The book by Idriça Djalo, a Bissau-Guinean politician and businessman, audits Guinea-Bissau from the departure of this West African country of the Portuguese colonial forces in 1974 to the present day.

The author devotes pages to relations with Senegal, "a powerful neighbor to the North", which is facing armed independence rebellion in its southern part from the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC).

This organization has become a player in the internal struggles in Guinea-Bissau, a "failed post-colonial state" torn between violence, poverty, impunity, drugs and ethnicism.

The author's personal journey serves, in certain chapters, as a guiding thread for his 140-page narrative, from the war of liberation against the Portuguese colonizer starting in 1961 to the current political vicissitudes.

As a child, the author was forced by this war into exile in Ziguinchor, in Casamance, where he went to school and experienced homesickness.

His dream return at the end of the war turned into a nightmare when he discovered the "terror" of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) with arrests, disappearances, "public executions" and a "shortage of essential products".

He discovers that Guinea-Bissau is "a copy of the dictatorial regime" of President Sékou Touré in Guinea Conakry, as well as a "degenerate tropical version" of Stalinism.

The PAIGC, both a military and political instrument of the liberation war, runs the state.

This state, unilaterally proclaimed on September 24, 1973 by this group, "is not republican, much less national".

He is "an instrument of the PAIGC, victor of the war" against Portugal.

It is "at once a party, an army and an administration" and it is "within it that we must look for the causes of political violence" and "permanent instability" in this country since 1974.

The PAIGC army, "glowing with its victory over the Portuguese forces, feels invested with the power to legitimize political leaders."

This situation "will unfortunately be replicated in all political parties that will emerge from internal crises" within this formation, says the author.

Amical Cabral, founder of the PAIGC and leader of the liberation war, is one of the many victims of this organization's violence.

He was killed in Conakry in December 1972 by the head of the PAIGC Navy, Inocencio Kany, whom he had denounced as a negative example in the future management of the country, after accusing him of stealing and selling an engine.

Drug trafficking "is eating away at structures and institutions," the author writes.

The multi-party system introduced in the 1990s did not put an end to this violence.

THE MFDC AT THE HEART OF THE CONFLICTS

This violence reached a peak on June 7, 1998, the beginning of the political-military conflict stemming from a controversy between political and military leaders.

The arms trafficking between Guinean officials and the MFDC will be the trigger.

It will lead to an 11-month civil war.

The Senegalese army intervened in this conflict to support President Joao Bernardo Vieira, known as Nino, against the mutineers led by the army chief, Ansoumane Mané, who were supported by the MFDC rebels, who were hostile to Dakar.

The author recounts the mediation he conducted, alongside that of international organizations.

It will be between Bissau, Dakar, Lomé and Banjul, between on the one hand Messrs Vieira and Mané and on the other hand between the latter and the Senegalese side under the leadership of the Minister of the Interior, Lamine Cissé, sent by President Abdou Diouf.

Mediation enabled an orderly withdrawal of Senegalese troops.

But after the departure of Senegalese and Guinean soldiers from Conakry, Ansoumane Mané disregarded the agreements of the organization of West African states ECOWAS and ousted President Vieira from power in May 1999.

For the author, the involvement of the MFDC in Guinean political crises represents one of the most important threats to the national security of Guinea-Bissau, "a danger to the existence" of its state, while "the rebellion is a marginal problem for Dakar".

A PACT FOR STABILITY

Faced with these problems, he calls for a national conference with a view to "a national stability pact".

He invites his compatriots to seize this opportunity to open a debate on a failed system that has become an existential threat to the country.

This book, published on the eve of the presidential and legislative elections of November 23, in which the historic Paigc party is not participating for the first time, excluded by the courts due to its late candidacy, is full of lessons about the demons that are ravaging Guinea-Bissau.

The history of this country bordering Senegal is curiously almost absent from Senegalese school curricula, even though Guinea-Bissau has influenced many socio-political and cultural formations in Senegal.

Senegalese politicians should read this book to better understand the realities in this neighbouring country, take them into account in their political integration projects and above all silence the guns permanently in Casamance, which has been a rear base of the PAIGC.

The author describes the MFDC problem as "marginal" for Dakar, a debatable idea.

He is not interested in two essential questions for us: how Portuguese colonization laid the seeds of this endemic violence in Guinea-Bissau and why Cape Verde, a country that experienced the same Portuguese colonial adventure, escaped it and is today a democratic model in Africa.

* Reading note

Idriça Djalo

Guinea-Bissau

A vision for the refounding of the State

Elma Editions, October 2025