Guinea: The Truth About the Kouyate Government
How American Corporate Interests Created a New Neocolonial Regime
By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah*
Neocolonial Prime Minister of Guinea, Lansana Kouyate has announced his plans to organize what he described as transparent elections in December 2007. This public announcement follows Kouyate’s recent visit to Washington where he met with George Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleza Rice as well as senior officials of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to discuss an elections agenda for Guinea and military support from the United States to his government.
In a recent interview with All Africa Global Media, Kouyate reported that his meeting with Rice has been productive because the United States has expressed commitments of supporting his government.
“We have so many challenges. The issue of security is paramount…the administration in the countryside is non-existent because the infrastructure – police stations, prison, and prefecture – was destroyed during the turmoil. But I have received total commitment from Rice that the US is going to back the process and we are working out how to reinforce the Guinean army, how to reinforce our police, our security system, and how to help us hold transparent elections in December 2007,” Kouyate told the All Africa Media Group in Washington few days ago.
We in the Africanist Movement had long referred to Kouyate as a puppet of the United States who is being imposed on the masses of African people to facilitate the theft of our aluminum resources in Guinea by the United States and its corporate allies.
Our position on Kouyate did not come from recent assessment of his current neocolonial role in Guinea but from historical evidences. Before he assumed the executive secretary position of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), Kouyate among other things had worked with the United States Agency for International Development, United Nations and later served as a special envoy of France in Ivory Coast.
But a clear understanding of Kouyate’s current role and function in Guinea can best be obtained from a study of the controversial circumstances that led to his appointment into what is being described by the petty bourgeoisie as a “consensus prime minister.”
A clear examination of this trend will reveal that the circumstances that resulted in Kouyate becoming Guinea’s current prime minister are not the product of a popular arrangement from the masses neither is it the true outcome of the mass uprisings in January and February against the Conte regime. But rather it is the consequence of the illogical, insincere and dishonest decision of Guinea’s trade union leadership and certain sections of the civil society movement who themselves were working as agents of US imperialism and its corporate allies to carryout a sponsored programme for regime change in the interests of the United States and the two leading north American aluminum conglomerates – Alcoa and Alcan.
It should be remembered that the years following the death of Ahmed Sekou Toure and the arrival of General Lansana Conte into power marked a period of intense western capitalist corporate concentration in Guinea - the build-ups of capital monopolies over the aluminum and iron ore mines in Guinea by leading north American corporations. Apart from the Russian Aluminum Company (Rusal), Alcan and Alcoa had remained the dominant corporations controlling and exploiting aluminum and iron ore from Guinea.
By 2006 for instance, Alcoa alone - the world’s leading producer and manger of primary aluminum – is believed to have extracted 86, 300 tons of bauxite daily from its mining concessions in Guinea from which 9, 575 tons of aluminum is smelted and 8, 810 tons of aluminum products that include consumer brands like Reynolds Wrap, Alcoa wheels and Baco household wraps were produced.
For a very long time, however, this north American corporate monopoly over the bauxite and iron ore reserves in Guinea went unchallenged. The Lansana Conte regime that came to power in a 1984 coup sponsored by France and the United States against the then socialist government of Ahmed Sekou Toure had depended on capital provided by these imperialist corporations to carryout the functioning of his administration. In fact, both France and the United States had supported the Conte regime on the basis that he maintains a free enterprise economy that guarantees the development of mining capital by western mining corporations.
Due to persuasion from the United States and France, Conte consequently drafted a new mining policy for Guinea in 1986; just two years after he assumed power. The policy known as the 1986 Mining Code, based largely on French law, gave away the extractive sector of the economy to western capitalist corporations. It provided a range of guarantees and tax incentives for the development of mining capital by western capitalist corporations allowing them ownership of at least 85% of any mining venture in Guinea.
It was part of this code also that a new department, the Centre for Mining Promotion and Development (CPDM), was established through financial support from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This was to enable the Conte regime to undertake joint new surveys with several capitalist mining corporations across the country, which eventually resulted in the identification of strategic mineral deposits in several parts of the country including the richest bauxite reserves at Sangaredi and Kerouani in the far east of Guinea and the creation of a national database of geological information.
