By Professor Abdoulaye Saine, Miami University, Oxford, OH  

  

 

Lt. Col. (Retired) Samsudeen Sarr, Coup d’etat by the Gambia National Army; July 1994, Xlibris, Philadelphia: PA, USA, 2007, 298 pp. Cloth, $ 30; Paper, $ 17

Lt. Col. Sheriff Samsudeen Sarr 

Written by a former Commander of The Gambia National Army (GNA), this book is a first hand, and by far the most comprehensive account of the 1994 coup d’etat in The Gambia.  It details the personal military frustrations and ambitions of a junior officer class, the GNA’s organizational military structures both of which are cast against a backdrop of systemic political and economic decay.  Analysis of the coup is also extended to highlight the contributory roles of regional military instability in Liberia and Sierra Leone, ECOMOG’s role in Liberia, all analyzed within the context of an emerging New World Order in the 1990s. Discussion of these major historical themes alone would have been both sufficient and remarkable if the author had ended the book there.  The reader is, instead, treated to a fascinating account of the author’s life, stint as a teacher in Gambian schools, academic and military training in the US in the 1980s and 90s, a distinguished military career in The Gambia cut short by internal military squabbles and self-imposed exile in the USA.  A sub-text of the book is a sociological exploration of the extremely pervasive belief in witchcraft, demons, and marabous and the anxiety aroused by these invisible forces in Gambian society and their impact on military and civil political institutions.  With great skill and ease, the author weaves these different yet related strands.  The result is a rich tapestry that is punctuated with suspense, humor, anger, pain and all other conceivable human emotions.

            The primary strand of the book centers around the analysis of the internal dynamics of the GNA, its origin in the Field-Force, recruitment style(s), sub-institutional competition within the army as well as cleavages based on ethnicity, rank, personality, personal ambitions and jealousy between junior Gambian officers and a top-brass constituted by a Nigerian Training Team.  When you add religion, social class differentiation, witchcraft and marabous to the mix, the result is a uniquely chaotic and politicized military institution. In the author’s view, disrespect for Gambian military personnel by civilian and military elite, partly because of their low social origins, and education was a major contributory factor to the 1994 coup.  Disrespect took many forms: low wages, late payments for Gambian military personnel who served with ECOMOG, poor living conditions, foreign senior officers disregard even for senior Gambian officers.  Together, they heightened junior officer frustration against the PPP regime.  These organizational military factors were compounded by endemic PPP corruption, intra-party factionalism over succession, and the growing divide between those in power and the mass of the population. 

            Thus, a general state of coup fertility, the author argued, was enriched further by ongoing regional instability, which despite Jawara’s best efforts to curb them, spilled-over into The Gambia to destabilize his regime.  Paradoxically, the 1994 coup also occurred against the backdrop of a changed international system that witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resurgence of Democracy’s “third wave” in Africa.  Consequently, the 94 coups and The Gambia’s in particular, as well as other forms of undemocratic regime-change in this so-called New World Order, were simply unacceptable to the new and single hegemonic power, the US and her European allies. 

            As noted earlier, Coup d’etat by the Gambia National Army is also an important sociological expose and commentary.  Belief in witchcraft, demons, and powers wielded by marabous, all work to heal, protect or inflict harm.  Thus, Gambians, including those in the military do not live in an ordered cosmos ruled by a single almighty deity, but rather in one ruled by a host of ambiguous invisible agents.  Therefore, those who for whatever reason are unable to progress at work, succeed in love, kids, or sickness, etc., often believe that they are held back by the malice of others, which can only be broken by the marabous.  These specifically, color and flavor the attitudes and beliefs of senior and junior military officers who are made to believe that with “Jujus’ their bodies are rendered bullet proof, and immune to bodily injury from guns. It is the deep-seated belief in “jujus’ by many in the GNA that accounts for the bulge under many a military uniform, which unfortunately has resulted in numerous deaths and near fatal injury. 

            When belief in the occult is then grafted with formal organizational military structures, weapons and training in the army, the by-products are sinister forces that undermine the essence of military order, discipline and rationality.  Also, were you to fuse the first and second elements, what you end up with are some despised, hungry, frustrated, ambitious and fatalistic soldiers who are determined to improve their social and economic standing. This was the personality profile of the 1994 coup leaders. 

