Trouble brewing?
To say that something's brewing in this country would be stating the obvious. With, as I've said earlier, almost one attempted coup d'état per year on average over the past decade, people here seem to have turned cooking up trouble into an art.
There's plenty of things to be dissatisfied with for each and everyone. By far the most destabilising factor is the fact that total arrears of state salaries built up by all regimes together over the past decades have now mounted to some 40 months, of which seven by the present regime since it came to power two and a half years ago. The thing that worries me most is that the military haven't been paid either...
With unsufficient reesources and a demotivated army, the central government does not really control the hinterland, where highway banditry runs rampant and may hide other, more politically motivated activities. The losing parties to the 2005 parliamentary and presidential elections have been quiet, perhaps too quiet. In the winning coalition many are dissatisfied as the jobs-for-the-boys game has its limits too... This is a country where politics is seen as a zero-sum game, with the winners counting on taking it all after victory and the losers not inclined to acquiesce in their defeat. I am not talking about the population at large: they are at the end of their tether after years of civil conflict and the misery of deep poverty.
A few weeks ago a gang of some 40 well-armed bandits attacked an army post far away from the capital, and the neighbouring country's army had to step in to pursue the gang, where the national army wouldn't go any further. As the neighbours then had victims to deplore in an ambush subsequently set up by the bandits, they were furious with the national army, and let this be known in no uncertain terms, which led then to a diplomatic demarche by the Foreign Minister to the neighbour's diplomatic representation here. For me the big question is: why would a few highway bandits attract all that attention to themselves if they could have been comfortably robbing people on a nearby major (well, for this country) traffic axis with very few chances of any armed force interfering? They were also surprisingly aggressive and able, attacking trained soldiers and laying ambush to them...
Anyway, I don't want to go beyond information that is already in the public domain. The point I want to make here is that at some point, and most probably long before the end of our posting here in 2008, some serious shit will hit the fan, the most likely scenario being the umpteenth coup d'état, either by dissatisfied military or by people from outside (who used to be insiders once). Things have been calm since we arrived here a year ago. But colleagues and friends who have been here before had troubling stories to tell about the events in 2003. I feel relatively safe as regards A. and the children: no foreigners got hurt here the last time it blew up, although many lived through some very anxious moments. (The situation for local people was, as usual, infinitely worse: there were hundreds, if not thousands of the locals here that got wounded - or raped -, and killed.) But there's so much at stake for the country itself. Without their donors they are lost. One more coup d'état and many donors, including the biggest one the European Union, will pack it up for good. All that time, work and money wasted, and so much more suffering...
Well, let's not jump to conclusions yet. One of the proud traditions of this country is also the change of minister or of government, in a never-ending blame game that leaves the no. 1 scot-free as the good father putting back some order in the house. Radio trottoir carries some interesting rumours these days ....
There's plenty of things to be dissatisfied with for each and everyone. By far the most destabilising factor is the fact that total arrears of state salaries built up by all regimes together over the past decades have now mounted to some 40 months, of which seven by the present regime since it came to power two and a half years ago. The thing that worries me most is that the military haven't been paid either...
With unsufficient reesources and a demotivated army, the central government does not really control the hinterland, where highway banditry runs rampant and may hide other, more politically motivated activities. The losing parties to the 2005 parliamentary and presidential elections have been quiet, perhaps too quiet. In the winning coalition many are dissatisfied as the jobs-for-the-boys game has its limits too... This is a country where politics is seen as a zero-sum game, with the winners counting on taking it all after victory and the losers not inclined to acquiesce in their defeat. I am not talking about the population at large: they are at the end of their tether after years of civil conflict and the misery of deep poverty.
A few weeks ago a gang of some 40 well-armed bandits attacked an army post far away from the capital, and the neighbouring country's army had to step in to pursue the gang, where the national army wouldn't go any further. As the neighbours then had victims to deplore in an ambush subsequently set up by the bandits, they were furious with the national army, and let this be known in no uncertain terms, which led then to a diplomatic demarche by the Foreign Minister to the neighbour's diplomatic representation here. For me the big question is: why would a few highway bandits attract all that attention to themselves if they could have been comfortably robbing people on a nearby major (well, for this country) traffic axis with very few chances of any armed force interfering? They were also surprisingly aggressive and able, attacking trained soldiers and laying ambush to them...
Anyway, I don't want to go beyond information that is already in the public domain. The point I want to make here is that at some point, and most probably long before the end of our posting here in 2008, some serious shit will hit the fan, the most likely scenario being the umpteenth coup d'état, either by dissatisfied military or by people from outside (who used to be insiders once). Things have been calm since we arrived here a year ago. But colleagues and friends who have been here before had troubling stories to tell about the events in 2003. I feel relatively safe as regards A. and the children: no foreigners got hurt here the last time it blew up, although many lived through some very anxious moments. (The situation for local people was, as usual, infinitely worse: there were hundreds, if not thousands of the locals here that got wounded - or raped -, and killed.) But there's so much at stake for the country itself. Without their donors they are lost. One more coup d'état and many donors, including the biggest one the European Union, will pack it up for good. All that time, work and money wasted, and so much more suffering...
Well, let's not jump to conclusions yet. One of the proud traditions of this country is also the change of minister or of government, in a never-ending blame game that leaves the no. 1 scot-free as the good father putting back some order in the house. Radio trottoir carries some interesting rumours these days ....
posted by Emilian at Sunday, October 16, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home