Guinea-Bissau: International Orphan By Shepard Forman
Shep Forman, LAFF president, traveled to Guinea-Bissau earlier this year as part of a team on an assignment from the Secretary General of the United Nations to try to talk the competing political elites and the military of that African nation into honoring their pledge to hold free elections by the end of the year. Forman’s job was to evaluate the UN’s performance to date and make recommendations to the Secretary General for the size and shape of a new mission. Excerpts from his report appear in the June 2013 issue of the LAFF Society newsletter. This is his full report.
As Guinea-Bissau nears 40 years of independence, the scars of colonialism and conflict appear everywhere, save in the smiles of her sweet and friendly people.
To walk along the pitted and dusty roads, the broken sidewalks, past dilapidated and unkempt buildings, is to witness the remnants of post-colonial development gone wrong. Despite nearly 15 years of UN presence, mandated by the Security Council after a 1998-9 civil war, the Bissau Guineans are yet to see the promise of a positive peace, the institution of a legitimate state that governs for the people’s benefit under a Rule of Law, or the economic opportunities that a relatively rich resource base (good soil, plentiful water, abundant fishing grounds, dense forests, unexplored minerals) should afford them. The fault largely rests with an entrenched political elite and a restive military that have forced regime change through assassinations and coups rather than meeting their leadership responsibilities to construct a modern state.
I spent two weeks in Guinea-Bissau in March at the request of Jose Ramos Horta, Nobel Laureate, former President of Timor-Leste, and newly appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) in whom the most recent hope for peace and development is vested. Ramos Horta is an inspired choice, a primary architect of the first post-colonial democratic state in the 21st Century, one that shares with Guinea-Bissau an odious Portuguese colonial past, an unplanned and unassisted process of decolonization, and a small, impoverished and largely uneducated population. But there the similarities end.
After a brief civil war following Portugal’s sudden disengagement from its most distant colony, East Timor was invaded by Indonesia in 1975 and brutally occupied for 24 years. During that quarter century of armed resistance and international lobbying and diplomacy, the leadership of the future state was formed, in classrooms and government offices in Portugal and Mozambique, in the corridors of the U.S. Congress, and in the Department of Political Affairs at the United Nations, where the right to self-determination for the East Timorese was defended firmly by a stalwart group of dedicated international public servants who engaged with the Timorese leadership in exile on a regular basis.
Ramos Horta, whom I met in 1973 when doing ethnographic research among the Makassae people in the mountains of East Timor, is largely credited with creating and inspiring a small but dedicated international movement that ultimately guaranteed Timor-Leste’s independence. I recall asking him in the late 1970s how he had the courage and energy to continue in the face of an eviscerated resistance whose 200 remaining fighters actually outnumbered their weapons. “One day Indonesia will implode under the weight of its corruption,” he assured me, “and Timor-Leste will have its independence.” When his vision was finally realized in 2002, I asked him to reflect on the years of struggle. “I’ll be satisfied,” he said, “when we have emerged as a democratic state, respectful of human rights, and with an end to poverty and illiteracy in sight.” Guided by an early and effective World Bank program of training and support, a two-year UN trusteeship and ten years of international support, sometimes faulty but steady in its application, Timor-Leste is on its way to fulfilling that promise.
Guinea-Bissau has neither enjoyed the unselfish leadership or the international support that has helped lead Timor-Leste into the community of respected nations. The promise of independence, led in a bloody anti-colonial struggle by the nation’s founding hero, Amilcar Cabral, was within decades overtaken by economic greed and the thirst for power, resulting in the series of assassinations and coups that has brought this West African nation to its knees. Considered one of the international community’s orphans, it has never been the privileged focus of international assistance. The UN presence has been meager, international aid begrudging. The yearning for nationhood that underpinned Timor-Leste’s post-colonial history has never taken root among Guinea-Bissau’s ruling elites, who see the state merely as the wellspring of personal wealth and power.
Ramos Horta was called by the Secretary-General into this maelstrom to try to talk the competing political elites and the military that hobbled together a post-coup transitional government into honoring their pledge to hold elections by the end of the year, to ensure that they will be free and fair, and that a government of national unity will institute a set of political and security-sector reforms that will provide the bedrock for a legitimate government operating under the Rule of Law. Having assisted him on a number of issues after Timorese independence and knowing of my work with the UN and the World Bank on questions of post-conflict state-building, he called me in mid-February, shortly after his arrival in Bissau, to ask me to catch a plane to help him think through a reconfiguration of the UN’s mission so that he would have the institutional backing for his diplomatic skills.
