Separatist insurrection in Casamance, Senegal's southernmost province, has continued for nearly two decades, testing the military and political capacity of the Government and progressively paralyzing what used to be one of the country's most fertile agricultural zones.

Until recently, the Casamance conflict was regarded as a purely domestic Senegalese issue, not least by the Dakar authorities in their official pronouncements. However, for economic and ethnic reasons, the confrontation between the Senegalese security forces and guerrillas of the Mouvement des forces démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC) has had an increasingly visible impact on the stability of Senegal's southern neighbour, the former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau. The predominantly Jola and Balant populations of southern Casamance have close links with Bissauans in the border areas of San Domingos, Bassoa and elsewhere, helped by a long and porous border; by no means a unique situation in West Africa.

As MFDC units made increasing use of the border zone as a rear base from the late 1980s, the conflict began to acquire a Bissauan dimension, and to feed into existing tensions in Bissauan society and politics. Most notably, elements in the Bissauan armed forces began collaborating – out of both sympathy and material motives – with the MFDC, running guns and drugs (cannabis) across the border. Meanwhile, Bissauan President João Bernardo "Nino" Vieira began to come under pressure for political and economic reform at the start of the 1990s, just as he began to experience growing Senegalese and French diplomatic irritation with the deepening Bissauan dimension to the Casamance war.

By early 1998 the Bissauan armed forces and political scene had been thoroughly destabilized by the implications of the Casamance question, leading to an attempted (and bungled) witch-hunt of the army general staff, an armed forces mutiny against Vieira and, to the surprise of many, the dispatch of Senegalese forces to Bissau to save the Vieira regime and cut off supply lines to the MFDC. At this point the regional nature of the conflict became clear to all. So too, did many of the themes the Casamance-Bissau question illustrates. These include: difficulties in African peacekeeping initiatives; the ever-thorny question of border demarcation; the difficulties faced by governments in policing disaffected and deprived regions in an era of economic crisis; and the close links between political violence and the "criminal" trade in weapons and drugs. The last, in particular, is rapidly becoming a dominant theme in African conflicts.

2.1 Overview

Despite the relative ease of portraying it in ethnic terms, the conflict in the southern Senegalese region of Casamance between secessionist guerrillas and the state security forces has roots which are largely economic and political in nature. As with many other regional conflicts in the past two decades, Casamance has as its causes the marginalization of a particular region under a highly centralized post-colonial administration, and the impact on African national economies of economic slump and the recourse to harsh Bretton Woods-backed structural adjustment programmes. Casamance is also at the centre of the army mutiny, civil war and Senegalese armed intervention. In this way has a local conflict become a sub-regional war, with consequences that will long outlast the announcement of a peace agreement between the warring parties in Bissau.1

2.2 The Ethnic and Political Roots of the Conflict: 1940s-1960s

The roots of the Casamance conflict lie in the formation in March 1947 of the Mouvement des forces démocratiques de la Casamance (MFDC) by four Casamançais politicians: Emile Badiane, Idbou Diallo, Assane Seck and Edouard Diatta. All four had either served in the colonial administration or were otherwise prominent in political milieux in Dakar, then the capital not only of Senegal but of Afrique occidentale française, the federation of France's West African colonial possessions. All were in favour of independence for the French colonies and it is unclear whether any held a clear-cut Casamançais secessionist view at the time. For much of the period 1947-1980 the organization had only an ephemeral existence, but it proved a useful vehicle for increasingly hard-line separatists as economic recession combined with local resentment of government and steadily more intrusive non-Casamançais economic operators from the late 1960s.

At many points since widespread armed conflict began between MFDC guerrillas and the Senegalese security forces in 1982, the MFDC has been portrayed as an ethnicist Jola front (although its founders had a variety of ethnic backgrounds). While not completely accurate, this characterization highlights the singular position of the Jola in the national context. Jola, accounting for 5.5 per cent of the national population at the 1988 census, is the largest of the "small" ethnic identities that coincide with the dominant Wolof, Serer and Haalpulaaren ethno-linguistic identities.2 A further – crucial – mark of difference was the relatively weak historical penetration of Islam in Casamance. Despite the presence of ambulant juula merchants with an Islamic identity as early as the 13th century, Islam was "appreciated as another possible source, and not as the only source, of spiritual power" in a local cosmology centred around bukut initation rites, relations with the earth and, more uneasily, with the invisible world, represented by the nocturnal kussay spirits.3 This was in increasingly sharp contrast with the growth under French colonialism of a highly visible and symbolized form of Islamic observance in the rest of Senegal, as various Sufi turuq (loosely, brotherhoods) acquired mass allegiances and rose to a position of corporate social dominance under first the French colonial administration, and then the independence-era rule of the founding President, Léopold Sédar Senghor (himself a Catholic). The turuq entered independence in 1960 as the most important intermediaries between administration and people, but have always been weakly implanted in Casamance. Islam became more and more closely identified with a predatory state and a colonialist, metropolitan Wolof identity.4 The acculturating processes, born from the propagation of a nordiste Islam (modifications in clothing, funeral rites, culinary habits, patronyms, and marriage alliance practices) and the use of the Wolof language to the detriment of tongues of local unity (Creole and Mandinka), reinforced these convictions.5

After independence Senegal rapidly became a one-party state under the Union progressiste sénégalaise (UPS). Senghor and the UPS built reciprocal political alliances with trades unions, religious organizations and traditional authority figures. Casamance was swiftly relegated to the sidelines of national political discourse.