            The autobiographical strand of the book serves as the glue, the connective tissue to the first and second, which results in a seamless blend.  Here the author discusses his life, his student days in the US, his return to The Gambia, following two failed love affairs in Atlanta, and death of his father.  Armed with a two-year degree in agricultural engineering, he joined the newly formed GNA.  A loving and protective mother repeatedly consulted marabous, which the author has no faith in, to help assure her son’s protection from evil and jealous co-workers.  By the time the coup occurred in 94, the author was a senior staff-officer in the ministry of defense charged with harmonizing government and military policy and activity.  At fist, the author’s goal when the coup began to unfold was to avert violence between soldiers who spearheaded the coup and those who sought to foil it.  As an arbiter, the author succeeded in his goal, joined the coupists, perhaps unwittingly, and is appointed minister only to be fired a day later, and detained for eight months at the Mile II Prisons.  Later, his jailers, vice-Chairman, Sana Sabally, and Interior Minister, Haidara are also arrested, jailed and tortured just like the other officers before them, Mamat Cham, Ebrima Chongan and countless others. 

            With harrowing detail the author discusses Yahya Jammeh’s dysfunctional personality and regime, his belief in “Jujus” and the tense relationship between him and Edward Singhateh, once his right-hand man. The author’s understanding of his military colleagues, both senior and junior, and Singhateh’s in particular, who comes across as a non repentant killer, is immense. 

Edward, Touray (top row) & Peter Singhateh Front (in green beret), murdered Finance Minister, Ousman K. Ceesay reveals Ex- Army Commander.

 The author recounted in great detail how Finance Minister Ousman Koro Ceesay was killed by Edward Singhateh with the help of his brother, Peter at Yankuba Touray’s house, and then transported by car into the forest where both Koro’s remains and the car were set alight. The gruesome killing of Basiru Barrow, “Dot” Faal, Fafa Nyang and many other military officers are also recounted in chilling detail, not to mention, the more recent killing of Daba Marena and four others, following the foiled 2006 coup. In fact, the author revealed those who may have been responsible for the death of Deyda Hydara.  It is Edward Singhateh and Sana Sabally rather than Yahya Jammeh, who is the villain in this military saga.  Boubacar Jatta, the army chief, in fact, appeared likeable and reasonable, but he is also criticized for his blind loyalty to Jammeh.  Accordingly, Jammeh is also not spared criticism and is singled out for his capriciousness, greed, vindictiveness, and more importantly, his propensity to fire, jail, demonize or kill those whom he no longer has use for.  Former vice-Chairman, Sana Sabally was portrayed as trigger happy, and a loose cannon who engaged in wanton killings and arrests of both civilian and military personnel in a bid to make up for his frail stature and deep-seated insecurities. 

            But these atrocities were not only committed by AFPRC strongmen but by the rank and file as well.  When a taxi driver mistakenly interrupted the motorcade of vice-Chairman Sabally’s, his driver stooped the convoy and pumped two bullets into the poor taxi-drivers body, leaving him to gasp in excruciating pain before he died.  In the period of military rule, these were routine occurrences.  Upon the author’s release from Mile II in 1996, he is redeployed in the army, and rose to the rank of Commander, but is unceremoniously retired in 1999, following problems with his boss Boubacar Jatta.  Ultimately, the author and his family secured political asylum in the US after a couple of intense interview session by a suspicious and seemingly unsympathetic female INS officer. 

            Interestingly, Sarr’s role as an intermediary between the coup conspirators led by Edward Singhateh, on one hand, and those who sought to resist them and led by Major Ebrima Chongan at Denton Bridge, on the other, changed into direct participation with the coupists.  Sarr not only helped craft the first announcement of the coup derived from notes written by veteran and respected journalist, Suwaebou Conateh, but he also helped in the consolidation of the coup by counseling the mostly inexperienced cadre of junior officers and later served as a minister.  Thus, many, including ex-President Jawara’s inner circle, felt that Sarr was involved, and knew all along about the coup. Sarr, however, claimed no prior knowledge of the coup.  Arguably, it is ex-president Jawara and his underlings who bore the brunt of Sarr’s most virulent criticism. 

            Yet, in an ironic twist of circumstances, Sarr consented when a friend in New York solicited on his behalf a letter from the ex-president to support his asylum application.  The ex-president agreed to writing the requested letter but was convinced later by his advisors not to do so out of the conviction that Sarr was, in fact, complicit in his ouster. Paradoxically, Sarr (and his immigration attorney in New York) based his claims for asylum in the US on having been an ardent supporter of Jawara’s and the PPP, which he was not. However, it is this failed legacy of the PPP and Jawara’s in particular, that in the end, became the legal basis on which Sarr and his family were granted asylum in the US.  Why Sarr would not use his fallout with Jammeh or Boubacar Jatta as the reasons for his asylum application cries out for an answer. 