Through this programme, at least a hundred multinational corporations, some of which were subsidiaries of both Alcoa and Alcan, gained unfettered access and control over Guinea’s mineral wealth between 1986-2005. Guinea’s Ministry of Mines and Geological Surveys in its 2005 Mining Sector Report revealed that about 100 multinational corporations are actively mining across the country. These did not include corporations owned by dubious individual magnates involved in nefarious activities around the world or corporations operating under the pseudo-ownership of some senior corrupt officials of the Conte regime.
The United States and France had helped the Conte regime develop a military and security service that enabled him to enforce a crude regime system that facilitated the theft and transfer of these resources by the various multinational corporations operating in the country. Since he assumed power in 1984, Conte has suppressed every opposition to his policies and developed a political mafia that survived from mismanagement of resources, embezzlement of public funds, political abuse, rogue alliances and corrupt contracts from western capitalist corporations exploiting the masses.
The Conte regime did not only use the military and police against organized opposition to his government but also to enforce the dictates of US imperialism and its allies. The process of legalization of Conte’s rogue regime took ground in 1993 after Conte won a controversial election organized and rigged by France and the United States on his behalf. Since then, Conte’s Party of Unity and Progress (PUP) had rigged all subsequent elections.
But throughout the period, the United States and France committed themselves to supporting the Conte regime only because he upheld the interests of the leading north American corporations operating in Guinea. In its 2005 Annual Report on Guinea, for example, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) stated that: “the United States strategic interests in Guinea is to promote increased US private investment in Guinea’s emerging economy as there are several large US Corporations in Guinea possessing significant shares of their respective markets.”
What this implies is that the United States was equally prepared to adopt an alternative mechanism and approach to secure the increased north American corporate exploitation and monopoly over Guinea’s vast aluminum and other strategic resources. This was in fact a key factor in Washington’s support for the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) -- a counter rebel movement organized by the United States against the then government of Liberia headed by Charles Taylor after 1997.
The United States had feared that Taylor, because of his relations with the French shortly after his inauguration as president in 1997, might use his NPFL fighters to attack US-controlled mining interests in Guinea. And when in 2000-2001, rebels believed to be part of Taylor’s NPFL fighters subsequently attacked Guinea villages along the borders of Liberia and Sierra Leone, the United States eventually provided huge military assistance -weapons and ammunitions - to the Guinea army to counter-attack strategic locations across the Liberia border in retaliation.
The seriousness of this threat to US interests was emphasized in a December 2001 communiqué issued by the US embassy in Conakry which partly states that: “unrest in Guinea does not only represents a major security problem for West Africa but also our nation’s most security threats because the United States has invested heavily in Guinea where our strategic interests remain strong and multi-faceted.”
But the period following 2003 was to mark the beginning of a new tactic by the United States and its imperialist allies in their efforts to protect the mining concessions of its two most leading north American corporations, Alcan and Alcoa. This was when the Guinean Ministry of Mineral Resources granted the richest aluminum-mining concession in West Africa to a Japanese corporation, Global Aluminum Productions Corporation (GAPCO), a subsidiary of Mitsubishi and Merubeni conglomerates. This agreement allowed GAPCO the definitive right to undertake exploration and extraction of aluminum resources around the Sangaredi area for a period of hundred years.
This annoyed the United States and its allies whose control of Guinea’s aluminum resources since 1984 had depended on Alcoa and Alcan’s monopoly over mineral exploitation in the country. In retaliation, the United States withdrew its supposed assistance and support to the Conte regime and alternatively sought a new agenda for regime change in Guinea. Because of absolute loyalty to the regime and due to excessive military spending, senior officers within the Guinean military had grown extremely rich from misappropriation of salaries and did not think of overthrowing Conte. A coup plot in January 2005 believed to have been masterminded through the US embassy in Conakry failed to topple Conte resulting in the dismissal of several officers.
