The international community must encourage reform tendencies in Guinea-Bissau to counter the risk of the West African country becoming a narco-state and political no-man’s-land of interest to Maghreb criminal and terrorist networks.
Guinea-Bissau: In Need of a State, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, analyses the national and international policies necessary to put an end to the country’s endless cycle of political crises. Despite 35 years of institutional incapacity, Guinea-Bissau has a chance for democratic reforms thanks to the signing of a Stability Pact by the three most important political parties in March 2007.
“The creation of a democratic state is increasingly urgent as the risk of criminalisation is growing”, says Daniela Kroslak, Crisis Group’s Deputy Africa Program Director. “Cocaine trafficking from Latin America has increased tremendously in recent years, and the country has become a pivotal transit point in the route to European markets”.
No leader since 1974 has tried to establish the necessary structures for a functioning democratic state. Consequently, the country’s infrastructure, bureaucracy, administration, political institutions and human- and social-development indexes remain largely unaltered since the first years of independence. Presently, the movement towards greater reform and democracy, fuelled by the Stability Pact and promoted by the government of Martinho Ndafa Cabi, faces the same military resistance and is hampered by a dangerous institutional vacuum.
Fundamental changes are required to the way the country is run. Above all, army reform is needed to free the political system from military interference. The stakes are considerable both for the country and the West African region, already touched by repeated political crises (Guinea) and drawn-out peace-consolidation processes (Sierra Leone, Liberia).
The international community has taken tentative steps to lend its assistance. A program of reforms addressing major security sector and public administration challenges was adopted in 2007, and, at the request of the prime minister, the country was added to the agenda of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (PBC). However, for these steps to have tangible results for the people of Guinea-Bissau, foreign partners must galvanise their efforts and seize what appears to be a genuine opportunity.
“Only a serious institution-building process and a legal framework that can regulate political life and free it from the guerrilla mentality of pre-independence can allow Guinea-Bissau to escape its crisis once and for all”, says François Grignon, Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director. “The country must start building a real democratic state”.
Source: International Crisis Group, Brussels, Belgium.
Photo: President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira of Guinea Bissau.
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