            Another major question is why Sarr, after eight months of detention at Mile II, would agree to be redeployed in the army?  Given Sarr’s sophistication and seniority over Jammeh and the other AFPRC members, one would have expected otherwise.  This could partly explain the female INS officer’s aggressive questioning of him during the first asylum interview. What role, the officer may have pondered, did Sarr play in the human rights abuses that he attributed to the regime and to Edward Singhateh, Sana Sabally and Yahya Jammeh, specifically?   Was he guilty by association?  Is this why Sarr fabricated his claim to be a PPP/ Jawara supporter, knowing fully well that the record of the military regime with which he was associated could not gain him asylum in the US? 

            Similar questions were also raised by two Gambian academics.  They challenged Sarr to address these concerns during dinner at an African restaurant in Washington, D.C., before they would agree to help him write a book on the coup.  These were legitimate and reasonable questions and concerns.  However, Sarr’s scathing criticism of the two Gambian professors and his apparent frustration with the female INS officer made it seem as if the questions were sophomoric and the answers all too obvious, which they were not.  After all, the two Gambian professors may have been skeptical and wanted more answers. In particular, they may have wanted to know Sarr’s alleged role in Yaya Drammeh interrogation and his subsequent death following his failed insurgency against the regime.  Perhaps, they also wanted to determine before plunging into the book project whether Sarr, like many before him, consciously worked for Jammeh without understanding the possible consequences of his actions.  I venture to suggest that this is hardly the case. Perhaps, in the end the two professors were not convinced and, therefore, opted out of the proposed project.  These lingering questions beg for answers. 

            From Sarr’s narrative, however, it is clear that he is ambivalent about a military culture and organization in which he reveled and yet was at the same time at odds with its leadership.  This may explain his dogged perseverance to remain in The Gambia, (other than the difficulty of uprooting his family and live in exile for the foreseeable future), so as to make a difference in the lives of the GNA and the country.  This was not to be. 

            This is a truly informative book that provides the raw information that only an insider is privy to.  Sarr, with considerable skill was able to pull together the aforementioned strands to paint a vivid and plausible picture of the coup, his co-optation, Edward Singhateh and Yahya Jammeh’s pathological killing sprees, pervasive corruption, and empty rhetoric. 

 

Pathological murderers 

Thus, the book is as much a study of the Gambian military as it is of Gambian society.  In the end, the military is portrayed as a microcosm of the society in which it is located, reflecting its hopes, failures and contradictions.   It is a study in individual ambition and failure, huge organizational military disorder and failed promises. 

            In the end, the author proffers several exit strategies for Jammeh in order to halt the country’s march toward predictable demise. Among these are:  coax President Jammeh out of office and forgive his crimes; appoint Isatou Njie-Saidy as his successor; select a presidential candidate to run on an APRC ticket to ensure that Jammeh never suffers the fate of Liberia’s Charles Taylor and/ or establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to investigate past human rights violations and crimes. What role the military will play, ultimately, in the politics of The Gambia will remain to be seen.  It is clear that the military will continue to be a permanent fixture in The Gambia’s political terrain and maybe, it is unrealistic to think that the military can be expunged from politics and live up to the principle of civilian supremacy. A post-Jammeh civilian government must grapple with strategies to work with the military and in doing so, keep it from being overtly political.  This is a monumental challenge that is likely to remain illusive for self-interested politicians and scholars of civil-military relations in Africa. 

            In sum, Sarr’s book straddles several levels- the individual, organizational, societal, regional and international to explain both the causes and consequences of the 1994 coup.  He infused the analysis of the coup with his personal narrative, as well as the stories of key military players, which in the end, make the book all the more engaging and instructive. It will remain for some time to come the most definitive personal account of the 1994 coup.  The book is likely to generate healthy discussion, and controversy at all levels and circles because of the many questions Sarr left unanswered or only answered partly.  This is not the last we will hear of him. 

            Finally, though the book reads well, it could have benefited from the skills of an able editor and a known publishing house primarily because the book deserves to be widely circulated and marketed.  In spite of these relatively minor flaws, especially when juxtaposed against the larger picture the book succeeded in painting, the book is required reading for all Gambians, students and scholars interested in civil-military relations and research. Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this article or any other article or image, or portions thereof, in any form or context without the expressed permission of The Gambia Echo Newspaper.

Lt. Col. (Retired) Samsudeen Sarr, Coup d’etat by the Gambia National Army; July 1994, Xlibris, Philadelphia: PA, USA, 2007, 298 pp.  Cloth, $ 30; Paper, $ 17.

Call this number to buy the book:1888-795-4274 Extn.(7876) 0r visit Samsudeen sarr at this website; www.samsudeensarr.com