Realizing that a military coup is hardly fashionable with an army that is doggedly loyal to the presidency, the US agenda for regime change in Guinea initially targeted the disaffected opposition parties. But the various opposition leaders - Ba Mamadou, a former World Bank consultant, Sidya Toure, an ex-employee of the IMF, and Prof. Alpha Conde, a retired lecturer at Sorbonne University in France persuaded by the US to form an opposition coalition in a campaign against Conte - couldn’t overturn the Conte regime as was envisaged by the US. This is partly because the opposition leaders lacked the required mass support to carryout a popular agenda and willingness to accept the leadership of any one of them. It was following the proved inability of the opposition parties to carryout the regime change agenda that forced the US to alternatively focus attention on the labour unions and a section of the civil society movement.
Consequently, in a report issued by USAID on Guinea’s political situation in June 2005, the United States openly called on the European Union and international financial institutions to withhold aid and assistance to Guinea as a way of forcing the Conte regime to embark on “democratic reforms.”
So for three years subsequent to the GAPCO agreement, the US had expended around a million dollars in a programme designed to develop the labour union leadership in preparation of a mass campaign against Conte. It was this strategy that ultimately culminated in the trade unionists position during the mass uprisings against the Conte regime in January and February this year. This also explains the basis of the trade union leadership’s decision to suggest the appointment of Lansana Kouyate, a US neocolonialist, as Guinea’s new prime minister.
Evidences that the trade unionist position was part of this wider sinister plot by the United States and its corporate allies was clearly evident in a statement issued by the State Department following Kouyate’s appointment. It reads:
“The United States notes with satisfaction the appointment on March 28 of a new government of broad consensus in Guinea. We salute Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate's intention to focus priorities on macroeconomic stability….the new government provides Guinea an important opportunity to improve democratic governance through increased transparency and the protection of human rights. We look forward to working with the new government as they translate their strategy for a democratic, accountable and prosperous Guinea into action.”
By Chernoh Alpha M. Bah*
Neocolonial Prime Minister of Guinea, Lansana Kouyate has announced his plans to organize what he described as transparent elections in December 2007. This public announcement follows Kouyate’s recent visit to Washington where he met with George Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleza Rice as well as senior officials of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to discuss an elections agenda for Guinea and military support from the United States to his government.
In a recent interview with All Africa Global Media, Kouyate reported that his meeting with Rice has been productive because the United States has expressed commitments of supporting his government.
“We have so many challenges. The issue of security is paramount…the administration in the countryside is non-existent because the infrastructure – police stations, prison, and prefecture – was destroyed during the turmoil. But I have received total commitment from Rice that the US is going to back the process and we are working out how to reinforce the Guinean army, how to reinforce our police, our security system, and how to help us hold transparent elections in December 2007,” Kouyate told the All Africa Media Group in Washington few days ago.
We in the Africanist Movement had long referred to Kouyate as a puppet of the United States who is being imposed on the masses of African people to facilitate the theft of our aluminum resources in Guinea by the United States and its corporate allies.
Our position on Kouyate did not come from recent assessment of his current neocolonial role in Guinea but from historical evidences. Before he assumed the executive secretary position of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), Kouyate among other things had worked with the United States Agency for International Development, United Nations and later served as a special envoy of France in Ivory Coast.
But a clear understanding of Kouyate’s current role and function in Guinea can best be obtained from a study of the controversial circumstances that led to his appointment into what is being described by the petty bourgeoisie as a “consensus prime minister.”
A clear examination of this trend will reveal that the circumstances that resulted in Kouyate becoming Guinea’s current prime minister are not the product of a popular arrangement from the masses neither is it the true outcome of the mass uprisings in January and February against the Conte regime. But rather it is the consequence of the illogical, insincere and dishonest decision of Guinea’s trade union leadership and certain sections of the civil society movement who themselves were working as agents of US imperialism and its corporate allies to carryout a sponsored programme for regime change in the interests of the United States and the two leading north American aluminum conglomerates – Alcoa and Alcan.
