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AFRICA: Casamance, Bloody Legacy of the Colonial Division of the Continent
By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Mar 20 (IPS) - The fighting that has been going on for four days between army troops in Guinea-Bissau and Senegalese separatists from the Movement of the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) reopened an almost century-old wound.
Since the wee hours of Friday morning, the army of Guinea Bissau - a tiny former Portuguese colony of 1.2 million people wedged between Senegal and Guinea on the Atlantic coast of West Africa - has pressed into use the entire arsenal of weapons available on the northwestern border with Senegal, in an attempt to retake the roads that link the villages of Susana and Varela with the town of São Domingos.
The roads were seized by the rebels in several military actions.
At least 2,500 Bissau-Guineans have fled their villages, according to the Red Cross.
The separatists are not waging war against the government of Guinea-Bissau. Their main enemy is Senegal, to which Casamance has belonged since a weakened Portugal was forced to yield it to a much more powerful France in 1908, as a result of the colonial accords reached at the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference, in which Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and Portugal divvied up the African continent.
However, numerous incursions by the MFDC into Guinean territory, where the rebels have seized villages and carried out kidnappings and murders, have caused more than one skirmish between the separatists and Guinea-Bissau troops.
Colonel Antonio Indji, the military chief in that area, told Portuguese correspondents in the theatre of operations that the people of São Domingos, Susana and Varela "are isolated and are now suffering from hunger, because the MFDC rebels have planted mines along the access roads," a situation he said the army would remedy by seizing back the roads from rebel control.
On Sunday, the Guinea-Bissau army set fire to the border villages of Barraca Mandioca, Bamcer and Budjin, which were suspected of serving as a refuge to the MFDC rebels. They in turn destroyed the village of Djeque, kidnapped local residents to use them as human shields, and drove out the inhabitants of Suncutoto, 10 km from São Domingos, to occupy their houses.
The offensive in Barraca Mandioca, carried out in the name of "ethnic cleansing" against the supposed base of operations of the Casamance rebels' military chief, Salif Sadio, was decided in Bissau and given the green light by President João Bernardo Vieira, who is concerned about maintaining good relations with Senegal.
With the aim of forcing Sadio out of the territory over which he exercises some control, Guinea-Bissau soldiers have opened fire with heavy artillery from São Domingos against Barraca Mandioca, the correspondent of Portugal's Lusa news agency reported Monday.
According to the military sources quoted by Lusa, the "ethnic cleansing" operation will continue "until it is certain that Salif Sadio's men have completely abandoned Guinea-Bissau territory."
The rebel actions began last Friday, when 20 MFDC fighters launched a suicide attack in São Domingos. Thirteen were killed, and the remaining seven were captured and are now guiding the Guinea-Bissau soldiers in search of rebel bases in the jungle, in Senegalese territory as well.
The political aim of the Guinea-Bissau government is "to speed up the negotiations between the rebels and the government of Senegal," said the special envoy of the Lisbon newspaper, Diario de Noticias, in São Domingos Monday.
However, the journalist was told by Sadio's chief lieutenant, Zacarías Goubiaby, that the rebels "will not be captured like chickens, but will fight like lions."
Given these developments, several United Nations agencies have already begun to send humanitarian aid for the alarming number of refugees fleeing the combat-stricken area, the vast majority of whom have headed for Gambia.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has called on Gambian leader Jahya Jammeh to take in the refugees from Casamance and to not allow the rebels to use his country's territory.
The MFDC was founded in 1982. In 2001, the group signed a peace agreement with the Senegalese government, but numerous factions refused to comply with the pact signed by their leaders, and outbreaks of violence have continued to occur.
Casamance is one of the many forgotten tragedies of Africa. It was the first Portuguese colony on the continent, "discovered" in 1445 by Diniz Dias and officially founded in 1446 by Antonio de Nolle and Luís de Cadamosto, who had been sent by Prince Henry the Navigator to colonise the coast of the Geba River.
This Portuguese overseas possession became an inexhaustible source of slaves captured and taken to Brazil or sold to other European countries.
After 462 years of Portuguese colonial rule, Casamance was transferred to French control in 1908, first as part of the Federation of Mali, like Senegal, and then as part of Senegal when it became a country in its own right. .
The French, attracted by the prosperous slave trade, "began to mark their presence in the region in 1459, and from that time onwards, they did not cease to pressure the Portuguese," notes an Internet article by Adelto Gonçalves, a writer and professor of Portuguese literature at the University of Sao Paulo.
In the 18th century, the French and Portuguese even came to engage in armed battle in the region, Gonçalves stresses.
Only 10 percent of Casamance's 3.5 million inhabitants are literate and speak some amount of French. The main languages are Jola (the language of the dominant ethnic group of the same name) and Portuguese creole.
Casamance's 32,350 sq. km. of territory, partly separated from the rest of Senegal by Gambia, are home to vast oil reserves.
Senegalese control of the region has long been challenged, particularly after independence was achieved between 1974 and 1975 in the former Portuguese "overseas provinces" of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe, leading separatists to seize upon Casamance's origins as a former Portuguese colony itself.
Although the region left the Portuguese colonial sphere almost a century ago, Gonçalves maintains that it has much stronger links with the Portuguese world than with the French, and emphasises that even today, young people from Casamance study at universities in Lisbon thanks to scholarships from the Portuguese government.
On numerous occasions, Amnesty International has denounced human rights violations committed by both Casamance separatists and the Senagalese armed forces, but the conflict has failed to find a place in the international media and "only the Portuguese press reports the odd news story, while in Brazil, there is no coverage," laments Gonçalves.
In addition to the ethnic and political aspects of the conflict, Gonçalves emphasises that there are also major economic interests at stake, since Senegal, in partnership with foreign companies, "is eager to explore Casamance's oil deposits."
He further points out that Senegal's only abundant natural resource is phosphate, which is why "it lives on aid sent by the French government - aid that, according to the Casamance independence fighters, solely benefits the (other) Senegalese."
(END/2006)
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