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CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Guinea: An Island of Stability?
by Sarah Birgitta Kanafani
“It takes three days to solve problems here, no matter what the problem. On the first day, the crisis hits; on the second there is chaos, riots, turmoil; and on the third day, everyone loses interest and things settle down.”
After my first week in Conakry, the capital of the small West African country Guinea, a young Guinean man explained his “three-day theory” to me. In a region that has become synonymous with gruesome civil wars fuelled by abundant natural resources and massive humanitarian crises, this theory seemed, to put it mildly, optimistic. Then again, Guinea is one of the few West African states to have avoided large-scale organized violence over the past two decades, despite the fact that it shares borders with Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. Has Guinea been doing something right, or has it just gotten lucky? The recent history of West Africa confirms that Guinea is certainly not exporting security, and although the tiny nation of 9.5 million seems to maintain a relatively stable status quo, a closer look reveals a plethora of structural problems that threatens to shatter its fragile peace.
West Africa is a classic “bad neighborhood” where internal conflicts rarely stay that way, instead seeping over borders along with refugees, militias, arms, and natural resources. While Guinea has managed to avoid civil war thus far, it has not been immune from the spillover effects of its neighbors’ conflicts. But since my arrival here, I have become increasingly convinced that the greatest threat to Guinea is Guinea itself. In addition to regional instability, the country currently faces a declining economy, weak governance, disenfranchisement of the citizenry, simmering ethnic tensions, and an uncertain domestic political situation. This combination of exogenous and endogenous threats means that all the pieces are in place for larger-scale violence in Guinea–all that’s needed now is a trigger.
Since I came to Guinea with the American Refugee Committee (ARC) to work with refugees from the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone who live in camps in Guinea’s Forest Region along the border with those countries, I figured I would have an upfront view of why Guinea has been kept safe from the region’s turmoil— at least so far. Indeed, refugees often reveal as much about the country to which they flee as the one from which they flee. The large-scale influx of displaced persons into a country can lay bare infrastructural problems, the government’s ability to provide services, the strength of its economy, inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations, and its ability to control its borders. While Guinea’s absorptive capacity for refugees, albeit with hefty international assistance, has been substantial— it has hosted hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighboring countries— its own problems are becoming increasingly apparent. As more and more refugees repatriate and take with them the international presence and donor money that followed them in, Guinea will be left to fend for itself. Thus, while regional threats to Guinea’s stability are significant, its internal problems are more likely to prove the “three-day theory” untrue.
Economic Crisis. Perhaps the most visible structural weakness in Guinea is its worsening economy. In the past year, rice—the staple food for most citizens— has quadrupled in price, as has the cost of fuel, but without a commensurate increase in wages. Inflation is a whopping 26.3 percent, second only to Zimbabwe.2 Indeed, the inflation is palpable here; when I first arrived in Guinea the exchange rate was 4,000 Guinean Francs (GF) per U.S. dollar; two weeks later it was 4,200 GF per dollar, and it has been sliding ever since. For the average citizen, these increases in price have very real consequences—they mean the difference between eating and not eating, and between being able to afford public transportation to work or not. In addition, the younger generations are faced with an increasingly tough labor market. As the economy declines, job opportunities become scarcer. Therefore, young people have no vested interest in the economic well-being of their communities, and often turn instead to illegitimate means of making a living. People are hungry and increasingly frustrated, and in the past few months, Conakry has seen sporadic rioting over rice convoys as well as an increase in both petty and violent crime. Low-level violence of this kind seems manageable, but if left unregulated it can easily mushroom into general civil strife, building on unrelated frustrations and security gaps. The path from human insecurity to national insecurity is a slippery slope, and the risk of fullblown organized violence is real.
Sarah Kanafani works for the American Refugee Committee in Guinea, West Africa. She received her Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in May 2005, where she was a Managing Editor for the Journal.