It should be remembered that the years following the death of Ahmed Sekou Toure and the arrival of General Lansana Conte into power marked a period of intense western capitalist corporate concentration in Guinea - the build-ups of capital monopolies over the aluminum and iron ore mines in Guinea by leading north American corporations. Apart from the Russian Aluminum Company (Rusal), Alcan and Alcoa had remained the dominant corporations controlling and exploiting aluminum and iron ore from Guinea.
By 2006 for instance, Alcoa alone - the world’s leading producer and manger of primary aluminum – is believed to have extracted 86, 300 tons of bauxite daily from its mining concessions in Guinea from which 9, 575 tons of aluminum is smelted and 8, 810 tons of aluminum products that include consumer brands like Reynolds Wrap, Alcoa wheels and Baco household wraps were produced.
For a very long time, however, this north American corporate monopoly over the bauxite and iron ore reserves in Guinea went unchallenged. The Lansana Conte regime that came to power in a 1984 coup sponsored by France and the United States against the then socialist government of Ahmed Sekou Toure had depended on capital provided by these imperialist corporations to carryout the functioning of his administration. In fact, both France and the United States had supported the Conte regime on the basis that he maintains a free enterprise economy that guarantees the development of mining capital by western mining corporations.
Due to persuasion from the United States and France, Conte consequently drafted a new mining policy for Guinea in 1986; just two years after he assumed power. The policy known as the 1986 Mining Code, based largely on French law, gave away the extractive sector of the economy to western capitalist corporations. It provided a range of guarantees and tax incentives for the development of mining capital by western capitalist corporations allowing them ownership of at least 85% of any mining venture in Guinea.
It was part of this code also that a new department, the Centre for Mining Promotion and Development (CPDM), was established through financial support from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This was to enable the Conte regime to undertake joint new surveys with several capitalist mining corporations across the country, which eventually resulted in the identification of strategic mineral deposits in several parts of the country including the richest bauxite reserves at Sangaredi and Kerouani in the far east of Guinea and the creation of a national database of geological information.
Through this programme, at least a hundred multinational corporations, some of which were subsidiaries of both Alcoa and Alcan, gained unfettered access and control over Guinea’s mineral wealth between 1986-2005. Guinea’s Ministry of Mines and Geological Surveys in its 2005 Mining Sector Report revealed that about 100 multinational corporations are actively mining across the country. These did not include corporations owned by dubious individual magnates involved in nefarious activities around the world or corporations operating under the pseudo-ownership of some senior corrupt officials of the Conte regime.
The United States and France had helped the Conte regime develop a military and security service that enabled him to enforce a crude regime system that facilitated the theft and transfer of these resources by the various multinational corporations operating in the country. Since he assumed power in 1984, Conte has suppressed every opposition to his policies and developed a political mafia that survived from mismanagement of resources, embezzlement of public funds, political abuse, rogue alliances and corrupt contracts from western capitalist corporations exploiting the masses.
The Conte regime did not only use the military and police against organized opposition to his government but also to enforce the dictates of US imperialism and its allies. The process of legalization of Conte’s rogue regime took ground in 1993 after Conte won a controversial election organized and rigged by France and the United States on his behalf. Since then, Conte’s Party of Unity and Progress (PUP) had rigged all subsequent elections.
But throughout the period, the United States and France committed themselves to supporting the Conte regime only because he upheld the interests of the leading north American corporations operating in Guinea. In its 2005 Annual Report on Guinea, for example, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) stated that: “the United States strategic interests in Guinea is to promote increased US private investment in Guinea’s emerging economy as there are several large US Corporations in Guinea possessing significant shares of their respective markets.”
What this implies is that the United States was equally prepared to adopt an alternative mechanism and approach to secure the increased north American corporate exploitation and monopoly over Guinea’s vast aluminum and other strategic resources. This was in fact a key factor in Washington’s support for the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) -- a counter rebel movement organized by the United States against the then government of Liberia headed by Charles Taylor after 1997.
