When soldiers don’t get paid
Reports from the west African country of Guinea indicate a worrying excalation of insubordination among the junior ranks of the country’s armed forces. Random attacks on public buildings have been reported from throughout the country. The cause of the unrest is apparently the fairly old problem of soldiers not being paid adequately. Insufficient reporting and transparency often lead to more senior officers pocketing their underlings’ pay. The soldiers are left without the means of subsistence but they are left with something rather useful in the short term for survival – their weapons.
Guinea saw some serious turbulence earlier in the year when a general strike was called to protest at the continued rule of President Lansana Conte. The strikers were initially fired on by an apparently loyal army, leading to over one hundred deaths, but many observers wondered how long it would be until the army would turn the weapons on their masters. This fear on the part of Conte’s circle probably led to the decision to give in partly to the protestors’ demands and appoint a new prime minister.
Conte is reckoned to be seriously ill. A power-vacuum, filled by allies jockeying for power and influence in a post-Conte Guinea, has already formed. Yet the news of a potential mutiny amongst the soldiers should perhaps create the greatest fears.
Surely Guinea’s rulers are aware of how dangerous an issue like unpaid military wages can be. Do they not recall what happened in neighbouring Liberia? In 1980 two disgruntled NCOs, one of them a semi-literate master sergeant called Samuel Doe, decided to take their grievance over unpaid wages directly to then President William Tolbert. They gained entry to his bedroom and stabbed him with their bayonets, later throwing his lifeless body out of the window. This event was the prelude, in the short-term, to an orgy of blood-letting which consumed many of Liberia’s elite. In the long term it led to two decades of fighting and mayhem, which have only recently been brought under control.
It is disappointing that many African states, nearly a half century after independence, are still so inherently unstable that a matter such as unpaid wages for its soldiery can threaten the very survival of the state itself.
