in the decision to remove Jawara’s government, and anyone who ever doubted the corrupting influence of power, most probably never commanded it. A case in point is that the Jammeh most of us loathe and have a pathological hatred for, is today far removed from the one, who as gendarmerie officer, visited his brother, a teacher in Niamina, Sare Gainako primary school, my own home village. Nor is he the same man who back in early 1994, was often seen visiting with his friend, the late Boye Bah, chief security at the Daily Observer Bakau premises. And how do I know? Boye Bah, himself a former military told me, and even introduced me to Yahya Jammeh’s mother, whom he was guarding the weeks and months after the coup. This background context is seminal in understanding the process of change germane to the creation of Jammeh’s nauseating and repulsive personality. The evolution of Yahya Jammeh has now come full circle, and his absolute lack of social and moral decorum has become an aberration to the good name of our country. He has, by his own power, consigned to himself the latitude that he needs to objectify our people and our country under the rubric of maintaining national security. The result is the emasculation of our fellow citizens, something, which has left our people dazed and malleable to his coercion and political manipulation.

 Yahya Jammeh’s slow rise to absolute power, rather than mystifying, is patterned after long ago structured and tested models, which every preceding African dictator followed diligently and religiously. My senior military officer admits to a widespread victimization of other tribes, brought on by Jammeh’s politics of divide and rule. The demeanors of the Jolas in the military, but in particular, those transplants from the Casamance, are seen as brash to the point of cockiness. It is true that Gambians in the military and security forces feel a sense of invasion, yet they dare not express themselves openly. Still the Casamance Jolas, mercenary embeds within our military, are immune to constraints of any notion of professional military ethics or by their statuses as unwelcome and discredited invaders of our country. Yahya Jammeh’s political gymnastics have created this disquieting tension within the ranks of the military forces and security personnel, and he is the beneficiary of this contemptible standoff. Additionally, his didactic sermons on tribalism contradict the way and manner he has structured the military, the security forces, and the entire civil service; assigning unlimited and unchecked powers to his Casamance Jola tribesmen and women, who he has accorded the power of military immunity and constitutional force of citizenship. But, beneath the glare of public view, also operates Jammeh’s most feared quacks; an eclectic patchwork of slimy, brutal and sadistic social misfits, who work with brutal efficiency to enforce Jammeh’s unwritten survivalist laws. They are the members of the hated National Intelligence Agency, behind whose inconspicuousness and deft and cruel operational efficiency, is concealed the gratuitously indiscriminate and criminal manner they operate in; tucked away in a remote and obscure corner of the State House grounds. Perhaps even more than our Casamance infested military, security forces and country, these stunted vagrants constitute inarguably the greatest threat to our cherished national security and tribal cohesiveness. Now, slowly but surely, we are losing the nifty civilizing characteristics of our cultures, which until Jammeh came to power, were the glue that bound us together into a nation of one people, largely undistinguished by tribe or by the color of money.

Today, at both the levels of our military and security forces, and general population, The Gambia is experiencing a chaotic order; a misnomer for sure, but the reality, nonetheless. Beneath the visible calm and seamless functioning of the regime, the underlying tensions created by forces of contradiction are festering, pulling our country apart in all directions, to undermine national stability and bringing us closer to, if I may; our own Armageddon. Empirical and anecdotal evidences are not replete with examples of dictatorships, which have relinquished power willing and graciously, rather, past experience show consistency in the use of force to remove dictators. It is a route well traveled by other peoples seeking to restore freedom in their own lives.

Our options as a country now appear limited by the prevailing political circumstances, but we have yet to awaken to this painful reality. The reason for this casual indifference is clearly explainable in a simple term; fear. Jammeh has got us just where he wanted us, and it is where we are cornered into captives of our own consciences; paralyzed beyond belief in mind and body. The source of Jammeh’s power lies in the distrust he has planted in the hearts of our people. The mere mention of Yahya Jammeh’s name in public is taboo, and criticism of him and his rogue regime could very easily turn into a death sentence. The military and security forces and the population are drawn into a conflict of mutual suspicion, because the friend each trusted, the neighbor they got along so well with before Jammeh, the young men who attended class with them or their brothers or their children, the NIA agents whose fathers were their best friend in high school, may today be the ones to turn them in to Mile 2 prison, for merely exercising the constitutional right to criticize the corruption of Yahya Jammeh and his regime. “Only a few people in the military are enjoy the fruits of Jammeh’s regime, and they are the few at the top,” my military officer said to me, and to that I might add; only a few people among the civilian population are seeing the fruits of Jammeh’s labor. “And almost everyone in the military hates Yahya Jammeh,” he added, “even among Gambian Jolas, yet despite this seemingly open and shut case, no dares to initiate an overthrow of a regime that is killing our friends, uncles, fathers, school mates, and neighbors,” the officer added. “Our problem is that everyone is scared to start a coup, but if all of us at the military and security forces could each read each others mind, we will realize simultaneously that we all share the same hatred for Yahya Jammeh, and Mathew, Jammeh would not last another day” the military officer said. “Do you think anyone of us at the military likes what is going on, and look all of you our intellectuals are fleeing. How can our country develop when its best minds are all living abroad and scared to come home where they are born?” That is because Jammeh’s NIA thugs and his Talibans, the Green boys and Green girls, are crawling everywhere; shadows in a deadly game of cat and mouse, forever stalking and shadowing anyone brave enough to even sound or appear disagreeable, not to mention daring to freely and publicly to express their grievances against Yahya Jammeh and his regime. It is said that one often cannot hear or see them, but they are omnipresent, ready to pounce and reduce any daring soul into Jammeh’s next statistic. This then is a rule by fear. It is what The Gambia has come to, and as sad and unfortunate as it looks, it is the reality that we must live with; that is, until we can figure out a way to rid our country of Yahya Jammeh and the nightmare presented by his regime.