Disagreement with Echo Editorials

By Samsudeen Sarr Newark, New Jersey 

My busy schedule last week wouldn’t allow me to write but I certainly had some comments to make over your editorial(s) discussing the four reported dead military recruits at Fajara Barracks during a Basic Fitness Test (BFT). I think it was the kind of quintessential subject reporters could have used to educate future prospective recruits about the dangers of BFT instead of merely exploiting the tragedy to vent out the usual anti-Jammed rhetoric that renders little help in correcting a chronic problem faced by armed forces all over the world. But by concluding in your second editorial after lashing out on all “idiotic” Gambian soldiers that the Gambia needs a Thomas Sankara to rescue the country from the ills of the Jammeh government with his “good-for-nothing generals,” the article simply reminded me of those pre-coup days in The Gambia National Army (GNA) when young political officers adamantly  tried to persuade their counterparts about the hopelessness of President Jawara and members of his government who they thought deserved nothing but to be overthrown and replaced by better leaders. Perhaps the only difference is that whereas the editor wished for a Thomas Sankara to come and do it for the Gambians, most of those officers through the misleading predictions of soothsayers or marabouts were seriously convinced of being predestined and quite capable of one day, becoming the ideal leaders of the country with their entitlement to it predicated on hereditary or birthrights. And as one would expect, every one of those presidential aspirants in uniform had anchored their hopes and beliefs on their usual snake-horn charms or jujus that they thought would ultimately lead them to the promised thrown. Unfortunately, what happened to them after the 1994 coup they so well helped to orchestrate was far from their expectations, the reason why many of us now strongly oppose the insistence of resorting to military force as a means of rectifying political problems. I will come back to that in the second part of the paper when dealing with the so-called good-for-nothing generals who were referred to as big jokes. One might argue that I was not a General but as former army Commander, it was apparent that the same duties I had handled as Lieutenant Colonel is the same those Generals do today as Army Commanders. In other words, the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the GNA ten years ago was more or less equivalent to that of a General’s today with little or no change in the key responsibilities. And the editor wouldn’t spare me when listing the names of the best and brightest military “failures” or puppets associated with those used and abused by Jammeh since 1994.     

In the mean time let us first look at the dangers in BFT’s in army recruiting and see how we could educate Gambians to understand it better, especially those young men who in the future might wish to join the army. It is not surprising that the OX who reported the incident was unable to definitively give an answer when asked whether it was normal for recruits to die during BFT. For that reason, I could immediately determine that he/she was a civilian without previous military experience. The answer to that question however is a resounding yes. What I think could be of great help to all of us is that when a situation is condemned for being undesirable or inappropriate, presenting a better alternative to it would demonstrate more professionalism in the business of reporting. But where that is lacking, the essence of criticizing becomes less constructive and certainly more destructive.

Apparently the casualty rate in military recruit training has always been a subject of mystery to medical doctors devoted to preventing it with minimal success.  The first casualty we had in The GNA occurred in its 3rd Intake in 1985 when a young recruit died of heart attack after a short sprinting competition. The second happened in 1987. Sergeant Major Johnson, a seasoned British Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) was in charge of the recruiting exercise. If my memory serves me right, the young victim in his early twenties who hailed from Lamin Village collapsed after running the usual two-mile distance normally required from all candidates. A medical team was present as always who followed the runners in an ambulance for such eventualities. But with all the first aid assistance administered on the young man that included cardiac pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), he died to everybody’s shock and regret. Many former GNA officers I spoke to recently could clearly remember both sad incidents.  Since then, this is the second time the GNA reportedly suffered similar casualties in recruit training which by international standards is still relatively low. I am however assuming that the report is factual although I haven’t heard much about it from local papers in The Gambia. And it is quite normal for such incidents not to be reported as national news, because of its frequent occurrence in military camps all over the world.

While serving in the Confederation army in 1988, I could recall the degree of concern raised by Senegalese military officials over exercise-related deaths on soldiers, not only on the young recruits during BFT but on officers and other ranks as well obliged to pass the annual mandatory tests for promotions and appointments.

In the USA, military records readily show descriptive analysis of recruit mortality conducted from 1956 through 1996. In the Air Force alone, 30 deaths were attributed to cardiac causes with 23 exercise-related. Some recruits will even commit suicide from the stress and strains involved in the hectic training.

Wagner and Clerk also retrospectively identified 31 on-base recruit deaths in the US Marine Corps training facility in San Diego, California from 1981 through 1985 with 4 suicides, 4 pulmonary related, 3 central- nervous- system problems and 6 from cardiac arrest. The survey covered both male and female recruits with similar results found in army, navy and national guard training camps.