2.3 Casamance's Economic Marginalization: 1968-1980s

By the 1970s, Casamance's disadvantaged position was having a profound effect on local identities, just as Dakar bureaucrats and others, reeling from the effects of drought and agrarian near-collapse elsewhere, were looking with fresh eyes at the fertile, underexploited Casamançais agricultural and fishing economy. Local resentment grew and a feeling of shared Casamançais identity, beyond ethnolinguistic diversity (Jola, Peul, Manding etc.) was reinforced: the affirmation of Casamançais difference gave sense to a spontaneous popular resistance against strangers to the region, accused of pillaging its resources and marginalizing its inhabitants with the complicity of the authorities. Highlighting a deficit in political representation, this resistance by those the Northerners (Wolof, Sérer, Toucouleur etc.) tended to refer to as "savages", "Indians" or "Zulus", raised both the question of the nature of links with Dakar and that of a mismatch between "imported" systems and indigenous social practices.6

The pressure towards increased exploitation of Casamance, particularly via tourism development, and the growing political and economic deprivation of its Jola and other indigenous minorities, are most easily understood in the context of Senegal's overall economic decline from the late 1960s on.7 The groundnut harvest, which topped 900,000 tonnes annually in the 1960s, declined in the 1970s under the combined impact of drought and desertification, and artificially low prices paid to producers by the Government; as elsewhere in Africa these represented a hidden tax on the rural population. Government attempts to diversify cash-crop production into cotton met with only partial success as the 1970s went on, despite an impressive start, while phosphates production was vulnerable to fluctuating international prices.8 Industrial, manufacturing and services development were equally sluggish throughout the 1970s, nowhere more so than in Casamance. The decline was one of the reasons behind the resignation of founding President Léopold Sédar Senghor in December 1980, in favour of his Prime Minister, Abdou Diouf.

Attempts to diversify the economy and drastically reform the top-heavy state sector in the 1980s and early 1990s met with decidedly mixed success. Meanwhile, Senegal's external accounts remained weak: the current account remained firmly in the red and annual deficits deepened through the 1980s.9 Leaders across the Franc Zone nonetheless persisted in maintaining the exchange rate with the French franc at 50:1, fearful of adverse political reactions to a devaluation in their sensitive capital cities, which depended largely on imported food and consumer goods. Rural areas were increasingly neglected.10 Senegal was no exception to this neglect of the hinterlands: Casamance was further downgraded in official thinking, despite producing half of Senegal's rice and maize, and most of its cotton. Government policies on land ownership clashed with local patterns of use and allocation, provoking further bitterness among rural Casamançais of all ages. The extent of the region's decline, despite its status as the most fertile and productive agricultural zone in the country, can be measured by the changing patterns of migration to Dakar between 1935 and 1989. Whereas early in this period most migrants came from Dakar's immediate hinterland, drawn by the possibilities of urban life in a rapidly expanding colonial metropolis, by the early 1970s more than 30 per cent of Dakar's immigrant population was from Casamance and (to a lesser extent) Guinea-Bissau and Guinée-Conakry. In addition, most immigration from Casamance itself was from rural areas, dominated by young single men (and more rarely women) seeking to escape the economic dead end they found themselves in at home. After two decades of solid growth, migrant inflows to Dakar stabilized near the end of the 1970s.11 This, though, was less due to any improvement in the economic situation in Casamance itself than to the steep decline in the groundnut-based economy of the North, which in turn had a profound effect upon the urban economy of the capital. An escape valve for frustrated young Casamançais had been shut off: little historical research has been done on connections between this development and the outbreak of the MFDC's military struggle in 1982, but it seems too close a coincidence to overlook.

2.4 The Beginnings of Secessionist Struggle, 1982-1989

The modern secessionist struggle can be conveniently dated from 26 December 1982, when several thousand people demonstrated in Zinguinchor, with a prominent separatist figurehead, Ansoumana Abba Bodian, carrying a separatist flag. (Bodian would go on to become one of the MFDC's most skilled political operators). In the two years before the demonstration there had been steadily escalating unrest, notably a strike by lycéens in Zinguinchor in 1979, which culminated with the death of one of them at the hands of the security forces. In the period following this, students and demobilized Casamançais members of the armed forces intensified contacts. The latter, especially Maurice Diatta, Jean-Marie Tendeng and Sidi Badji, were to be at the heart of the independence struggle, via the military wing, Attika, throughout the 1980s.12 Armed insurgency and further unrest in Zinguinchor, Kolda and elsewhere followed immediately upon the demonstration and subsequent arrests of activists. The deteriorating situation led the Government to divide Casamance into two administrative units, Zinguinchor and Kolda, the following year, instituting a system of quasi-martial law. Meanwhile, the MFDC's highest-profile civilian figurehead, the idealistic Father Augustin Diamacoune Senghor (no relation to the former President) rose to prominence.

By the mid-1980s it was clear that the MFDC this time meant business. Civil servants in Casamance were among the first people to realize that 1982 marked a serious change in the nature of Casamançais separatism. They lobbied Diouf with proposals which apparently were well received: amnesty for Diamacoune and other political prisoners; a locally-born provincial governor and other administrative changes; modifications to the Government's hated land policies along with more social spending; and increased use of Jola and other national languages in the state media.13 Few were put into practice, however. Two new ministers with a strong Casamançais background, Ibrahima Famara Sagna (rural development) and Makhaly Gassana (culture) were brought into the cabinet, in an attempt to persuade Jola and other Casamançais that their local grievances were understood in Dakar. Gassama, a well-connected intellectual, was said to have received the culture portfolio as a sign to educated Casamançais, many resident in Dakar but sympathetic to the separatist cause, that Wolof was not going to be imposed on them as an official language of government.14

This démarche had little effect: ominous rumours began to spread of training camps over the border in the Cacheu-Cachungu region of Guinea-Bissau, capitalizing on sympathy among Bissauan Jola and Balant, some of whom remembered help from their Casamançais kinfolk in the forest war against the Portuguese.15 A May 1988 amnesty was followed by a fresh upsurge in localized violence followed by an organized MFDC offensive in 1990.