The United States had feared that Taylor, because of his relations with the French shortly after his inauguration as president in 1997, might use his NPFL fighters to attack US-controlled mining interests in Guinea. And when in 2000-2001, rebels believed to be part of Taylor’s NPFL fighters subsequently attacked Guinea villages along the borders of Liberia and Sierra Leone, the United States eventually provided huge military assistance -weapons and ammunitions - to the Guinea army to counter-attack strategic locations across the Liberia border in retaliation.
The seriousness of this threat to US interests was emphasized in a December 2001 communiqué issued by the US embassy in Conakry which partly states that: “unrest in Guinea does not only represents a major security problem for West Africa but also our nation’s most security threats because the United States has invested heavily in Guinea where our strategic interests remain strong and multi-faceted.”
But the period following 2003 was to mark the beginning of a new tactic by the United States and its imperialist allies in their efforts to protect the mining concessions of its two most leading north American corporations, Alcan and Alcoa. This was when the Guinean Ministry of Mineral Resources granted the richest aluminum-mining concession in West Africa to a Japanese corporation, Global Aluminum Productions Corporation (GAPCO), a subsidiary of Mitsubishi and Merubeni conglomerates. This agreement allowed GAPCO the definitive right to undertake exploration and extraction of aluminum resources around the Sangaredi area for a period of hundred years.
This annoyed the United States and its allies whose control of Guinea’s aluminum resources since 1984 had depended on Alcoa and Alcan’s monopoly over mineral exploitation in the country. In retaliation, the United States withdrew its supposed assistance and support to the Conte regime and alternatively sought a new agenda for regime change in Guinea. Because of absolute loyalty to the regime and due to excessive military spending, senior officers within the Guinean military had grown extremely rich from misappropriation of salaries and did not think of overthrowing Conte. A coup plot in January 2005 believed to have been masterminded through the US embassy in Conakry failed to topple Conte resulting in the dismissal of several officers.
Realizing that a military coup is hardly fashionable with an army that is doggedly loyal to the presidency, the US agenda for regime change in Guinea initially targeted the disaffected opposition parties. But the various opposition leaders - Ba Mamadou, a former World Bank consultant, Sidya Toure, an ex-employee of the IMF, and Prof. Alpha Conde, a retired lecturer at Sorbonne University in France persuaded by the US to form an opposition coalition in a campaign against Conte - couldn’t overturn the Conte regime as was envisaged by the US. This is partly because the opposition leaders lacked the required mass support to carryout a popular agenda and willingness to accept the leadership of any one of them. It was following the proved inability of the opposition parties to carryout the regime change agenda that forced the US to alternatively focus attention on the labour unions and a section of the civil society movement.
Consequently, in a report issued by USAID on Guinea’s political situation in June 2005, the United States openly called on the European Union and international financial institutions to withhold aid and assistance to Guinea as a way of forcing the Conte regime to embark on “democratic reforms.”
So for three years subsequent to the GAPCO agreement, the US had expended around a million dollars in a programme designed to develop the labour union leadership in preparation of a mass campaign against Conte. It was this strategy that ultimately culminated in the trade unionists position during the mass uprisings against the Conte regime in January and February this year. This also explains the basis of the trade union leadership’s decision to suggest the appointment of Lansana Kouyate, a US neocolonialist, as Guinea’s new prime minister.
Evidences that the trade unionist position was part of this wider sinister plot by the United States and its corporate allies was clearly evident in a statement issued by the State Department following Kouyate’s appointment. It reads:
“The United States notes with satisfaction the appointment on March 28 of a new government of broad consensus in Guinea. We salute Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate's intention to focus priorities on macroeconomic stability….the new government provides Guinea an important opportunity to improve democratic governance through increased transparency and the protection of human rights. We look forward to working with the new government as they translate their strategy for a democratic, accountable and prosperous Guinea into action.”
Besides, the fact that the US was deeply involved in the Guinea crisis and the reality that the trade union leadership received directives from the American embassy in Conakry was further evident in a statement issued by the embassy on February 16 this year, which did not only condemn the Conte regime but also expressed dissatisfaction over the desperate actions of the masses who were no longer following the dictates of the labour union leaders.