In England, France, Nigeria, Turkey, Pakistan, to name a few countries, recruits dying from rigorous training have remained a constant happening that no measure of precaution could prevent. The same must be true in the former communist blocs like Russia and China where such military data was and perhaps is still kept confidential.  

What is critical in keeping track of such deaths is the autopsy records in the industrialized world kept on every recruit who dies in the process. Since there are usually no symptoms or signs to indicate these pre-existing conditions with the initial medical test restricted to hastily checking blood pressure level, regular rate of heart beat, weight of body mass against height and age bracket, vision and hearing, few vulnerable ones unavoidably slip through the cracks for no fault of theirs or the recruiting officers. That’s why until they die during or after the BFT and pathologists determine the cause of death, commanders and recruiters rarely understand how they happen.

In The Gambia, unfortunately, family members for religious reasons would usually oppose any recommendations to conduct autopsies on soldiers who died prematurely under any circumstances, compounded by the belief that such deaths could also be caused by human-eating witches or evil spirits bent on killing humans for the thrill of it.

The important lesson we could learn from this is the need for prospective soldiers from civilian lifestyles to be honest about their health conditions. There is no doubt that with unemployment so high and perhaps the army being the only institution that guarantees possible employment, many young men would do anything to be enlisted even if it means hiding their life-threatening ailments. It is however advisable for them to start simple training routines, such as short-distance runs and gradually improve on their speed and stamina before the day of recruiting when suddenly they encounter stiff competition with thousands of enthusiastic contenders fighting to be among a few needed hundreds. In one recruiting exercise at Yundum Barracks, I could fully well recall how in an attempt to enlist a batch of 150 men, over five thousand young men appeared for the exams. That was around 1989. With military career in the country so cool in the country now since the coup, I will expect the number of applicants to rise exponentially.

But if at any time, while on such physical training one notices regular shortness of breath, constant chest pains or nauseating feelings then one must see a doctor before going to enlist or disclose the symptoms to the recruiting medical officer before any physical engagement. These could be heart or blood related problem that might be fatal during BFT. Those with sickle cell traits are also prone to cardiac problems when pushed to their limits. The recruiting officers could also start briefing them about the health risks and encourage the sick ones who know about their conditions to disclose them before anything.

But let’s not be fooled by the accusation that the recruiting officers tend to be highly intoxicated, an ideal excuse I probably would have given my parents if I had failed my first BFT in January 1986. The way we were treated, despite our test being the milder version for cadet officers, I thought the recruiting officers were not only intoxicated with drugs but that they took the craziest type, “kubayjarra” the mother of all hallucinogens. When I complained about the toughness of the BFT, one of the prospective cadets who had already finished basic infantry training told me that the 1st Intake sent to Senegal for basic recruit training in 1985 had to flee all the way back home accusing their instructors of a deliberate scheme to kill them in the name of training.
 Yes, even the British officers like Sgt. Major Allen, one heck of a huge giant, mercilessly punched and dragged soldiers in a way totally illegal by international standards. But they kept on doing so anyway in a program to instill courage, perseverance and obedience in our new military characters. In the sixteen weeks of basic training, we slept and ate less, ran everyday immediately after lunch, crawled on gravels and hot sand under temperatures that could cause heat stroke, swam in filthy muddy waters;  awoken at the middle of the night and asked to assemble outside and wait for an hour under heavy downpour of rain for no reason; to get my mind adjusted to the habit of complimenting superior officers with the salutation SIR when talking to them, I was forced to stand alone in the hot sun for two hours screaming YES SIR, NO SIR. After that I was even saying YES SIR or NO SIR to women. 

But the amazing part of all is how these recruiting officers do everything with you throughout the training period; they wake up with you at dawn and go to bed at the same time with everybody; they run the two hours marathon with you; show you how to do pocket drills, pushups, sit ups, dig trenches and foxholes with you, sleep in snake-infested forests by your side to teach you how to effectively lay ambushes and spring them. They introduce you to the standard assault rifle of the army the AK47, teach you the names of its basic parts, educate you with the skills of stripping and assembling them and above all, they also teach how to use them to kill people in the field of battle. In other words, they go through the whole nine yards of training with you and then help you in the graduation ceremony before they start treating you as a respectable soldier. Soon after that, they start all over again preparing for another batch in the next sixteen weeks for the never ending rigmarole. The bottom line is, they always want the best and therefore will push everyone to his limit to a point where the ordinary observer will think that their irrational behaviors border on intoxication from drugs and alcohol. Habitual drug addicts could never survive the rigors of training military recruits on regular basis. Recruit training is tough because it is the first most important stage in programming the mind of the soldier for the brutal task of fighting wars. It’s not boys’ game.

