Gambia: History Corner 1975 - the Year Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara Brokered Peace Between Senegal and Guinea Conakry

Our Founding President His Excellency Alhaji Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, GCMRG, was a man of peace. He kept peace a-yard and abroad. Whilst his intrepid efforts to bring peace to Liberia in the early 1990s are well noted by scholars, less has been written by scholars about his other successful peacemaking adventure- the one he undertook in the early summer of 1975 to normalize the toxic diplomatic relations between Senegal and Guinea Conakry.

From 1958 when Guinea Conakry under President Sekou Toure voted for Independence from France to 1975, the two countries were at a silent war. Sekou Toure, the fierce despot in Conakry, saw Senegal as a Fifth Column primed by France to weaken and overthrow his miserable Revolutionary government. The President of Senegal, Leopold Sedar Senghor, saw Sekou Toure as a useless and blood thirsty ruler who took pleasure in hanging his people in public, or starving them to death at his infamous prison, Camp Boiro.

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