It is this imperialist conspiracy executed by fickle minded petty bourgeois sellouts that necessitated the imposition of Kouyate as leader of a neocolonial government with responsibility of securing the interests of American corporations in Guinea. So it is inarguable that Kouyate is not a consensus prime minister as the imperialist media has been suggesting. And it will be irrational, naïve and preposterous to assume or suggest that the struggle of the masses in Guinea to reclaim control of our resources has been nipped in the bud following a middle class settlement that insultingly imposes an imperialist puppet on the blood of the masses.
In fact, recent and continuing trends within Guinea and the region in general should be, and we believe it is already, a serious source of concern for the ability of imperialism and its neocolonial agents to continuously hold our people hostage under this suffocating and decadent system. As a matter of reality, Kouyate himself is now riddled with tremendous contradictions as seventy-five percents of the country has absolutely refused to recognize his legitimacy. In most parts of the interior, his authority is non-existent and worst still, within Conakry he also faces the rifles of angry soldiers who are still loyal to Conte. There is serious bad blood between Kouyate and Conte’s old political clique who are isolated and represent another danger from within.
Kouyate’s only hopes – hopes which he shares with his imperialist masters – is the employment of military power, and in this case, the deployment of an international military force that will create space for the enforcement of a deceitful electoral process to “legitimize” this ongoing process. This is the rationale of Kouyate’s recent visit to the United States and his meeting with the Bush regime and officials of the World Bank and IMF.
This was clearly stated in his interview with All Africa Global Media during his trip to Washington. He said:
“The immediate need of my government is to rehabilitate all the destroyed buildings inside the country, because without that we cannot send the local authorities to establish and monitor election procedures. But, immediately, we need money. The European Union has committed roughly seven million euros, but this is directly linked to the election process itself. It has nothing to do with the rehabilitation or restoration of the buildings we are talking about, which will require some money. So I discussed that today with the newly appointed ambassador of the United States to Conakry. The policy of "wait and see" in emergency cases is not a good option. The situation can deteriorate. It is wise to help before the election. Secretary Rice said the United States was going to help us as soon as possible.”
“The immediate need of my government is to rehabilitate all the destroyed buildings inside the country, because without that we cannot send the local authorities to establish and monitor election procedures. But, immediately, we need money. The European Union has committed roughly seven million euros, but this is directly linked to the election process itself. It has nothing to do with the rehabilitation or restoration of the buildings we are talking about, which will require some money. So I discussed that today with the newly appointed ambassador of the United States to Conakry. The policy of "wait and see" in emergency cases is not a good option. The situation can deteriorate. It is wise to help before the election. Secretary Rice said the United States was going to help us as soon as possible.”
This did not only indicate the level of US involvement in the situation in Guinea but it equally highlights how serious it is to imperialist interests. Few days after Kouyate’s visit, a US Navy frigate was dispatched to the coast of Conakry. In a press conference held on June 22 by the US embassy in Conakry, Commanding Officer of the vessel, Michael Elliott told journalists in Conakry, “the deployment is part of an ongoing effort to enhance relations throughout West Africa and the US commitment to help bring stability and economic opportunity to the region.” The vessel, an Oliver Hazard Perry Guided Missile Fast Frigate, is home ported in Mayport, Fla., and has been operating in the region for several weeks.
This represents a serious threat and challenge to the African liberation movement. We in the Africanist Movement insist that the struggle in Guinea is not yet over. And as stated by the African Socialist International, it represents a strategic component of our general struggle for African independence and control over our resources. It is a clear call to the international African community, revolutionaries and progressives around the world to unite in defense of a just struggle for self-determination.
This is a call we must answer! Build the African Socialist International! Forward to Victory!
* Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, an award wining journalist and former editor of Sierra Leone 's Concord Times newspaper, is the Leader and Director of the Africanist Movement. He was the founder and president of the Young Writers Association of Guinea and now president of the West Africa Media Forum Monetary Zone. For information, please contact him at africanists@yahoo.com.
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