That’s how training in the GNA was conducted before President Jammeh came to power and I know that it continued unaltered to this day. That brings me to the second part of the discussion. Before the coup, despite the things that were evidently wrong in the army, the majority of the soldiers simply held on to their jobs and respected the institution as their income-earning source. In the same way ministers, technocrats and other civil servants in those days put in their best to help the PPP government grow and progress, the soldiers on a parallel commitment were there to defend the society with their lives. At times the soldier’s service was not just to defend the Gambia and obey all commands from the Commander-In- Chief-it was President Jawara up to 1994-but was occasionally obliged to perform international duties on the president’s orders. That’s how the GNA was deployed in 1990 with ECOMOG forces in Liberia. Soldiers died there and wouldn’t be brought back home for burial. Yet we continued to serve and never felt being used by Jawara who as a matter of fact, afforded us with the jobs that put food on our families’ tables. Our responsibilities in the PPP era were of lesser burden to us given the fact that the key command decisions were made by foreign military experts; that also gave them the lion’s share of the benefits that went with the job. I guess that may have been one of the reasons why nobody wanted to kill or die for President Jawara on that July morning when he left the country together with members of his family and some senior government officials.

When Jammeh took over, like everybody in the previous government, the majority of the work force who chose to shift their loyalty from the past to the present regime included the soldiers in the camps. Most of us never took part in the planning or execution of the coup, but thank god when the operation succeeded peacefully and our jobs still in-tact, we merely continued from where the past ended. Except that instead of foreigners, we the Gambian officers now made our own decisions on national security matters. And mark you, in our field of work we are still trained fighters loyally committed to the system that provides us with our feeding, shelter and general livelihood. And I believe everybody else in other civil departments rendered their sincere service to the government on the same principles until for one reason or the other they fall apart with President Jammeh like some of us did. Just for curiosity, can we also say that all those ministers, technocrats, politicians, civil servant, judges, ambassadors, etcetera  who since 1994 worked for Jammeh but were later fired, jailed, retired, with quite a few dead now, fall in the same category of the good-for- nothing idiots used, abused and jettisoned like the soldiers? I don’t see much difference in their case with that of the soldiers serving under President Jammeh; and I will be thrilled by an editorial lambasting them with their names listed like ours.

Throughout the period, I served both in Jawara’s and Jammeh’s government, never for once did I feel being used or abused by both leaders. Of course, Jawara never provided me with much and fairly enough never gained or demanded much from me in return. The few times I volunteered to share my opinion about security problems facing the army, top senior officers in the PPP government categorically warned me to keep it to myself since they had contracted more competent foreign Generals and Colonels to advise them on what to do about security matters. I was only a Captain and they therefore, had a good point there, given my inferior rank to such senior officers.

With Jammeh, we had a mutual trust and confidence that benefitted both of us until it ended on May 15, 1999 when he decided to retire me. I had served him in every way I could not only to preserve his government and his leadership but also to preserve my job in a stable society where the benefits were wonderful. Under him, I had engaged in risky missions and operations that could have cost me my life but survived them with the best feeling a person could have for just being alive. By the same token, Jammeh has allowed me to travel all over the world, meet different peoples, study different cultures and military traditions that helped greatly in making me what I am today.
Therefore, when he retired me, I also believed that the setback was mutual to both of us. I lost a good job and a generous leader and I think he equally lost a good loyal officer. When vigilante groups in the urban area almost destabilized Banjul, Serekunda and other surrounding towns in 1997 by attacking and severely beating up helpless individuals they claimed were stealing men’s genitals through merely shaking their hands, Jammeh insisted that we came up with an immediate solution to the problem. And we did. But he also took me to Mecca, Medina, Turkey, Egypt, Libya and Taiwan where he treated me like a prince. When Farafenni and Kartong Barracks were attacked by unknown gun men who walked in at dawn and started shooting and killing anybody in uniform, it was our responsibility to stop them by putting our lives on the line. And we did it. When Bissau erupted into a nasty civil war in 1998, Jammeh ordered us to join the ECOMOG peacekeeping contingent sponsored by France to go in and help broker peace between the belligerent factions of General Ansumana Manneh and President Nino Vieira. We went in with Gambian diplomats who shuttled through treacherous combat terrain risking their lives to ensure that the mission was accomplished. It eventually led to Vieira and Manneh agreeing to meet in Banjul for their first peace talk. That to me was never Jammeh using or abusing us or his ministers or diplomats but government workers performing their normal duties. The soldiers went in with their guns and bullets while the diplomats carried their pens and papers.