3.1 The Break-up of the Senegalese Federation and the Regionalization of the Conflict

The next turning point in the conflict came with a sharp deterioration in relations between Senegal and its closest neighbours: the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania. Crucial here was the disintegration of the Senegalese Federation, between Dakar and Banjul. This dated back to 1981 and Senegal's intervention in the Gambia against the armed revolt of (the Casamance-born) Kukoi Samba Sanyang, saving Gambian President Sir Dawda Jawara's regime. (Sanyang's uprising had a powerful effect upon activist young Casamançais). The Keur Declaration, which followed, pledged the two countries to move towards confederal status followed by full unification. Praised at the time as a textbook pan-African initiative, the Federation never had much of an existence, although a sizeable Senegalese armed presence remained in the Gambia, largely on Sir Dawda's wishes.16

The rise of a Gambian smuggling economy, arbitraging on the difference in value between the hard CFA franc and its own soft dalasi currency, alienated many Senegalese, especially as the economic hardships of the 1980s began to make themselves felt. In addition, Senegalese suspicions grew over the attitude of the Jawara government towards Casamance (Gambia-Casamance links, often Jola, are strong). The final straw, in 1989, was Sir Dawda's refusal to second Gambian troops to Senegalese forces positioned on the border with Guinea-Bissau, at a time of heightened Dakar-Bissau tension over both Casamance and disputed offshore oil concessions. Senegal withdrew its forces from the Gambia and closed the land borders to commercial vehicles.

Meanwhile, tensions between Senegal and its northern neighbour, Mauritania, had increased throughout the 1980s, centred around complicated land and grazing disputes in the Senegal river valley, the two countries' common frontier and a vital agro-pastoral resource for both. Communal violence flared in April 1989, leading to pogroms against Senegalese residents (and ethnically "black" Mauritanians) in Mauritania and parallel atrocities against Mauritanians in Dakar and other major towns. Hundreds of thousands of people were expelled in one direction or another, and diplomatic relations were broken off, not to be resumed until 1992.17 Shortly after these events, MFDC insurgents began to dispose of considerably greater firepower than previously (some early MFDC attacks on army posts had been carried out with nothing more than spears and machetes). Dakar immediately assumed – perhaps correctly – that pro-Iraqi Baathist elements in the Mauritanian administration were funnelling arms to the MFDC via the Mauritanian consulate in Bissau, and possibly the Gambia. (There was a large Mauritanian trading community in Banjul, some of whose members had been expropriated in the April riots by angry Dakarois).18

Meanwhile, relations with Bissau had reached a post-independence low, over a disputed maritime border, with valuable fishing grounds and possible petroleum deposits at stake. A ruling from the International Court of Justice at the Hague, in Senegal's favour, was rejected by Bissau, triggering a diplomatic row that lasted until 1993. In Guinea-Bissau itself, sentiment in the border region was swinging progressively behind Diamacoune and the Front Sud, who crossed the border with ease.

3.2 The 1990s: Intensification of the Conflict

In mid-1991 a ceasefire was concluded in talks between the Government and the MFDC at Cacheu in Guinea-Bissau. This held until the end of the year, while hundreds of MFDC activists and sympathizers were released, some on the personal order of Diouf. Renewed violence in early 1992 signalled a deepening split in the MFDC high command, along north-south lines. The Front Nord of the MFDC's armed wing, under Kamougué Diatta, became progressively more disenchanted with what it viewed as the Jola ethnocentrism of Diamacoune and the Front Sud. Although the experienced Front Nord, under commanders who, in some cases, had experience of war in Algeria and Indochina, was more of a military threat to the Senegalese army, it had arrived at a gradualist position, favouring a steady move to autonomy, where the sudistes were now committed to all-out independence won by force of arms.19

Meanwhile, MFDC units worked assiduously to disrupt polling in the presidential election of 21 February 1993 and the legislative poll of 9 May. Systematic persecution of non-combatant Casamançais became commonplace, with people in possession of polling cards being regarded as traitors by MFDC fighters. Both representatives of the ruling Parti Socialiste (PS – the new name for the UPS since the mid-1970s) and the leading opposition party, Abdoulaye Wade's Parti démocratique sénégalais, were targeted.20 In February an unprecedentedly fierce rocket attack on Zinguinchor airport illustrated the movement's increasing logistical and tactical sophistication.21 Senegalese troops were pulled out of the West African peacekeeping mission in Liberia and redeployed in Casamance, bringing military strength in the region to roughly 7,000.

As the temperature rose again, the Gambia pointedly denied that separatists were using its territory, although in private Gambian security officials admitted it was impossible to police the country's long, porous border. Many of the fresh wave of refugees arriving in the Gambia were Mandinka and there was talk of ethnic cleansing by hardcore Jola members of the Front Sud. Meanwhile, Guinea-Bissau again came under Senegalese suspicion, with rumours circulating of gun-running – including weapons from Cuba – to the MFDC by senior Bissauan officers.22 Violence flared again along the border with Guinea-Bissau at the end of 1994, despite a return to relative normality in the Cap Skirring tourist area, rendered more attractive to French holidaymakers by the CFA franc devaluation. Casamance otherwise signally failed to benefit from the upswing in competitiveness that the devaluation was supposed to impart to Senegal and the other economies of the Franc Zone.

