Night falls on Conakry, Guinea’s coastal capital. Out in the Atlantic lights appear; European trawlers scooping up shoals of fish a few kilometres from West Africa’s shore.
For the city’s people, bound by poverty in a country besieged by sporadic wars on three borders, the world they represent is as distant as the stars. Guinea is one of the poorest, most isolated countries. Its seven million people live on about $330 a year for an average of 40 years.
Now, by a quirk of international relations, the country is charged with deciding the fate of another suffering people. As a temporary member of the Security Council, its vote could determine whether, and under what circumstances, the United Nations sanctions war with Iraq.
If there is anything odd about that, Foreign Minister Francois Fall will not admit it. ”The situation in Iraq remains a serious concern for the people of Guinea,” he said this week. ”It’s a question of principle: as a member of the international community we have to see that Iraq disarms.”
No one in Conakry, it seems, has heard of Iraq: not the huddles of men drinking on corners, not even the students reading in the light outside the military barracks. ”What do I know about that place?” says Francis Issay, a refugee from Sierra Leone.
His ignorance is not surprising. Three-quarters of Guineans are illiterate. The handheld radios crackling in the dark offer no news of Iraq; only government reports delivered in the name of General Lansana Conte, Guinea’s ailing dictator.
In Conte, Guineans have a leader not unlike Saddam Hussein. He seized power in a coup two decades ago and has maintained it by crushing dissent while allowing his cronies to plunder Guinea’s mineral wealth. Though he introduced democracy in 1993, according to Amnesty International his security forces open fire whenever ”opponents dare to show their dissatisfaction”.
Though he has liberalised the mineral sector Guinea remains one of the world’s most corrupt countries, and its people are getting poorer every year, according to the anti-corruption group Transparency International.
Last year Conte engineered a referendum to allow himself to rule for another term. As a question of principle, he might expect international condemnation. Instead Western donors give him more than $200-million a year; plus, in the US’s case, arms and military training.
Last week the US added another $2-million, ostensibly to cope with refugees from neighbouring Liberia. They reason that, if Conte is not perfect, he is an ally against Liberia’s tyrannous president, Charles Taylor.
Fall denies that Guinea would vote for any UN resolution its patron proposed. ”Even Germany or France would support a war if the council’s sanctions are violated,” he said.
For a Muslim country, Guinea’s mullahs show no apparent interest in their country’s role in the future of Iraq.
The only conflict poor Guineans are concerned about is the civil war they live in fear of. Conte is rumoured to be dying. ”The army’s getting ready,” said Alhassan Sillah, a leading journalist. ”Everyone’s waiting for the coup or … maybe war.”
That would probably draw the curtain on Guinea’s role on the international stage. The American and Russian companies would flee; the Western donors and diplomats would follow; the Spanish trawlers would keep a little further from its shore. — Â