The 2012 Coup in Guinea-Bissau: CPLP, Portugal, Angola, Brasil and…wait…Guinea!

“This is the last chance for Guinea-Bissau. If stability in the country is not restored, there may be no more hope (…)” – Shola Omoregie, head of the U.N. mission in the West African country said at a meeting in the Senegalese capital Dakar. – quoted in UNPAN in 2007.

Here in Portugal, the Acordo Ortográfico (something like a “Spelling Agreement”, the AO) is famous for all the wrong reasons. Instead of bolstering the lusophone identity by creating a single spelling system for all Portuguese speaking countries, it actually backfired and is hated by most Portuguese, who see it as a instrument to subvert what they believe to be their language. I tend to argue that the many points raised against the AO are underlined by a essentially nationalistic thrust. Anyway, that’s a topic for another post. The political goal of the AO was to finally carve a way to the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP – Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa), this fifteen year old organization that brings together eight countries (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé e Príncipe and East Timor) and three observers (Equatorial Guinea, Mauritius and Senegal) has a brand new headquarters in Lisbon and some missions and events, but still fails to find it’s own space as an active international organization.

It seems the AO hasn’t cut it, but the CPLP has apparently found its golden goose: Guinea-Bissau. What the CPLP and its member states can offer Guinea-Bissau in the wake of the coup and what this crisis offers to CPLP, is the topic of a next post, but is a question to keep in mind while reading this one.

Guinea-Bissau recently suffered an attempted-turned-real coup d’etat that pit its military against the acting government that was ruling the country between the death of former president Malam Bacai Sanhá, from the PAIGC party, and new elections. As the NY Times put it:

“In April 2012, former prime minister Carlos Gomes Jr. appeared poised to win the presidency in a runoff election. But shortly before the vote, explosions blasted through the capital, Bissau, and the military sealed off the city’s downtown area and lobbed grenades at Mr. Gomes’s home, according to a diplomat and witnesses. The diplomat said the shooting started after the state radio station signal inexplicably went dead. He said that the whereabouts of the interim president, Raimundo Pereira, were unknown. It was unclear whether Mr. Gomes was inside the house.”

I will skip the details of the chronology of events in the country, but if you haven’t followed the situation, I recommend taking a brief look at the news, here (also in Portuguese and in French) and especially here. As I write this post, the negotiations, discussions and bureaucratic sprockets of the bilateral and multilateral diplomacy are accelerating to bring an UN-sanctioned mission to the ground in Guinea-Bissau, and you can find more about that in the links above.

I basically want to briefly address two questions here: 1) The problem of statehood in Guinea-Bissau; and 2) What are the prospects for an international intervention in Guinea-Bissau.

So let’s tackle the first point, starting with an anecdote: last year I attended a Conference on African Security here in Lisbon, at a military institution. At one of the sessions, a brilliant portuguese scholar, Prof. Dr. Teresa Cravo, presented her work on Guinea-Bissau. At the end, debate time was granted by the chair and the confusion started: first some patronizing questions on Guinea-Bissau being a narco-state, then some nationals of Guinea replied minimizing this issue. No one talked about nor seemed to have understood the presentation, but started to digladiate over the issue. Finally, two of the people engaging the debate decided to use the ID trump card: one was a former military in Guinea-Bissau and the other a former Minister of Justice. The first one started his own statement by telling us how he was personally responsible for two of the several past coups d’Etats in the country, and the Minister told the audience that all that had been said was a lie, and there was no narcotics problem nor “abnormal” political problems in the country. We had already exhausted the time for that session by a long margin, and one of the organizers forcefully declared the session finished, but most of the audience was in shock.

Most scholarly accounts pin Guinea-Bissau as a failed-state, being more and more dominated by the dynamics of drug trafficking, and therefore, a narco-state. I would accept those two definitions, and would add a pinch of “completely private conflict”, not in the most widely used sense (that it is the one that it is waged by PMCs – Private Military Corporations), but in the sense that the driving forces for conflict in Guinea-Bissau are not popular in nature (anti-colonial struggle), or even identity-based (ethnic/religious/national conflict or secessionism). What drives the conflict there are mostly the interests of single individuals or rather small groups of people with power, that mobilize violence resources for their own benefit. In Guinea-Bissau, there’s no one looking to seize power in the name of a shared identity; instead, they are privatizing state power/structures, for themselves and their cronies.

Apparently, the 2012 coup fits this assessment: the military (mainly the Army), led by General Antonio Indjai, seized the country on a Thursday night, deposing the government-in-exercise (and seemingly favourite candidate in the elections’ second round) and disarming the police. Gen. Indjai and his entourage mobilized the whole military apparatus against the government. It seems that Gen. Indjai is a close friend to strongman retired Rear Admiral Bubo Na Tchuto, a former Chief of the Navy who has been involved in previous coup d’Etat attempts. Na Tchuto is also known to be the drug boss in Guinea-Bissau nowadays. There’s a clear pattern of interest articulation, with the national military being used to ensure the interest of the drug industry, through a tangled (but not that complex) web of contacts and associations. The interest of crime organizations is shaping the country’s politics, security sector and people’s lives.