The Generals in The Gambia today were of course yesterday’s Lieutenants, Captains and Majors who took part in those special operations from Angola to Darfur, Sierra Leone to Liberia, Bissau to Congo; and they are still doing the same fine job. Every one of them has his personal story to tell his children and grandchildren. General Tamba for example was the last senior officer left at State House on July 22, 1994. He was only a lieutenant then but had to make the final critical decision that averted an armed conflict between the GNA and the Presidential Guard. It was by his defiance that Colonel Ndure Cham’s coup attempt against Jammeh failed. He was loyal to Jammeh and would have laid his life to defend him and his government. And naturally, he was also benefitting well from the government. I think the lost of his job was as much another setback to him as it is to Jammeh for losing a loyal, good officer.  Removing Tamba and appointing Kinteh and Drammeh has however debunked the notion that the Armed forces were purely for Jola Commanders. If Sam Sarr was a puppet used and discarded, Tamba a tribal favorite used and dumped, what about Kinteh and Drammeh? It is likely that they will sooner or later go if Jammeh no longer needs their services. That’s just the hard reality on the ground, period! Anyway, what I know about Kinteh and Drammeh is that they are all like us, loyal to the core and will serve Jammeh with their lives. They were there since the coup and had always proven their total loyalty to him. They will not be part of any coup conspiracy or take part in one fermented by mutinous soldiers and could sacrifice their lives for the preservation of the status quo because in that position, anything bad aimed at Jammeh will harm them if not prevented. They are also good people at heart. Drammeh in particular is very godly and was General Dada’s most trusted Aide de Camp. He served the Nigerian Army Commander from 1992 to 1994 with absolute loyalty. He never took part in planning the 1994 coup and never participated in the operation despite most of his peers being among the mutineers. He was among those of us arrested and jailed in the immediate aftermath of the 22nd July coup, but was released and reinstated for his innocence and admirable character.  If loyalty is what determines a good-for-nothing General, Kinteh and Drammeh are no lesser loyalists.

I want to conclude by coming back to the idea of Gambia needing a Thomas Sankara. I would have preferred dealing with an example of what a good-for-something general should look like in contrast to the useless ones profiled in the GNA, but since that was missing in the editorial with only the late Captain Thomas Sankara paraded as the cute soldier, I have an argument to make over that. Those who knew the man though generally agreed that he was a charismatic political/military officer; beside that, as a leader, he was just another Marxist protagonist, intellectually very arrogant and hardly got along with his peers or superiors, a trait that eventually led to his assassination by his closest allies in November 1987. His admirers called it a betrayal of trust while his enemies celebrated it as necessary riddance. His heroes were Castro of Cuba, Jerry Rawlins of Ghana and leaders belonging to that archaic school of thought. The following excerpts were statement he made in 1983 and 1985 few years before he was assassinated. They were clear testimonies of how he disregarded the core values of modern democracy: 

 "As for our relationship with the political class, what relations would you have liked us to weave? We explained face to face, directly with the leaders, the former leaders of the former political parties because, for us, these parties do not exist anymore they have been dissolved. And that is very clear. The relationship that we have with them is simply the relationship we have with voltaic (Burkinabe) citizens, or, if they so wish, the relationship between revolutionaries, if they wish to become revolutionaries. Beyond that, nothing remains but the relationship between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries."

August 21, 1983 press conference, Sankara said:

"I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of caution and organization we deserve victory. You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future."

Sankara like all those revolutionaries of the past overestimated the level of their intelligence and popularities in the same way they miscalculated the efficacy and durability of communism among contemporary economic system of governments. He was determined to kill and die for his socialist beliefs and fairly enough he ended in a mass grave with eleven of his closest comrades when his dogma could no longer be tolerated by his people. If he was what one would term a good- for- something-military commander- whether in a captain’s colonel’s or general’s rank- then sorry to say it but I will rather prefer to be remembered as a good for nothing commander than be like a Captain Thomas Sankara.

I keep on saying this repeatedly that I may have lost Gambia, but I got America which I cherish dearly. Instead of crying over spilled milk or licking my wound after being hurt for losing my job unexpectedly, like many other progressive Gambians who couldn’t make it in the Jammeh government, I chose to turn my scars into stars. I know Gambians including my good friend, Ebrima Sankareh who because of their problems with the APRC government seized the opportunity to leave The Gambia and now enjoy the status of American citizenship and did a lot to improve their educational standards. So many Gambians including discharged soldiers are today thankful to God and their families back home for achieving greater things in the international community which they had never dreamt of and might never have otherwise achieved in their lives.  

Hence like in The Gambia, other than the fact that my job description has changed from being a soldier to a different less-risky occupation, I still go to work giving my best to my boss to keep his company successful for our common benefit. Hypothetically, would losing my job someday mean being used and dumped by my boss? I don’t think so. He may sack me but will certainly leave me with an experience that could help me get another job and grow better in that company. That’s what life is all about until one day it all ends with death. I think I gained tremendously after leaving The Gambia in 1999, far more than anything The Gambia could have provided for me if I hadn’t leave.  So once again, I am thankful to God and everybody who contributed to my present living condition including friends and foes. No hard feelings and no regrets.