Chiemeka Iwuoha
13 October 2009
RECENT events in Guinea where soldiers, acting by themselves or in concert and the prodding of outside forces opened fire on unarmed civilians protesting the possible elongation of the illegal government of Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, have attracted different reactions from observers.
Largely, many have condemned the all-too-common habit of soldiers on the continent using life-bullets to disperse civil demonstrations that question the hold on the reigns of power by one of their own.
In the Guinea case, about 157 civilians were said to have been killed in the shootings, bayonets were reportedly run through the bodies of demonstrators, women were raped and over 5000 were left wounded.
Some have seen this unfortunate habit of soldiers running amok as the result one gets when national civilian institutions have corrupted themselves to the point of failure in providing impartial leadership and to govern their states and nations.
The army, in that case, becomes the only credible institution that can save potential situations of anarchy. But justification is only possible in a nation with a strong tradition of soldiers that subordinate themselves to overall civil authority.
In that case, the army becomes justified when it steps in to rescue their nations from social break-down as can easily happen in even the most economically and politically advanced nations like in the United States of America during the Nixon Watergate years when General Alexander Haig, a serving General, was drafted in as Chief of Staff at the White House to stabilize things. There, he over-saw the transition of power from the impeached President Richard Nixon to Gerald Ford.
But rarely in modern, western style democracies that African countries look to as model, do armies or their commanders mutiny, take over governments or turn their guns on citizens who as good as protest one thing or the other.
That other countries laboring under gross socio-economic inequalities (China, India, Indonesia etc, included) occasionally have their armies massacre citizens, tends to suggest that the issue of military involvement in politics through armed intervention with its accompanying excesses, may actually be a fundamental matter of comprehensive under-development.
This under-development shows in the form of weak-to-rapacious civil institutions and ruling cadre that condones that a handful of citizens live better than the many, including their armies.
In looking at the reason why soldiers wearing Guinean uniforms, as with their Rwandan, Congolese or Nigerian counterparts, would turn their guns on un-armed fellow citizens with such savagery, one invariably agrees with military experts who trace the cause to the colonial origin of African nations' armies.
Of the existing armies on the continent today, nearly all were established by the colonial powers to pacify their various colonies. These armies' originating briefs and indoctrination had been that soldiers sacrifice their lives in protection of the interests of the colonial authorities.
On gaining independence, nearly all the post colonial African state governments have not substantially departed from this traditional doctrine of the colonialists who set them up. The institutions, training manuals and structures, have largely remained the same as in early 19th century colonial era. Nowhere is this ideological confusion more remarkable than in the retention of the recruitment policies adopted by the colonial administration in staffing their armies.
In most cases, the recruits were not chosen on the basis of aptitude or ability but on other racist parameters like some tendency to blind obedience bordering on 'docility' on the part of the recruits. Only zombies would obey the command to open fire on unarmed compatriots when commanded to do so by colonial officers.
These self-selecting zombies have routinely been recruited into post-colonial African armies where they have caused great havoc to the continent's efforts to develop and spare millions of them from the absolute ravages of poverty and disease and un-necessary deaths.
Could the Guinea massacre have been possible if patriotic, nationalistic armed forces had been in place there? This is debatable because soldiers who have seized power and government in the whole of Africa have compounded, more than solved, the problems they deplored to begin with and then set out to solve.
Moreover, once they have 'tasted' power, few men or women, civilian or military would relinquish it willingly.
Underpinning the massacre in Guinea is the simple fact that the army, or parts of it who gained power illegally, want to retain it by force of arms and not through accepted participatory 'democratic' processes.
Not many cared when Captain Camara seized power last December following the death of brutal and long-serving Lansana Conte and had pleaded exigency and a determination to quickly conduct elections he ruled himself from contesting. But much later, the Guinean leader is arguing that, if he does not run and possibly retain power in future elections, another band of the army would still take over power in a coup.
This brings us to the question of composition of African national armies and the use to which post-colonial continental regimes put them.
Preliminarily, we concede that no government or nation can exist without a self-sufficient and loyal army. Infact a human situation where man will live in peace with each other making strife and conflicts non-violent and less lethal is realistically unimaginable as long as man persists in the injustices that induce resentment among the great majority.
This social discontent becomes dangerous to the state with the existence of armies which are run on a mercenary basis that attracts mere economic adventurers who see the military as an escape route from poverty.
As a profession where the soldier is required to stake his life in defense of his country and where, according to Machiavelli, he must by training be "rapacious, fraudulent, violent, and exhibit many qualities which, of necessity do not make him good', it appears self-indulgent of rulers to ignore their armies' sensibilities, especially if they have not had similar trainings and experiences.
It is even more naïve to conduct national affairs in manners that show up civilian politicians as indolent drones that enjoy the 'good things' of life that they deny even those who toil and bear arms in their defense.
So, what are we saying? The issue of what sort of army that beleaguered societies like African nations should have is an old one. The issue even pre-dates the existence of most modern African nations who uniformly have laboured under the yoke of under-development and can be traced back to classical antiquity.
In weak nations whose leadership is corrupt and where there are no robust institutions and mechanisms to protect and provide for the majority, a standing army of mercenary volunteers is more a threat to national security and development than several enemy foreign armies combined.
African national governments might well begin to revise the fundamental assumptions for the existence of their armies. Until every citizen in a free country is required by law to bear arms, the few who are paid to do so on behalf of the many will always use their guns to blackmail leaders and terrorize unarmed citizens.
But it is only by providing relatively good governance that is holistic and equitable enough to carter for all citizens alike, that it has been possible to keep the army, any volunteer army, within their barrack confines.
Clearly, it has been historically naïve of Africa's civilian political class to assume or act in ways suggesting that they can keep their citizens down with the instrumentality of equally deprived armies.
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