3.3 Developing Crisis: 1995-1998

With 1982 and 1989, 1995 was arguably a key year in the conflict; events between January and April triggered a further, full-scale army invasion, intensification of search-and-destroy missions against MFDC strongpoints, changing tactics by the insurgents and an increasing, albeit shadowy role played by Bissauan and other intermediaries in the burgeoning regional market for anti-personnel landmines and light weapons. The proximity of the conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali and Niger, all then near their most intense, flooded the region with weapons and the price of Kalashnikovs in particular plummeted. (In Sierra Leone at the time, the going rate for one was as low as US$25 in some localities).23

Against this disturbing background, on 6 April 1995 four French tourists, holidaying at Cap Skirring, left their hotel to sightsee and promptly disappeared. A fortnight later the Senegalese Government publicly blamed the MFDC for what appeared to be abductions, although Diamacoune denied this outright.24 (No bodies have ever been found). Although French pressure to find them was exerted on Dakar through diplomatic back-channels, the French embassy in Dakar maintained a public near-silence on the episode, even when relatives of the four later made strong criticisms in the French media.25 Nevertheless, the Government immediately sent in a further 1,000 soldiers. This was ostensibly to search for the four, but in fact was a fresh, major push against the MFDC. Well-known MFDC bases at Efok and Youtou, near the border with Guinea-Bissau, were destroyed, forcing the MFDC to reconsider its tactics as the war began to take on a scorched-earth quality, and the 1993 ceasefire was officially abandoned. Twenty-three Senegalese soldiers were killed in an ambush near Babanda in July, causing shock in Dakar. 26

The outcome was the most serious attempt yet by the Government to attempt a settlement, in the form of the Commission nationale de la paix, headed by a former foreign minister, the Casamançais (but not Jola) Assane Seck. Seck and colleagues again opened up dialogue with Diamacoune, who was under house arrest in Zinguinchor with the rest of the MFDC's political leadership. However, not for the first time, the MFDC's fragmented nature was in play. Diamacoune had spent much of 1995 appealing to MFDC fighters to respect the ceasefire, with little success. A further ceasefire, brokered by Seck, also failed to obscure the fundamental difference between the two sides. While Diouf and the Government were genuinely prepared to grant an unusually large measure of autonomy and decentralized power to Casamance, they maintained the principle of the inviolability of Senegal's borders. The MFDC's bottom line, on the other hand, remained independence. Beyond a certain, low, level there was little to negotiate over, a situation which remains the same in late 1998.27

However, conflict continued and the late 1995 resumption of the army's offensive had as a further goal the securing of as much territory as possible in the vicinity of the tourist facilities of Cap Skirring.28 Another motivation was for the state to be in a strong position at peace talks being arranged by Seck and colleagues. Some of the heaviest firefights in the history of the conflict took place in October and November, although a subsequent ceasefire held well into 1996.29

By April 1996 the mood was one of muted optimism as scheduled talks approached, with multiple gestures of goodwill in public from both sides. In particular, Salif Sadio, the MFDC's military leader in the south, confirmed that he had ordered his lieutenants to disarm their men remaining in the maquis. Ominously, though, he underlined to correspondents that the conflict remained "a struggle for the independence of Casamance".30 Then the situation deteriorated badly, with Diamacoune and other MFDC political leaders boycotting the planned talks for a variety of reasons including restrictions on their right to travel and consult with MFDC exile cells in Paris. This was the start of the most recent cycle of violence.

3.4 Destabilization of Guinea Bissau

A further, highly ambiguous factor in the deepening conflict was Guinea Bissau's adhesion to the Franc Zone, which formally commenced in March 1997. This had been decided by the president, João Bernardo "Nino" Vieira, as part of his locally controversial programme of structural adjustment measures, and in order to benefit from increased French aid and technical assistance. The decision cost Vieira much residual support among the urban population and -crucially – among old-style nationalists and army officers who objected both to falling living standards and the rapprochement with France.31 The monetary stabilization and anti-inflation measures, among other adjustments required to reach the benchmarks imposed on West African Franc Zone members by the Banque centrale des états de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (BCEAO), cost over US$1 billion, much of it provided by France, which was keen to see Guinea-Bissau in the zone as a way of undermining the MFDC and its Bissauan backers. However, the social costs of the austerity policies imposed by the Bissauan finance ministry and central bank appear to have stimulated gun-running and drug-smuggling along the Casamance border, by dissident anti-Vieira elements in the army but also, apparently, Bissauan Jolas and others.

For several years President Vieira had been moving closer to France's diplomatic apparatus in the region. In 1990 he decided to fall in with the prevailing trend in his francophone neighbours, by instituting multiparty politics "from above". (The overthrow of Mali's General Moussa Traoré and the bloodless deposition of Beninese head of state Mathieu Kérékou proved Vieira and other veteran heads of state correct in attempting this route). During the transition to elections in 1994, Guinea-Bissau's – recent – past as an insurrectionary Portuguese colony featured heavily in the rhetoric of many newly formed political parties, and Vieira and his colleagues, who had taken power in 1980, were with increasing frequency accused of having hijacked the revolution. Guinea-Bissau's final agreement on a maritime border with Senegal offended nationalist sentiment, as the Casamance conflict itself warmed up again. The elections themselves were controversial and Vieira's mandate was immediately questioned by opposition parties. The army, meanwhile, remained unhappy at living conditions, Vieira's previous execution of soldiers accused of plotting a coup d'état and his increasingly pro-French line.

Bombings by the Senegalese air force on Bissauan territory in 1995 provoked widespread political and military protest, while the Government strove to improve relations. Following this, rumours intensified that the army was involved in supply and trading activities with thet Front Sud. Following further French and Senegalese pressure an inquiry was set up in mid-1997. At this point relations between Vieira and the highly respected chief of the armed forces staff, General Ansumane Mane, began to deteriorate, as colleagues of Vieira let it be known that Mane was under suspicion for gun-running. By late January 1998 the split between Vieira and Mane was definitive, and the latter's suspension as chief of staff by defence minister Samba Lamine Mane (no relation) came as little surprise: the Bissau rumour mill had repeatedly dwelt on Brigadier Mane's alleged arms-dealing activities in the previous weeks, while Senegalese diplomatic pressure to move against Mane had been strong.32 However, Vieira fatally misjudged the mood of the armed forces outside his ultra-loyal presidential guard. Most ordinary soldiers were behind Mane, for several reasons.

