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Guinea's new government — Will the army take a back seat?

Feb 4th 2010 The Economist

Though a post-coup peace deal has been done, it is far from certain to last.

A year after an army captain pulled off a coup over the still-warm body of the military dictator who had run Guinea for 24 years, the country is being run by a civilian. Jean-Marie Doré will supposedly hold power until a proper election within six months. But Guinea has never had a genuine poll before, nor any tradition of civilian rule. Moreover, the transitional government that the 70-year-old Mr Doré has been asked to form is to include a big batch of soldiers. No one is betting on a smooth path to true multi-party democracy.

Guinea has been shaken since President Lansana Conté died just before Christmas in 2008. His coup-making successor, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, soon faced opposition. In September his troops massacred at least 157 protesters in a stadium in the capital, Conakry. Three months later, one of his own soldiers tried to kill him, causing him to fly to Morocco for medical treatment.

For the past month he has been in nearby Burkina Faso, whose president, Blaise Compaoré, along with Captain Camara and a Guinean general who had been standing in for the captain as Guinea's leader, agreed that Mr Doré should take over as the country's temporary ruler at the head of a unity government pending a general election in the summer. General Sekouba Konaté, who had been running the show in Captain Camara's absence, agreed to a proper election and promised to revamp the army.

But scepticism remains strong. Some of the women who were raped and beaten during the September protests are still getting telephone calls from military types telling them to be quiet or be killed. Some of the opposition people arrested last year seem to have disappeared. Bribery remains rampant, with soldiers routinely demanding payment at checkpoints.

Under the deal in Burkina Faso, ten members of a new, 30-member government will be from Captain Camara's military junta. Though Mr Doré, a maverick, has campaigned in the past for human rights, he has also served as a go-between for the captain and an opposition front known as the Forces Vives, which will also be represented in the unity government. Mr Doré and the captain both hail from the same minority tribe, known as the Forestiers, who inhabit the country's remote eastern region. Some members of the Forces Vives think Mr Doré has quietly been giving the captain advice. He has also been evasive about whether he will seek the presidency permanently, though the Burkina Faso agreement was originally said to ban any member of the transitional government, including Mr Doré and General Konaté, from running in the promised summer election. The captain is supposed to stay in exile.

But soldiers apparently loyal to him still lord it over Conakry's streets. “There are uncontrollable elements in the army,” says Mouctar Diallo, who heads another opposition group, the New Democratic Forces. He hopes General Konaté will restrain Captain Camara's diehard military supporters, who plainly do not want a proper election in the summer—or ever.

When members of the feared Red Berets, an army unit hitherto loyal to the captain, were asked if they would back a civilian government, they replied that they would obey their commanders. General Konaté recently arrested Colonel Moussa Keita, a disciple of Captain Camara, who has been accused of planning to charter a plane to bring his man back from exile, presumably to reinstate him as president.