Conditions Deteriorating in Guinea
In my safe havens piece I wrote that “Broken states, alas, are not all that rare.” This is a difficult point to raise without coming across as glib, but it is the reality. Neither the American public nor the American press has much taste for foreign affairs coverage. We basically see media attention and political controversy attach to either Iraq or Afghanistan, but there’s not the bandwidth to cover both of them simultaneously, much less the whole wide world.
But read, for example, Elizabeth Dickinson’s post about how Guinea’s year-old junta is unraveling:
All the comes at a time when the junta itself is falling apart. Dadis comes across as crazy, drugged, or bi-polar in his interviews and TV spots. He has become increasingly fragile, observers say, as the pressures of patronage and a fractured junta coalition weigh on him.
And fractured the junta certainly is. The group of 30 or so soldiers who came to power, with the backing of about 500 more, make up just a handful of the armies 20,000 forces. Within the high ranks, the most obvious split has emerged between Dadis and his defense minister, General Sekouba Konaté. The latter was an important figure in the military prior to the coup as is largely percieved as the biggest “threat” to Dadis’s rule — an impression codified by the fact that, since earlier this year, Dadis has refused to let his defense minister out of his sight for more than a few moments (they are pictured together above). When Konaté left the country several weeks ago to Morocco (the rumor mill claims he was sent to procure arms), many in Guinea wondered if he would be let back in to the country. His whereabouts now are unknown.
There’s also this Human Rights Watch account of the premeditated murder of protesters in the country, but we can probably safely dismiss that as part of HRW’s vast anti-Israel conspiracy.
Anyways, none of this is to say we should withdraw all our forces from Afghanistan and invade Guinea instead. It’s just that the real humanitarian and security issues involved in weak or fragile states need to be kept in some kind of perspective and our actual policy commitment should be balanced.
16 Responses to “Conditions Deteriorating in Guinea”
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October 30th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
sadly, our world view is so skewed by the powers that be decision that real Americans don’t care about the world.
No wonder adults don’t know where most countries are on a map or who is the leader of a country. Or anything else about the world.
no wonder so many shrug their shoulders when you mention that last fall not only our economy would go down but, the world’s as well.
No wonder so many righties see war as an adventure movie and torture as an episode of 24 and cannot relate to the seriousness of either subject.
Many probably see Africa as it was presented in 1930s Hollywood rather then as it really is.
We have lost our ability to understand the world. We have lost our basic building blocks knowledge of our own country, history and civics like our government and how it really works. Which is why so many express such disappointment because Obama has not solved world hunger let alone all the problems facing him yet.
Or why things operate as they do in the congress.
The dumbing down of America is almost complete.
Break our school system, Hollywoodize our media and add in a dose of conservative bullying and you have what our society is now.
October 30th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
thank you, vwcat, for giving us the kind of insight i would expect from a precocious and cynical high school student. now let the adults talk.
October 30th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Konate will be allowed to return only after Guinea gets their share of of Global Warming Remediation Loot and Dadis opens another Swiss account.
What say we give them 3 Billion$ Matty?
October 30th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
thank you, vwcat, for giving us the kind of insight i would expect from a precocious and cynical high school student. now let the adults talk.
Money. Who’s blaming Obama for not ending world hunger? And doesn’t that conflict with your assertion that Americans don’t know or care about the rest of the world. And who’s actually seen a movie from the 1930’s about Africa? Tarzan? Take your prozac and shut up.
October 30th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Is one side or the other in a prospective Guinean civil war going to enlist the aid of an anti-American terrorist organization, giving them a base of activity in exchange for military help against their rival?
Instability in Guinea does not support your argument at all.
Somalia, on the other hand, does.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
vwcat: The comments to your comment demonstrate the puerility of the American adult. The majority of Americans are ill educated which is what many of the “elite” wish – it makes their job easier. The stupider the people are the easier it is to lead them around like sheep.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Njorl, actually the people behind the coup in Guinea are foreign drug lords and various criminal masterminds. So the threat to the rest of the world is bigger than you think, even if it doesn’t come in the form of terrorist attacks.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
However, Matt’s arguments are based on the threat to the US, not the world. Drug lords in Guinea are virtually meaningless to US interests.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Nice snark. I like it.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
And even Matt is only interested in the rest of the world to make his own narrow points about Israel and Afghanistan.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Drug lords in Guinea are virtually meaningless to US interests.
They’re not only “in Guinea” but international criminal groups:
It is true that drug lords are more interested in making money than attacking the US, but it would still be a big problem to have these people in complete control of a state. Who exactly would make sure that terrorists are not training in such a country?
October 30th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
You know your country is in a bad way when coups happen because soldiers aren’t paid.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
So what’s special about Guinea that allows our leaders to safely ignore it, instead of wasting more that it’s own GDP shuffling dust from one dirt road to the next?
October 30th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
You know your country is in a bad way when coups happen because soldiers aren’t paid.
I would have thought that it’s the second most common reason* for a coup thoughout history; it almost happened in the American Revolution, and would of, if G.W. were a different (and more normal) type of person in that situation
*the first being ‘why be the power behind the throne when I can be the power on the throne?’
October 30th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Why oh Why,
If every Guinean affiliated drug lord vanished from the face of the Earth, we would not notice it in the US. We have drug lord saturation already. All they could possibly do is supplant existing activity.
October 30th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I’m not really as contemptuous of Guinea or Afghanistan as my other posts might sound. But when the bombs are seriously worth more than their eventual targets, that’s a good reason not to drop so many.