For most people life continues unchanged in Guinea-Bissau, but that’s exactly the point: the state is so unimportant to the Bissau-Guineans that, except for private interests (and to international eyes), the absence of rule of Law and constitutional order doesn’t make the news. This coup is mostly regarded as another sad event in the history of the country so far, but nothing really tragic. If we compare the level of violence in Guinea-Bissau to other conflicts in Africa, it’s actually quite moderate. The absence of the state translates much more into poverty and degraded living conditions than to open traditional violence directed at the population.

Moving to the second issue. It is now known that Portuguese and Brazilian notes verbales are already circling around key embassies and that both Foreign Ministers are directly engaged in advocacy and pressure for international engagement in Guinea-Bissau. Both of them personally contacted US Secretary of State Clinton and Portuguese Minister Paulo Portas is in NYC for the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on the situation in Guinea-Bissau. The Portuguese newspaper Expresso published that the Brazilian Ambassador to the United Nations, Amb. Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti declared that it could take less than a week to deploy a UN mission to the African country (a record!), to protect civilians and sustain the restoration of the democratically elected government, and should come coupled with sanctions on the military leaders and a strong international community condemnation on the attempt to take power through military force. She also adds that the UNSC will consider a recommendation for a mandated joint CPLP-CEDEAO mission.

But what will a UN-mandated mission do in Guinea-Bissau? Who will they be fighting? Or monitoring? Or interposing? These are the actual questions that should be asked. The military led by Indjai already assumes the situation as the new status quo, and by closing naval, aerial and terrestrial boundaries (following Portugal’s announcement that it was sending a task-force composed by a frigate, a corvette, a re-supply ship and a maritime reconnaissance aircraft to the theatre, to support any need to evacuate portuguese citizens from Guinea-Bissau) they’re signalling that they are not at all open to a international armed mission. In fact, the ruling military junta already stated that any mission will be seen as an invading force, “because Guinea-Bissau is not at war”. Even considering that their discourse is deeply flawed, it’s hard to contradict the guy holding the gun – unless the UN gives a mandate (and SOFA, and MoA, etc.) and money to concretize an actual occupation force in the country, to expel another military force illegally occupying the territory (even though it is their own military), something like Kuwait in the 90s (and they should be bringing the US too). But will CPLP wage war against one of their own? CPLP is not exactly the UN.

Neither the UN, nor the CPLP or CEDEAO, nor Brazil or Portugal seem to know what a mission in Guinea-Bissau would need to accomplish. But they know that the country needs a mission, something! But they’ll need to do better than that. What are the actual challenges of Guinea-Bissau and how can a mission engage them? This is the question that the UN should be asking, and answering, all together with the parties involved in taking action. I would risk a brief shot saying that Guinea-Bissau needs minimal peacekeeping/peace enforcement and a major peacebuilding effort. More than that, that country needs countries actually willing to engage the issue on the long term, but also needs more interest by the Bissau-Guineans themselves and their diaspora. The know-how coming from East Timor (which mainly involved many similar actors and interests) should play an important part in paving the way for any attempt to “stabilize” Guinea-Bissau. Crucially, the attitude that characterizes the quote I chose to open this piece SHOULDN’T be the guiding principle of ANY proposed mission in the country, as it has in the past.

Funny thing: in Libya, the UN mandated a NATO mission to overthrow a government, now, in Guinea-Bissau, the UN is going to mandate a CPLP-CEDEAO mission to restore a government. Either for leaving or for coming back, the UN is willing to lend a hand!

* I thank the contribution of Cláudia Teles to the ideas present in this piece.

The Bargaining Problem in Libya: Peace versus Justice?

I have recently read the post ICC Sheriff Too Quick on the Draw by guest contributors Leslie Vinjamuri and Jack Snyder for The Duck of Minerva blog and I couldn’t agree more. Actually, I had many discussions on the topic of Libya and asserted the same preoccupations put forward by the two scholars, but never took the time to bring them to this blog, what I intend to fix right away. I shall reinforce the argument presented in their post and add my own conclusions and further a bit more into consequences of the bargain problem to the achievement of conflict resolution in the Libyan case. Let’s hit it.

Since the beginning of the uprising in Libya and the western commitment to help the insurgents get rid of Gaddafi, clear signals were sent regarding a possible prosecution of the de jure leader by international law, namely by the International Criminal Court. On May 4th, Luís Moreno-Ocampo, ICCs chief prosecutor, went to the United Nations Security Council to report on the investigations by the body on Libya, and what he has found is that “crimes against humanity have been and continue to be committed in Libya” – this should be no surprise to anyone but to Gaddafi and his entourage. What isn’t being noticed is that, this and the following statement of intentions to prosecute issue pre-trial arrest warrants to three key people on the Gaddafi government is a big kick in the nuts for everyone really worried about the outcome of the conflict and the end of violence between warring parties.