There was the widespread military resentment at Guinea-Bissau's entry into the Franc Zone, which had caused considerable economic suffering to soldiers and other ordinary Bissauans. Zone membership, in turn, was felt by many to have resulted in an increasingly "francophile" diplomatic policy on the part of Vieira and his key ministers, perceived by many as an unhealthy link with a neo-colonialist Western power. This rapidly became a useful nationalist charge for the political opposition, especially Koumba Yalla, the leader of the Partido para a Renovação Social, a vociferous breakaway from Rafael Barbosa's Frente Democrática Social. Other military and civilian veterans of the independence struggle were unhappy with Vieira's deepening French links. The public destruction of landmines in February, a gesture calculated to appease Senegal and win further favour from Paris, was met with resentment by many of Mane's colleagues from the late colonial era, who saw it as a humiliation. 33

Mane's replacement, Brigadier Humberto Gomes, was confirmed in office on 6 June, triggering a mutiny by roughly 90 per cent of the army, who were loyal to Mane. Meanwhile, the official report on army gun-running, handed over to Vieira at the start of the year, remained secret, despite increasingly vociferous demands for its release by opposition politicians including Canjura Injai, the head of the União para a Mudança (UM), the opposition coalition.34 The country rapidly slid into civil war and Senegal and Guinée equally rapidly decided to intervene, seriously underestimating the strength of military, political and civilian feeling against Vieira.

4.1 Senegal Invades Bissau: Implications for Regional Peacekeeping

Without the festering Casamance conflict, the Senegalese and Guinean invasion of – or peacekeeping mission to – Guinea-Bissau would never have occurred. Although the Bissau emergency was in part the result of a series of policy blunders by Vieira and his government, neither of whom could claim a watertight electoral mandate, as opponents were quick to point out, it was the links between Bissauan army officers and MDFC cadres that precipitated the crisis with the sacking of Mane and the subsequent rebellion.

Senegal's intervention was decided at executive level, something which was to lead to great political controversy. It also appears to have been based on defective military intelligence: Mane's support among the Bissauan army was virtually unanimous. Furthermore, many of the senior officers and NCOs behind him had experience of fighting and training men for an insurgent war against an outside colonial power: Portugal. In this they were clearly more seasoned than the bulk of the Senegalese force, which had recent experience only of relatively low-intensity peacekeeping duties in Liberia and elsewhere. In addition the Senegalese rapidly came to be seen, by Mane's followers and many Bissauan civilians alike, as neo-colonialist in intent.

After deploying in and around Bissau, Senegalese forces (there were also 400 Guinean peacekeepers, who kept a low profile) rapidly discovered they were facing a determined and well-equipped enemy, and failed to dislodge Mane's troops from points outside the capital. In fierce fighting much of Bissau was destroyed and an uneasy stalemate ensued, punctuated by rounds of negotiations with little effect. The unstable dynamics of what was now clearly a regional conflict became evident in July, as various parties aimed for a ceasefire. By then, diplomats, journalists and Senegalese politicians were becoming convinced that what had originally been billed as a 24-hour operation to put down a mutinous rabble was in danger of turning into another Liberia, at least in part due to the easy access of mutineers and their Casamançais and Bissauan sympathizers to relatively high-quality small arms and ordnance.

In July serious mediation began, with the complication that two antagonistic groups of negotiators were involved. The Comunidade de Paises de Lingua Portuguesa (CPLP, the lusophone commonwealth) delegated the Portuguese foreign minister, Jaime Gama, and his Angolan counterpart, Venâncio de Silva Moura. They rapidly became aligned with Mane, as far as Senegal and Vieira were concerned. Meanwhile, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) became involved, after Vieira requested its help. ECOWAS' executive secretary Lansana Kouyaté (of Guinée) publicly condemned the CPLP as neo-colonialist, as the West African organization statrted rival talks. Eventually, a ceasefire, engineered largely by the CPLP, but with some ECOWAS encouragement, was agreed, followed by an agreement in Praia, Cape Verde, on 26 August.35 This noted "the public recognition of institutions and democratic legality", a key demand of Vieira's, who had come under increasing domestic criticism for his handling of the Mane affair as well as the manner of his election in 1994. One of the most damaging attacks on him came from the Bishop of Bissau, Septimo Ferrazzetta, who accused him of a "feeble will to negotiate". A third mediator was President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia, but he was viewed by most other participants as too closely aligned with Mane, a fellow Gambian.36

By this time Mane's forces controlled nearly all of the interior, including the border areas adjoining Casamance, and there were fresh reports of close collaboration between them and the MFDC. Senegal maintained its public stance that it would not abandon Vieira, but the true cost of the operation, in both lives and money, was beginning to sink in in Dakar.

