The Gambia: State Terrorism as a Population Heads for the Hills

By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

The most feared and most lethal Libyan trained Green Boys

It was a week of disquiet, exasperation and frustration; a week that began with a bang and ended with a simple thud. But, before the week was over, Gambians were again put under the spotlight and subjected to the curiosity of an international community fixated as much on Yahya Jammeh’s medieval buffoonery, as it was held captive to the asinine character and the maddening comedic impulsiveness that he represents. But, what began with the non-dramatic release of Halifa Sallah, PDOIS politician and former NADD presidential candidate, and ended with the deaths and struggles for survival of several dozen innocent Gambians across the country, did much to help shape and motivate us to coalesce around an issue that was sufficiently titillating to our collective imagination. This, therefore, is a Gambian reality that we cannot afford to shy away from or turn our back on. Even as the entire world laughed at Yahya Jammeh’s injurious stupidity and antiquated and tortured belief system, evidence of the international community’s empathy with The Gambia over the imperviousness of Jammeh’s vexing, impaired, uncultured and unsophisticatedness was evident judging from the deluge of critical commentary from all around the world. Despite the political power at his disposal, and in spite of it, the life of Yahya Jammeh today appears tailor-made for comedy play in the character of a Greek tragedy whose human personification is frozen in dreams set between reality and imagination. But, if Jammeh’s tragedy, which began with the assassination of Koro Ceesay, and escalated to the murders, executions and horrendous human rights violations were not bad enough to capture the aversion of the world community, the abhorrent nature of his medievalism attracted much worldwide attention in a way that evoked global outrage. Nearly fifteen years after the beginning of Jammeh’s campaign of brutality against the people of our country, the Gambian media is making baby steps inroads into the hard to crack open worldwide political stage, and our media can finally be exonerated from accusations of undermining our country’s wellbeing in the international community. The very hateful, deceptive and sarcastic rhetoric spewed by Yahya Jammeh’s guile, mean-spirited and obsequious apologists can finally be laid to rest where it rightfully belongs; in the dustbin of history. All last week, while the international community was drawn primarily to the caricature amusement cast by Jammeh’s ignorant behavior, Gambians on the other hand were mortified by the level, extent and spread of the brutality to which our countrymen were subjected, and horrified by the stolid scenes of sorcery that have become all too familiar to our countrymen. What Gambia witnessed last week, was history repeating itself, as a simpleton nonentity, in the person of Yahya Jammeh, shined light over our country, inadvertently exposing to the world the tragic activities of his evil regime over all these years. The events of the past four weeks are like the comical playback of the lives and times of dictators long gone, but never forgotten; of Idi Amin Dada, and Adolf Hitler, Bokassa, Stalin, and Haile Mariam; lives that embodied evil reincarnate, which last week, came alive in the undeserved existence of Yahya Jammeh.

As tragic as the last several weeks have been and continue to be for our country, Yahya Jammeh, it seems, has drawn the battle lines on the sand. His actions motivated purely by the imperative of raw and boundless power, appealed to the lowest common denominator of his humanity; humanity bereft and devoid of emotions and hardened by the blindness of the absolute power he wields. To most of us, it is hard to make a sense of the events of the last four weeks, as our country descended into a state of lawless anarchy, complete with marauding bands of APRC loyalist thugs and military and security officers. While we intermittently send our own young and patriotic men and women in harms way on noble peacekeeping operations around Africa, our own country lacks the protections that our fellow citizens are entitled to as enshrined in our Constitution. Today, The Gambia’s military, whose existence is entirely predicated on the protection of the citizens of our country, has been found wanting and of criminally abdication of the sole responsibility that is assigned to it by our laws and Constitution. In stead, both the military and security forces have fallen into the hands of Yahya Jammeh, a dictator who lacks the commitment and the desire to secure the lives of our fellow citizens. As Gambians wallow in self-pity and remorse over the creating of this monster at the helm of a non-existence government, our military and security forces are proving again that they are not up to the challenge of providing our fellow citizens the protection they are entitled to. Today, the Gambians are left exposed and vulnerable to the abuse of a few faithless and hard-core Yahya Jammeh worshiping zealots among the police, military and security forces. Over the past many years, security check points mounted and manned by unscrupulous security and military forces all around the country, have not only become bottlenecks of intimidation, extortion and even outright criminal seizure of citizens assets, they have virtually turned the entire country into a criminal enterprise governed by cumbersome and unconstitutional rules and turning us into a police state. In spite of the harrowing tales of rape, banditry and mafia-like intimidation, Gambians are cognizant of the fact that among the security and military forces, the silent majority is disgusted by what is happening to our people around a country, that was once renowned as a bastion of freedom from fear and a haven of peaceful co-existence, but now effectively reduced to a state-sponsored terror state. All around the country, fear of the regime is palpable among every demographic category, as innocent Gambians are threatened by real prospects of falling prey toYahya Jammeh’s treachery and insipid abuse of power. In the Fonis and in many parts of the Kombos close to Senegal’s southern border, scores of Gambian villagers have fled into the Cassamance to escape capture by Jammeh’s minions and sadistic criminal enforcers. And in a recent development, some refugees of the long drawn out factional war in the Cassamance are reported to be returning prematurely to the villages they abandoned as a result of rebel activity, rather than stay in The Gambia where Gambians have provided them necessary hospitality and security for more than four decades. In far away Bureng in the Lower River, two hundred miles east of the country, residents who normally congregate on the Basse/Bureng intersection, recently scattered in fright helter shelter into the hills as a military vehicle slowed down to a stop. In Foni Dobong, villagers led by the indomitable Alkalo, successfully mounted resistance to the criminal zealots of Jammeh’s APRC Green boys’ thugs and the military accomplices in crime who have combined effort to lease terror on our people, across our country. Today, our country is in a challenging and trying time, and focus must be placed on the collective responsibility to participate in tasks and that will advance the liberation of our country from the clutches of Jammeh’s pernicious rogue regime. We must never permit political demagoguery to seep into this charged and harmful situation in order to avoid obfuscating the real danger that our country faces. We must reject the prospects of any counterproductive, divisive and polarizing circumstances that could prove injurious to the cause we are sacrificing to ameliorate in the interest of the Gambian people. Our collective and most overarching interest must remain focused on a commitment to the total and absolute annihilation of a regime that has visited so much pain, misery, agony and hopelessness on the people of our beloved country. To permit narrow interests to distract from the challenges posted by Yahya Jammeh’s evil regime, could cause some self-serving political fanatics to deviate from the commitment to the larger issue of providing all Gambians the opportunity to operate in a safe, sane, and humane environment that provides an atmosphere where the rights of our citizens are respected under a ceiling less limitation to the growth and development of their God-given potentials. Only this can provide our countrymen and women the prosperity that has eluded us as a country for so long. But for now, as terror is rained down on our fellow countrymen, we must all resolve to actively participate in causes designed to free our country from the harmful orgy of bloodlust and intimidation that has characterized the past fifteen years of our nation’s existence. We must stand together and shout in unison that we will not tolerate the abuse anymore. Together, we must resolve to show Yahya Jammeh the way out of the lives of our fellow countrymen, because together we can finally rescue our country from the agony of defeat and march towards the promise of freedom. For there is nothing we cannot accomplish if we work together. We can do it and we must do it. The time to end this long state sponsored terrorist nightmare is now.