Life imitates fiction in Guinea-Bissau

Originally I wasn’t going to write about the assassination of the president this weekend in the small African nation of Guinea-Bissau, because, sadly, it’s not a new story for this small, desperately poor country. Since getting its independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has been plagued by instability and has endured several military coups in its short history. But even by that sad measure, this weekend’s events were pretty unusual.

According to reports, a group of military officers killed President Joao Bernardo Vieira, after launching a rocket attack on the presidential palace. They assassinated Vieira apparently in retaliation for the murder-by-bombing a few days earlier of popular military Chief of Staff General Batista Tagme Na Waie – a murder the military blamed on Vieira. The two men had a strong mutual dislike for each other, Waie helped lead a coup in 2005 that ousted Vieira, who had only recently returned to power, Waie’s murder may likely have been payback.

What makes all of this really interesting is who happened to be in the country at the time of the assassination and saw it first-hand – British author Frederick Forsyth, who wrote the book “The Dogs of War”, a novel (quite a good one) about an attempted coup in a small African country. Forsyth called the events of the weekend “bizarre”, according to his account even after being bombed, shot and having a roof fall on him, Vieira was still alive (making him Guinea-Bissau’s version of Rasputin), his attackers finally were forced to finish him off with machetes.

Forsyth, who admits to being involved in a coup in Equatorial Guinea, another West African nation, in 1973 said that the events in G-Bissau, in his opinion, didn’t constitute a coup, but rather was a struggle between two powerful men who simply despised each other and decided the time had come to eliminate their rival for power.

The African Union condemned Vieira’s murder, but agreed with Forsyth’s view that it wasn’t a ‘coup’ (something that would then force the AU to kick Guinea-Bissau out of the Union). The coup leaders (for lack of a better term) promised to ‘respect democratic principles’ - aside from killing the president I suppose. They are pledging to support the Prime Minister as interim ruler until new elections can be held.