By the time further fierce fighting erupted in October, both the lusophone and ECOWAS representatives sensed that the conflict was on the verge of destabilizing the entire region and applied pressure on Mane to agree a government of national unity with Vieira, largely to allow the politically crippled President a dignified exit. On 12 November there were unconfirmed reports that Vieira had agreed to stand down after the formation of a unity government under ECOWAS supervision. The most recent agreement, concluded in Abuja under the eye of Nigerian head of state General Abdulsalaami Abubakar, was in part the result of alarm among the Portuguese military intelligence establishment, who had been particularly close to Mane in the field (there have been frequent, if unsubstantiated rumours, that the Portuguese army had equipped Mane with sophisticated satellite phone technology). Portugal feared that, having had outlying garrisons forced out of Bafata, Fulacounda and elsewhere in what little of the country they controlled, the Senegalese were now vulnerable to an all-out attack by Mane which would drive them into the sea. Portuguese intelligence also suspected that Senegal was about to declare war formally on Guinea-Bissau as a pretext for sending in the rest of its army. Massive international lobbying ensued, with success, to avoid what Portuguese officials were referring to as a "catastrophe scenario".37 Shortly after Abuja, the Senegalese foreign minister, Jacques Baudin, confirmed that under the Abuja agreement, Senegalese forces would be progressively withdrawn, as ECOWAS monitors – to be drawn from Benin, Togo and the Gambia - arrived.38 Assuming successful deployment of the ECOWAS force, a top priority will be patrolling the border with Casamance, especially as Senegal still regards Mane as pro-MFDC and many of Mane's subordinates almost certainly have no other means of living but the trade in weapons and cannabis through Casamance.

Senegal's intervention – supposedly justified by secret codicils in a regional defence agreement – has also further undermined the doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other states that has been a key element of UN and OAU thinking throughout the postcolonial era.39 It has also been a major embarrassment for the Senegalese military establishment, previously regarded as one of Africa's best-organized and most efficient.

Meanwhile, the outbreak of civil war and the Senegalese-led invasion has had a further, destabilizing effect on Guinea Bissau. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Bissauans fled towards the border with Casamance, aggravating the security situation still further. First estimates had suggested that 300,000 were on the move, equivalent to the entire population of the now deserted capital, Bissau.40 Major concentrations quickly sprang up around the border settlements of Bafata, Mansoa, Bissora and San Domingos. MFDC units were reportedly fighting on the same side as pro-Mane troops, before the ceasefire and, later, peace agreement between Mane and Vieira. By early November, it was still unclear how many displaced people there were in Guinea-Bissau, although after Abuja inhabitants of the capital started to trickle back. The Portuguese ambassador in Bissau, Franscisco Henriques da Silva, described the food supply situation as serious,41 although the UN was more optimistic, pointing to a good harvest. 70,000-80,000 displaced people in camps just outside the capital were a cause for concern, however.

4.2 Landmines and Refugee Camps: Casamançais Society Destroyed?

By 1998, southern Casamance's social system and local economy were completely disrupted. A renewed Senegalese army offensive, triggered by the massacre of 25 troops from an elite unit in Mandina-Macagne in August 1997, had been met with heavy resistance from the Front Sud, including what appear to have been suicide attacks, amid worsening atrocities against the civilian population. As in 1996, Amnesty International documented various forms of torture, extrajudicial execution and "disappearance" and placed the blame firmly on both sides.42 However, the widespread and increasingly indiscriminate use of antipersonnel and antitank landmines has been a particularly alarming feature of the most recent rounds of fighting, although landmine incidents go back to January 1993, when seven people were killed as their vehicle struck a mine.43

Research by the Senegalese human rights organization, Rencontre africaine pour la défense des droits de l'homme (RADDHO) underlined the scale of the problem. Roads and tracks round Zinguinchor itself were found to be riddled with mines, with the Oussouye and Bignona areas also badly affected. RADDHO estimated that 210 villages had been completely abandoned, with an estimated 30,000 refugees having crossed into Guinea-Bissau or the Gambia, and another 50,000 displaced within Casamance itself.44 The damage to crops, fruit harvests and fishing was immense. Artisanal fishing was particularly badly hit. Many of Casamance's fishermen are from outside the region and in recent years they have been singled out by MFDC hardliners for terror attacks.

As 1998 began to draw to a close, southern Casamance remained a war zone. In the two worst combat incidents, four Senegalese soldiers and sixty alleged MFDC rebels were killed in late August, according to army sources. One of the incidents took place on Bissauan territory south of Kolda. According to Agence France Presse and local sources, rebel forces were backed by Bissauan army mutineers.45 Two gendarmes died in an attack near Kolda on 21 August. Shortly before that an MFDC landmine killed 13 civilians. After relative calm returned following a further plea for peace from Diamacoune, a bus was attacked near Sédhiou, with four fatalities.46 On 20 October two more soldiers died in another landmine incident on the outskirts of Zinguinchor itself, emphasizing how pervasive the mines threat had become.47

MFDC units were of course by now also involved on the side of General Ansoumane Mane's Bissauan army rebels in Fulacounda, Bafata and Bissau itself, as part of the Bissauan army revolt which sparked the Senegalese invasion of Guinea-Bissau, underlining that the Casamance and Bissau conflicts had by now overlapped so heavily as to become a single, regional war. By now, with most of Bissauan territory under rebel control the MFDC had complete freedom of movement in the border region. On 2 November the most serious firefight in Casamance since the summer resulted in a reported 24 MFDC dead after a rebel attack on Djifanghor, seven kilometres from Zinguinchor. By then the warring parties in Bissau had signed a peace treaty, although there was little immedate impact in southern Casamance. Refugees and internally displaced Casamançais were clearly biding their time before returning to their shattered, mine-strewn villages and fields. The seriousness of the humanitarian situation in Casamance, which was thought to be considerably worse than even that of Guinea-Bissau, was underlined by a rapidly disbursed US$500,000 grant from the EU, announced on 2 November and destined for urgent village rehabilitation and mine-clearing work.48

4.3 Dakar, Bissau and Banjul: the Political Fallout in Three Capitals

Casamance and Guinea-Bissau are essentially the same conflict. A solution to the Guinea-Bissau war, if one is now genuinely at hand, could imply a solution to Casamance. However, the cost in human lives and regional destabilization has been great. Senegal may yet emerge as the main loser: the conflict has damaged the army's morale and shattered the usual careful political consensus where foreign policy is concerned. Landing Savané of the left-leaning And-Jëf party – a longstanding foe of Diouf's – was swift to question the operation, both at home and to representatives of regional and francophone media.49 Other Senegalese opposition politicians (and many in the ruling PS) are publicly or privately critical of what they see as further proof that the PS and the Government are both autocratic and, increasingly, out of touch with reality. Unless a solution is found, Casamance will play a far greater role in political debate as the presidential election of 2000 approaches, than it ever has in the past.

