Guinea-Bissau

Guinea-Bissau is a small West African country bordered by Senegal to the north, and Guinea to the south. It includes numerous tiny offshore islands located off the Atlantic Coast. Tropical rain forest and mangrove along the coast gives way to savanna woodland towards the east. The country has deposits of bauxite and phosphates, but these have not been exploited.

History

Portugal laid claim to the region in 1446. In the 17th century, Portuguese Guinea became a major centre of the slave trade. Partly because of their coastal location, the Papel people suffered the most direct colonial repression of any group in Portuguese Guinea. On the other hand, some were involved in the slave trade in Bissau.

Until 1879, Portugal administered the region from Cape Verde, 900 kilometres away. Portugal was unable to control the interior until well into the twentieth century, and in part employed Fula and Mandinga peoples to assist in putting down resistance among peoples of the interior. Balanta and Bijago people continued to resist the imposition of colonial rule until 1936. The capital was established at Bissau in 1941, and in 1952 Portuguese Guinea was made an overseas province of Portugal.

Cape Verdeans played a prominent part in the nationalist movement for independence. While the Portuguese received Fula and Mandinga support, the nationalist movement also drew support from many Balanta. Amilcar Cabral, the son of Cape Verdeans, organized the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in 1956, launching an armed struggle against the Portuguese in 1961. The PAIGC fought against thousands of Portuguese troops and gradually expanded its control over the colony. Cabral was assassinated early in 1973, but the PAIGC formed a government and declared independence on 24 September 1973, before fighting had ended. Following the democratic revolution in Portugal in April 1974, Guinea-Bissau finally was granted independence on 10 September 1974 (Cape Verde also became independent).

Amilcar Cabral’s half-brother Luis became the first president of the country, until he was overthrown by army commander Joao Bernardo ‘Nino’ Vieira in a coup in late 1980. Vieira, from the small Papel people, ruled as a military commander until instituting a one-party state in 1984. In response to an alleged 1985 coup attempt, six senior officials including the vice president were executed. The vice president had been a prominent Balanta fighter in the war for independence, and his death increased distrust of Vieira in the Balanta-dominated military.

Under international pressure, constitutional changes in 1991 opened up a multi-party system, and Vieira was duly elected president in a 1994 vote deemed free and fair by international observers, an important first in the history of the young nation. In 1998, when Vieira sacked an army general for alleged smuggling of arms to rebels in the Casamance region of Senegal, the army mutinied and Vieira was forced to rely on Senegalese and Guinean forces – encouraged by France – to put down the uprising and the civil conflict that ensued. However, a third coup – in May 1999 – was successful, and he was overthrown.

The junta arranged for new elections, held in February 2000, and Kumba Yala, a Balanta, was elected. He was the first of his ethnic group to lead the country. He governed erratically, dissolved the National Assembly, and ruled by decree. The military stepped in to remove him in September 2003. An interim president headed a Transitional National Council, with support of many political parties and civil society, to return the country to civilian rule. The country held credible legislative elections in 2004, won by the former ruling party – the PAIGC. A new head of the army re-appointed 65 senior officers who had been driven out, with the explicit aim of restoring ethnic diversity to the Balanta-dominated military. In 2005, Yala and Vieira – returned from a six-year exile in Portugal – both contested presidential elections. Running as an independent, Vieira won in a run-off, with Yala’s backing in the second round. International observers judged the voting to have been free and fair.

From around 2004, weak institutions and a history of political instability had made Guinea Bissau a target for drug traffickers seeking new routes; drug trafficking began to emerge as a major influence in the country, further undermining the rule of law.

Guinea-Bissau’s political turmoil continued in 2006 and 2007, with Vieira involved in a political showdown with the opposition-controlled parliament. Vieira was assassinated in March 2009, shortly after the army chief of staff was killed in a bomb attack; some reports indicate that Vieira’s assassination was a revenge attack prompted by the bombing, but others differ. In June 2009 a number of Vieira supporters, including a former interior minister, were reportedly assassinated by members of the military, and others arrested. Peaceful presidential elections in July 2009 saw the election of Malam Bacai Sanhá of the PAIGC over Vieira’s earlier rival and former president Kumba Yala of the largely Balanta Party of Social Renewal (PRS). In January 2012 Sanhá died in office, triggering another round of power struggles.

