Guinea: Cloudy Days in Conakry

Like the boy who cried “Wolf!” Guinea’s Marxist President Sékou Touré has called for help in fighting off invasions or coups so many times that people scarcely listen to him any more. Once it was a cabal of teachers and trade unionists from within Guinea. Another time it was a plot against Guinea launched by Ivory Coast President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a longtime Touré enemy. There was an authentic assassination attempt by a knife-wielding Guinean in 1969, but the young fanatic bungled the job, and was lynched by an angry crowd before he could implicate anyone else. Altogether, in the dozen years since Guinea won independence from the French, Touré has complained of at least half a dozen attempts to overthrow his regime.

Thus, when Touré frantically informed the United Nations last week that his country was being attacked by “an imperialist Portuguese invasion,” there were a few yawns and even some protests of “Not again!” Even so, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session and decided to dispatch a five-man fact-finding team headed by a Nepalese general to look into the situation.

This time the President of Guinea seemed to have a legitimate beef. The U.N.’s own man in Conakry, Guinea’s capital, told of seeing men disembarking from four unmarked vessels—among them an LST and a 5,000-ton cargo vessel. Heading for shore in small boats, the invaders came under heavy fire. Eyewitnesses later estimated the force at 350 men wearing Guinean army uniforms without emblems. Most of the invaders were black, but there were some whites as well.

It was immediately assumed that the whites were either mercenaries or Portuguese bent on punishing Touré for harboring guerrillas who regularly harass the neighboring colony of Portuguese Guinea, also known as Guinea-Bissau for its capital. Mercenaries who were recruited in France in the past to fight in African wars re-emerged recently in London, and there was talk among them of “a big operation in West Africa.”

Suburban Targets. Before the landing party’s members were killed, captured or driven off by Touré’s Chinese-trained “people’s militia,” they headed toward an expensive suburb of Conakry and raided the headquarters of PAIGC (African Party for the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde). Guerrilla fighters from PAIGC now control anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of Portuguese Guinea, pinning down some 30,000 troops. The party’s founder and leader, Amilcar Cabral, was in Europe during last week’s raid and missed an attack on his house.

The raiders also burned down Touré’s summer home, Belle Vue, and temporarily occupied two army camps. But they ignored Conakry’s radio station, whose Chinese-made transmitter is located practically next door to PAIGC headquarters. Thus Touré was able to go on the air with an emotional report to his people and a plea to them to remain alert: “Leave your books and get your arms, leave your kitchen pots and get your arms, leave your plows and get your arms.” The President reportedly was being assisted in directing the battle by Kwame Nkrumah, who was deposed as President of Ghana in 1966 and has since become Guinea’s best-known exile-in-residence.

Portuguese Denial. Casualty figures were uncertain at week’s end. One hundred Guineans were reported killed. The number of killed and wounded among the invaders was unknown, but about 100 were captured. Three Europeans —including a five-year-old Yugoslav girl —were killed in the fighting, which went on for some 40 hours in the capital. Lisbon denied any Portuguese connection. In a similar episode, however, Portuguese aircraft recently bombed Senegalese border villages from which guerrillas had been attacking Guinea-Bissau (the attacks quickly ceased).

The fact that white men had been in the landing party infuriated other black African governments. Their reaction recalled a Touré maxim from the early 1960s, when Pan-Africanism was more vibrant than it is now: “Africa is like a human body. If one finger is cut, the whole body feels the pain.” Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere sent $1,500,000 in aid to Guinea. Libya dispatched arms. Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and the Congo-Kinshasa promised help. Somalia opened recruiting centers for volunteers to fight in Guinea. University students demonstrated against white colonialism in Lusaka, Abidjan and Dar es Salaam. In Lagos, students toted placards reading DOWN WITH NATO and shouted “Go home, pigs!” at white passersby.

Temporarily, at least, the invasion also rekindled support at home for Sekou Touré, 48. Poorer Guineans have generally backed Touré, but their incomes from bananas, rice and pineapple farming have steadily decreased. The country (about the size of Oregon, with 4,000,000 people) contains one of the world’s largest bauxite deposits, and has signed a $180 million agreement under which a Western consortium will mine and market the ore starting next year. But most hotels in Conakry normally do not serve lunch, for the simple reason that there is not enough food. At least 600,000 Guineans have fled into exile, many to neighboring countries. That alone is enough to make a ruler cry wolf every now and then.