In mid-August Abdoulaye Wade, leader of the Parti démocratique sénégalais, demanded the immediate withdrawal of Senegalese troops from Guinea Bissau. This was a knowing gesture by an opposition veteran in decline: Wade is too experienced not to know the implications for Casamance of a Senegalese pullout from Bissau after the events of May onwards. Wade's cited reasons were, however, reasonable: the intervention has costs numerous lives among Senegal's soldiery, and the hard-pressed Government cannot afford to sustain the military presence on it own.50 Since then, the opposition has taken a harder line. When Diouf went to Paris to address the Assemblée nationale on 21 October, opposition leaders including Wade, Savané, veteran political intellectual Abdoulaye Bathily of the Ligue démocratique and Amath Dansokho of the Parti de l'indépendence et du travail, also flew there, in order to lobby politicians and the media over various matters, including Casamance. While only Dansokho remains totally opposed to Senegalese involvement in Bissau in any form ("Let the Bissauans sort their own problems out!"), the Casamance/Bissau issue has taken on a distinctly party-political flavour.51

More ominously, veteran French Senegal researcher Christian Coulon has publicly raised the possibility that the army could become politicized through its involvement in Casamance. Previously a highly apolitical body in West African terms, the Senegalese officer corps is thought to be unhappy with both levels of equipment and the "dirty" nature of the Casamance conflict's most recent episode.52 The speed and force of the deployment in Guinea-Bissau resulted from pressure on Diouf from the high command, regardless of the serious budgetary implications of such unilateral action.53

In Bissau, the undoubted loser is Vieira. From 1994 onwards, Vieira been alienating his key domestic constituency (the civil service and army) without building bridges with other social groups. By realigning his foreign and regional policy towards the francophone world, he alienated Portugal and the lusophone African states, without building sufficient ties with Paris to receive more than lukewarm personal support when crisis struck. Bissau post-Vieira is likely to be a volatile and fragmented political society, although if the ECOWAS mission performs well some stability should be restored relatively swiftly. There is relatively little possibility of Guinea-Bissau witnessing the wholesale social-psychological trauma of societies like neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone, however. Bissauan society is more cohesive than these neighbours.

The Gambia, and President Yahya Jammeh, have come through the crisis relatively unscathed. Dakar still mistrusts the Jola-born Jammeh where Casamance is concerned, but no more than it did previously. His attempts to mediate were discounted in public, but Gambian diplomacy may have scored points in the region through its careful display of even-handedness over the Mane revolt. One result is the probable inclusion of Gambian soldiers in the ECOWAS force currently being put together. Not only does this allow Jammeh greater leverage in the region as a whole, at a time when the unexpected death of his military-political patron, General Sani Abacha of Nigeria, could have undermined him: it also gets him an automatic seat at the table if serious negotiations between the Senegalese Government and MFDC political leaders do resume. If the Casamance-Bissau border is successfully sealed, this could be sooner rather than later.

Most observers and many participants agree that there is no military solution to the Casamance problem. Yet the gap between the two sides remains wide. Neither the Government nor the MFDC can credibly claim complete legitimacy in Casamance. Dakar invokes the argument of territorial integrity within existing borders, yet since independence Casamance and its largely Jola population have been economically, politically and culturally devalued in government thinking. The rebels, however, have never been able to sustain the willing support of a majority of the indigenous population: the increased resort to scorched earth tactics, landmines and terror against villagers from the early 1990s hints indeed at a sharp deterioration in their support among what is now a largely displaced Casamançais population.

The wider impact of Casamance is less predictable and is in part tied in with the fading fortunes of the ruling PS and President Diouf. Intellectuals in Dakar immediately made remarks about "Senegal's Vietnam" after troops were sent into Guinea-Bissau, although Senegalese off-the-record briefing has stressed that the elite units in Bissau are well-equipped and experienced in peacekeeping techniques.54 There is little doubt that one objective, along with restoring Vieira to power, was to cut off the supply corridors to the MFDC in the far south of Casamance, and Senegalese officials claim privately that similar incursions would not be ruled out in the future.

The impact of the conflict on Guinea-Bissau has been an example of how border conflicts can easily destabilize neighbouring countries, even when there appear to be few obvious links. It was the possibility of an insurgent military-led regime taking power in Bissau and strengthening ties with the MFDC guerrillas that prompted Senegal to dispatch a peacekeeping force, in what some diplomats (including the Portuguese) privately viewed as an illegitimate invasion. Although Senegalese forces were being withdrawn in November in favour of a multinational West African peacekeeping force, the episode has ominous implications for current African efforts to build multinational peacekeeping capacity with French and US backing.

More generally, the Casamançais roots of the Bissau crisis illustrate the growing role of illicit and criminal action (on the part of elements within both the Bissau government and the armed forces) in African political and military conflicts rapidly becoming a dominant theme in the continent's political economy.55 Bissauan President Vieira is still nominally in power but has been politically crippled by a crossborder network linked by ties of ethnic and military background, and by a shared set of material objectives. It took a regional, rather then a purely domestic, conflict to undermine his de facto legitimacy (despite the dubious nature of his victory in the 1994 presidential elections).