Three months after Sanhá’s 2012 death in office the military directly intervened in governance. Just days before an April 2012 presidential run-off election that the incumbent prime minister Carlos Gomes Junior, of Portuguese-African descent and a member of the PAIGC, looked set to win after defeating Kumba Yala of the largely Balanta-backed PRS in the first round, officers staged a coup, accusing him of undermining the military. Some PAIGC members were arrested elsewhere. In response the African Union suspended Guinea Bissau’s membership, and international donors froze all aid. This negatively impacted on the country’s finances at a time when people’s food security was already under threat due to a drop in the global price of the country’s main crop – the cashew – which a reported 80 per cent of the population produces. The breakdown in the rule of law has encouraged other illicit activity, such as illegal logging, in the face of resistance from local communities who oppose the deforestation that damages their traditional ways of life.

An Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)-backed transition period was marred by some ongoing violence. In presidential elections eventually held in March 2014, the army’s preferred candidate was defeated by José Mário Vaz of the PAIGC, who was duly installed as president. However disputes within the party contributed to the dissolution of the government and the ouster of the prime minister in August 2015. A replacement was named but dismissed in May 2016; after several attempts another was eventually appointed in November 2016, but the impasse continued.

By mid-2017 little progress had been made in implementing an October 2016 Conakry Agreement on the implementation of an ECOWAS-backed road map to create a government of national consensus. Organised transnational crime, drug trafficking and violent extremism continued to pose significant threats. The organisation of a national conference on reconciliation, mooted in 2007, remained largely pending. Meanwhile, in the light of past ethnicity-based rhetoric and stereotyping amongst some public figures and other duty bearers, experts expressed concern at potential manipulation of ethnicity and other differences for political gain and called on political actors and other leaders to show restraint.

Governance

Under the Bissau-Guinean constitution, members of the 100-seat unicameral National Assembly are elected every four years. The president serves a five-year term, with no limits placed on the number of terms; however, since independence no president has served out a full term.

Years of fighting and instability had left Guinea-Bissau’s economy a shambles and its infrastructure devastated. It is one of the least developed countries in the world, with its economy based largely on meagre agricultural exports, especially cashews, and fishing. From the early 2000s, the transit through Guinea Bissau of illegal drugs originating in South America and heading to European markets began to emerge as a major influence in the country, undermining democratic institutions and the rule of law. An operation by the US Drug Enforcement Agency in 2013 led, for example, to the indictment of both the head of Guinea Bissau’s armed forces and the former head of the navy on trafficking charges. Deepening rifts between and within parties have contributed to ongoing political instability.

Weak institutions and a history of political instability have made Guinea Bissau a target for drug traffickers seeking new routes; drug trafficking began to emerge as a major influence in the country around 2004, undermining civic institutions. Moreover, a longstanding power struggle between the military and politicians, and between and within parties, continues. Alongside regional differences, a rural/urban divide and other key factors, ethnicity plays a significant role. The military has over time become dominated by members of the Balanta ethnic grouping, which historically lives along the southern coast; the Balanta and the northern, traditionally Muslim, Fula/Fulani, are the two largest ethnic groups in the country, each with reportedly less than a third of the population. Balanta have considered their group to have long been under-developed and under-served by public resources, and military service has come to be seen as one way of countering that perceived marginalization. For its part, the army has traditionally been resistant to security sector reform initiatives put forward by parliament or others.

Guinea Bissau has had a turbulent political life since independence in 1974. After independence the country was headed by a Cape Verdean leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the group which had spearheaded the independence movement from Portugal, followed by Joao Bernardo ‘Nino’ Vieira of the small Papel minority. The next leader was Kumba Yala, a Balanta, elected in 2000 and subsequently succeeded, after a coup, by Vieira again in 2005. Vieira was assassinated in office in 2009, and Malam Bacai Sanhá of PAIGC became president before dying in office in 2012.

• Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa (INEP)
• Liga Guineense dos Direitos do Homem