My terms of reference, in UN jargon, were to accompany a UN Technical Assessment Mission (TAM) that would evaluate the UN’s performance to date and make recommendations for the size and shape of a new mission that would be forwarded with Ramos Horta’s endorsement to the Secretary-General, who would reformulate them as a set of recommendations to the Security Council for its approval. The TAM consisted of representatives of each of the UN departments and programs that comprise the on-ground team of nearly 300 UN employees in Guinea-Bissau: political affairs, development, justice, police and military advisors, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, administrative support, etc., who met with a vast array of government officials (the transitional president and members of parliament, heads of ministries) and members of civil society (women’s and youth groups, human rights advocates, lawyers and judges, religious leaders and members of the principal political parties). I was to serve as an interface of sorts between the SRSG and his special advisor, the TAM and the UN field staff, and forge my own independent recommendations on the shape and focus of the support structure he would need for his political mission.
I left Rio de Janeiro, where I now reside, for Guinea-Bissau in mid-March, just a week after my 75th birthday, eager to re-engage with the questions of multilateral cooperation that occupied my post-Foundation years at NYU’s Center on International Cooperation. Chastened by age and years of doubt about the UN’s and international community’s capacity to fully deliver; prepared for the devastation that I witnessed in Timor Leste after the Indonesian scorched earth withdrawal and the horrific scars of conflict and mass killings in Burundi, where I went to evaluate the UN’s Peace Building Commission’s efforts in 2009; and warned about cerebral malaria, cholera and meningitis by friends who had worked recently with NGOs in Guinea-Bissau and the difficulties of daily life and work I would face, I caught the late-night flight from Lisbon to Bissau with considerable misgiving. Misplaced misgiving, as it turned out.
I was greeted at the airport just after 1 a.m. by a UN driver, the head of UN security and a UN administrative officer who took me to a clean and comfortable hotel with air-conditioning to ward off the mosquitoes (actually few and far between in this dry season) and a strong internet signal that allowed me to send a “safe and sound in Guinea-Bissau” message to my family. I locked away in a secure safe my passport and the wads of cash I was told were necessary in a country devoid of ATMs and corresponding banks, drank from a liter bottle of imported mineral water chilled in a refrigerator stocked with beer and slept soundly on clean sheets on a firm mattress. I awoke to a sunny, dry and warm morning and a breakfast of papaya, bottled juices from Portugal, good bread, cheese and ham, excellent yogurt to envelop my malaria medication and really good coffee. While hardly a gourmand’s delight, food in Bissau’s diverse restaurants proved to be fresh and well prepared, and I neither fattened nor thinned in the 16 days I spent there.
I was picked up by the Bissau Guinean driver, a local UN hire who was assigned to me for the duration of my stay, and taken to the SRSG’s home for coffee and a chat and a garnering of his first impressions after less than a month in the country. In his view, the major problem was political with a small group of elites vying for power and privilege and a restive military filling the vacuum of a dysfunctional state. While there was no hard evidence that Guinea-Bissau had become a “narco-state,” its nearly ninety off-shore islands and ungoverned territory were ripe for extra-legal, exploitative fishing and deforesting and well-established as a transit point for drugs on their way from Latin America to European markets. Despite their national interests and humanitarian inclinations, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Community and other international donors, including Brazil, had pulled their financial support following the April 2012 coup, while low-budgeted UN specialized agencies and programs—UNICEF, UNDP, WHO and WFP—struggled to provide essential services to the people. The UN’s Peace Building Fund, a $16.8 million tranche intended to support quick impact projects to build confidence and trust, also had been frozen until a “legitimate” government was electorally restored.
The UN’s international staff was demoralized and dispirited and a talented, well-educated group of local staff, carefully balancing their roles as both politically committed citizens and professionals in a non-partisan international agency, spent most of their time providing information to feed the UN’s insatiable appetite for report-writing. Despite multiple layers of mandated integrating mechanisms, organizational complexities (at one point I counted more than 80 acronyms in the stack of reports, papers and guidelines I was given as background reading) and agency rivalries further undercut institutional effectiveness and delivery, feeding a cynicism that even the welcome arrival of a charismatic new SRSG would have to work hard to surmount.
With that as background, we went to work, with meetings starting at 8:30 each morning and lasting till well past 8 most evenings. From government officials to religious and NGO leaders, we learned about the current political situation and the difficulties faced by a post-coup, transitional government largely believed to lack in legitimacy; inter- and intra-party struggles between and among the largely discredited but still powerful African Independence Party of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGVC) and its smaller rival, the Party for Social Renewal (PSR), two of the tens of political parties that complicate the political environment; the discontent at various levels of the military, from the major brass political brokers to non-pensioned retirees and rank and file soldiers sleeping under leaking roofs; an untrained and undisciplined police straining against their subordination to the military; a weak judicial system in which, despite well trained and intentioned judges and lawyers, indemnity appears to rule; threats to and physical intimidation of fledgling civil society organizations whose leadership could otherwise provide the basis for constructive change; an economy largely based on exporting raw cashew nuts for processing and marketing abroad; widespread corruption and exploitation of natural resources; and a people struggling for survival in a system devoid of the support apparatus of a viable state.