One supposedly doesn’t have to be a great mind to understand what stalemate and deadlock are. But it seems that countries and bureaucrats involved in decision-making within the UN aren’t aware of those concepts. First and foremost, stalemate means that you are in a “can’t-help-it-situation” and, by default, breaking the stalemate is much more difficult than avoiding it. Stalemates also have the property of being very dangerous when survival is the issue at the end of the day. Here rational choice theory applied to political violence comes in to explain what are the incentives, motivations and limits to the fulfilling of options by the players. To better put it, the idea of taking this to politics and conflict resolution (supposing you are into resolving the conflict), is to avoid pushing the players to positions unacceptable for them, in which no cooperation (in a game theory sense, not in a institutionalist one) is possible, and therefore “play” with incentives and punishment to compel parties to stop violence.

What is happening in Libya is exactly the contrary. While Western efforts do not seem to assure the end of the conflict by force, the incentives given to Gaddafi to step down are also very scarce. Actually, they point to the contrary: peacefully exiting power is the worst thing he could do – for him and for his friends. Even after No-fly zone and No-fly zone +, no palpable result for the conflict seems to be in the horizon, specially if the rules of the game (such as “we’re not going to directly bomb Gaddafi”) are maintained.  The situation becomes a stalemate, in this case, because at the same time the Western supports the Libyan rebels and embraces their principle of not reaching an agreement with Gaddafi and demanding to see him completely extricated from any decency, but they don’t grant the necessary measures to achieve those aims.

Just for the sake of it, I’ll list some thinkable (even if partially flawed) possibilities: 1) significantly arm the rebels, allowing them to break the stalemate themselves by forcing military defeat through a protracted war; 2) bomb the hell out of Gaddafi’s Libya, producing unequivocal military defeat of the Colonel’s forces; 3) quietly, precisely and quickly kill all the core members of Gaddafi’s government; 4) bring full Western engagement to Libya, landing a massive army with the objective of disabling Gaddafi’s military and political power by occupation, and, by the gates of one of his palaces, arrest him out of throne. Let’s quickly run them one by one.

1) Arming the rebels: this is already happening, but not enough to fulfill their needs; conflict is far from being defined and it seems more and more to be leading to a military equation very hard to solve.

2) Bombing the hell out of Gaddafi’s Libya: does anyone feel comfortable with doing it?

3) Quietly killing Gaddafi and his guys in a decapitation strike: we still have the “we won’t kill Gaddafi” rule in order.

4) Bringing full Western engagement and occupying Libya: anyone remember Afghanistan? What about the big economic crisis?

Phew. Quickly enough. Well, have we run out of options then? No. We still have the possibility of finding a viable negotiated exit, by pressing (but not too much) Gaddafi out of power. How? By balancing incentives and punishment to make him feel that stepping down without creating more resistance is the less-than-worst situation, and – here comes the important bit -, less-than-worst but still acceptable. It is possible and much cheaper (politically, economically and militarily), as well as in terms of the lives lost and the collateral damage produced.

So, what’s all the fuss about having Gaddafi prosecuted as a war criminal? No fuss, at least for me and you, in the short term, unless you are: a) a taxpayer or in the military service in Europe or in the the US; or 2) if you are Libyan! Ok, maybe you are.

The main problem with the ICC prosecution of Gaddafi is the signal it sends. Basically, what it says is: “Hey, Gaddafi, step down and your future is spending the rest of your life in a small cell in the Netherlands”. How this contributes to making him peacefully step down is what I don’t see. If he knows this is what awaits him outside Libya, it’s hard to tell whether he’ll prefer this or death, and if he prefers death how much damage he will produce to the country and how much cost he’ll impose for the West while pursuing it. For what we know about these guys and especially the Colonel (Lockerbie anyone?), I’d bet he’ll drag everyone and everything he can with him while holding on to the intent to survive, especially because he knows he’s going down either way. Because people act like this. People suck.

By allowing the ICC to proceed with the prosecution, UNSC limits steeply its possibilities. It reduces the probability of a negotiated exit and the space for maneuver, raising the stakes for Gaddafi and his friends but pushing it too far. While raising the stakes is what we need, it needs to be done considering how we allow the gambler to fold and withdraw without breaking chairs and tables. While combining “the promise of relief and the threat of punishment”, it is possible to bring players to a rational choice of stopping it. Just remember that this exact same type of strategy worked very well just a few years ago to bring Gaddafi back in from the cold of international pariah status, reversing his nuclear policies and establishing a working relationship with the West.

And to answer the title’s question: in Libya, we shall have peace or the absence of it. No justice is likely to be made, as it happens mostly with any war crimes. This might sound a bit like reverse advertising, but hopefully the relevant authorities will decide on solutions other than the Worst Case Scenario for Libya.

Which by the way, bringing back an old friend of the blog – our Worst Case Scenario is: Gaddafi is prosecuted by the ICC, and immediately escalates conflict in the Libyan civil war. With help by the West staying equal or not changing steeply, protracted, violent and harsh conflict settles in, scaling massive scourges of war to the country, with consequences to the region. NATO and EU are pulled into deploying full resources to avoid total madness in Northern Africa, just by the gates of Europe, while still more than sufficiently engaged in Afghanistan and barely surviving the financial crisis.