Guinea Bissau: A Coup or Not? - in 'Expanding Sahel Coup Belt'

The coup in Guinea-Bissau "feels less like a classic overthrow and more like a political stunt wrapped in military theatre", writes Daniel T. Makokera in an AllAfrica guest column. There is "a growing belief that the crisis may have been an inside job," he says - "a carefully managed confrontation used to settle scores, sideline opponents, or reassert control over institutions slipping from the president's grip."

The country's electoral commission announced that it would be unable to publish the results after most of the vote count from the November 23 election were destroyed.

Whatever the reality of what happened, writes Professor John Joseph Chin in an analysis for The Conversation, "the events point to both a deepening regional crisis of democracy and the inability of Guinea-Bissau to escape its coup-prone history," addiong his view that "the country is caught in a classic coup trap whereby poverty and coups d'etat are mutually reinforcing." Events in Guinea-Bissau reflect a crisis across the Sahel, which he says has the global epicenter of both terrorism and coups - so much so that it is sometimes dubbed the Sahel "coup belt".

AllAfrica's peacebuilding reporting is supported by funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic organization.