En route to meetings or on one or two occasions when I was able to venture out, I caught glimpses of a once leafy and pleasant colonial capital now rutted and neglected, with broken sidewalks and dusty streets waiting for the rainy season to wash them clean. The streets bustled with enterprising vendors selling fruits and vegetables, used clothing and shoes, while hordes of people moved quickly along dodging ubiquitous mini-buses and taxis all painted in a blue that suggested a transport cartel. Here and there and everywhere the white SUV’s with their large UN markings wended their way between hotels and residences and the UN compound, guarded by private security, or parked in clusters in front of the few restaurants and bars. Unlike other African countries whose national parks attract tourists, there are no major craft markets in Bissau, although a small market of carvings and clothing made from colorful African batiks enlivens at the arrival of the occasional buyer.
Guinea-Bissau was the major departure point for slaves en route to Brazil, and one day I drove with Ramos Horta and his Timorese security to the northern port city of Cacheu where the European community and a national NGO were opening a cultural center on slavery and African heritage. The first Catholic Church in West Africa sits in uncomfortable proximity to the embarkation pier that carried Balantas and Falupas and other tribal peoples to Rio de Janeiro, the largest entry point of any slaving nation in the western hemisphere. Blessed on departure and on arrival, the most insidious commerce in the history of mankind created a bridge between colony and empire that is scarcely recognized today. A mottled sign on a concrete slab at the entrance to the town announces the Festival de Quilombolos, a reference to the visit two years ago of twenty people from a former runaway slave “republic” in Brazil’s northeast, and some continuing longing for recognition from the emerging power across the Atlantic. With commercial interests in Angola and Mozambique paramount, and a politically correct congruence with the European Union’s denial of aid until an election takes place, Brazil’s engagement with Guinea-Bissau remains essentially suspended.
Meanwhile, the people of Guinea-Bissau, spared the ravages of the mass killing and genocides in other African countries, suffer the poverty, illiteracy and disease that is their harsh reality. Virtually no government services are available to them. Hospitals are closed or dysfunctional. The educational system is in disrepair. Salaries and pensions go unpaid. Bissau Guineans rely on family and community for sustenance and protection. They “enchant” the UN’s international staff and the EU representatives who watch and wait and cajole the political elites and military to do the “right thing” so they, in turn, can re-engage with modest amounts of foreign assistance until an elected government is enabled to provide basic services.
Ramos Horta wants them to re-engage now, to provide him with the carrots that will bring the elites and military to the table where he hopes to convince them that free and fair elections and a power-sharing arrangement are an essential first step to political normalcy. He wants then to fully engage the UN and international donors in a serious effort to build responsible state and societal institutions that can ultimately provide security, essential services and economic opportunity for all of the people of Guinea-Bissau. It is a very tall order in a very complex place, but he has, with his Timorese colleagues, done it before. If the UN and the international community will step up to plate, he just might be able to show the way again.
The trick is to get the diverse UN agencies to apply their resources to his political mission rather than in template projects that fit their individual organizational mandates. To do this he needs to balance the UN system’s internal power nodes so that there is equal heft between the political side of the house and the development and operational agencies that tend to follow their own situational analyses and guidelines. As the mission is currently designed, the head of the UN Development Agency (UNDP) also serves as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General/Resident Coordinator (DSRSG/RC) and chairs the UN Country Team, the first of multiple and marginally effective coordinating mechanisms. Under the new design, Senior Advisors on military, police, justice and state institutions, and a DSRSG for political affairs would balance out the decision-making structures and re-enforce Ramos Horta’s vision in a close collaboration between his office’s strategic planning and policy making and the implementation of programs and projects.
Everyone understands that elections are only the beginning. A UN technical team with experience in conducting elections can, along with international observers, ensure that an election can occur largely free of abuse and intimidation. Political elites and the military can agree to honor the results and create a government of national unity in which political parties elected to parliament can have a share of the jobs in the ministries rather than continuing with the winner-take-all patronage system that now substitutes for a functioning state. The UN can marshal the expertise to help build the capacity of state institutions to manage budgets and deliver essential services, eventually assuming the responsibilities now being met in half measures by humanitarian agencies. The World Bank and the IMF can help to re-establish the financial and monetary underpinnings of an economy with growth potential, one that offers opportunities to small farmers and entrepreneurs and creates jobs that provide a living wage. The UN can increase its support of civil society institutions, helping to strengthen the leadership and memberships of women’s and youth groups, human rights and advocates’ organizations and cultural institutions, helping to build an informed and active citizenry that can exact accountability from its government.
That’s the plan, and the hope. Can it be done? Yes! Guinea-Bissau’s 1.6 million inhabitants can be helped to have the life and government they deserve. But it will take a UN willing to change the way it does business, international donors willing to loosen their purse strings, Bissau Guinean elites ready to believe that their best interests lay with the fortunes of a “normal” state, a Bissau Guinean people prepared to demand their rights and exercise their responsibilities as citizens, and the patience and fortitude Ramos Horta, his colleagues in the Timorese resistance and the Timorese people have demonstrated in their 30-year quest for Timorese statehood.
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