However, it is the wider domestic implications of Casamance for Senegal itself that may have most impact: the conflict is merely the most deep-rooted and intractable of various socio-economic and ethnic confrontations which "are an unsettling reminder of the country's delicate social fabric and are in stark contrast to the image of peace and openness that the Government tries to project".56 Taken in conjunction with violent socio-economic conflicts elsewhere in the country, especially between Mauritanian refugees and Senegalese villagers in the Kidira region near the Mauritanian and Malian borders, Casamance proves that "although the Senegalese people have traditionally tried to settle their disputes in a relatively peaceful fashion, exceptions are becoming more common.... [Casamance] threatens both the economic and the political stability of the nation."57 The increasingly brutal war in Casamance has, for one Senegalese researcher, highlighted the "culture of violence" that is a legacy of the longue durée historical crises which affected the Senegambian coastal empires of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, not to mention the colonial period itself.

Thus, the gun, one of the principal products of the [slave] trade ... became the instrument of affirmation of virility ... [In Casamance] as in the rest of Senegambia, colonial administrative practice [the imposition on populations of non-local provincial and canton chiefs] aggravated the persistence of cleavages, of resentments and of violence in the relationships between different groups and sub-groups. The repressive nature of colonial and post-colonial state power [lengthy, bloody 'pacification', forced labour etc.] is permanently reflected in Basse Casamance by a latent hostility to all forms of political or administrative authority.58

Some local political theorists see in Casamance, and the Senegal-Mauritania conflict, proof that the postcolonial nation-state has failed to supplant the precolonial politico-economic area, La Sénégambie, running from the right bank of the Senegal River through to the Rio Nunez area of modern Guinée-Conakry, and as far inland as Kankan (Guinée-Conakry) and the Kayes region of Mali, if not throughout the savannah region of Guinée-Conakry and as far as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Indeed, much of the Casamance crisis has its roots in the artificial border divisions with Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia.

However, these borders are not about to be redrawn. In francophone West Africa, the push towards full economic and monetary union is seen by some as the solution to problems such as Casamance. This, in theory, is to be achieved by 2000 under the framework of the Union économique et monétaire ouest-africain (UEMOA), to which both Senegal and Guinea-Bissau belong. Optimists argue that the power of the centralized postcolonial state will become relativized under UEMOA legislation on the free movement across borders of people, goods and capital. Politico-economic enclaves like Casamance would thus be drawn into a new, sub-regional political economy with certain parallels to the pre-colonial era's zones of economic and trading influence. However, this ignores one stark fact: the several hundred hard-core members of the MFDC's Front Sud have little to trade but guns and drugs, and few viable forms of economic existence other than warfare.

Africa Analysis [London. "Guinea-Bissau Backs Senegal Against Rebels". 6 February 1998.

Africa Confidential [London]. "Pushing for Praia". 11 September 1998.

"Mane's Men". 26 June 1998.

"On the Campaign Trail in Casamance". 19 February 1993.

"Casamance Won't Go Away". 17 April 1992.

"Senegal: Crisis in Casamance". 23 November 1990.

"Senegal: Casamance". 21 January 1987.

"Senegal: Friend and Foes". 9 April 1986.

Africa South of the Sahara 1998. "Senegal: Agriculture". London: Europa Publications, 1998.

Africa South of the Sahara 1997. "Senegal: Separatism in Casamance". London: Europa Publications, 1997.

African Topics [London]. "Ouaga Seminar Piles On the Pressure". May-June, 1998.

B. Diagne and Alex Vines. "Senegal: Old Mines, New Wars". January-March 1998.

Agence France Presse. "60 rebelles et 4 soldats tués au cours d'accrochages". 28 August 1998.

"Le PDS demande le retrait immédiat des troupes sénégalaises de Bissau". 15 August 1998.

Amnesty International. Senegal: Climate of Terror in Casamance. London, 1998.

Senegal: Widespread Use of Torture Persists with Impunity, While Human Rights Abuses Continue in Casamance. London, 28 February 1996.

L'Autre Afrique [Paris], "Etat de sémi-démocratie". 20-26 May 1998.

Barbary, Olivier. "Dakar et la Sénégambie: Evolution d'un espace migratoire transnational" in Momar Coumba Diop (ed.). Le Sénégal et ses voisins. Dakar, 1994.

Bayart, Jean-François, Stephen Ellis and Béatrice Hibou. La Criminalisation de l'état en Afrique. Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1995.

Coulon, C. Le Marabout et le Prince: Islam et Pouvoir au Senegal. Paris: A. Pedone, 1981.

Délégation des cadres casamançais élargie. "Mémorandum rélatif aux évenements de Zinguinchor". Zinguinchor, April 1984 (photocopy of unpublished document).

Diop, Momar Coumba (ed.). Le Sénégal et ses voisins. Dakar, 1994.

Diop, Momar Coumba and Mamadou Diouf. Le Sénégal sous Abdou Diouf: état et société. Paris: Karthala, 1990.

Durufle, G. Le Sénégal peut-il sortir de la crise? Paris: Karthala, 1994.

Economist Intelligence Unit. Senegal: Country Risk Service Report for Second Quarter 1998. London, 17 June 1998.

Congo, Sao Tomé, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde: Country Report for

Second Quarter 1997. London, June 1997

Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal: Country Reports and Country Profiles 1995. London, 1995.

Faye, Ousseynou. "La Crise casamançaise et les rélations du Sénégal avec la Gambie et la Guinée-Bissau (1980-1992)" in Momar Coumba Diop (ed.). Le Sénégal et ses voisins. Dakar, 1994. Pp.189-212.

Global Development Finance 1997. Washington: World Bank, 1998.

The Guardian [London]. Alex Duval Smith. "Refugees Trudge into New Civil War". 24 June 1998.

L'Indépendent [Conakry]. Saliou Samb. "Elections législatives au Sénégal: on calme les nerfs...". 21 May 1998.

International Financial Statistics Yearbook 1997. Washington: International Monetary Fund, 1998.

Jeune Afrique. Francis Kpatindé. "Les Ennemis de mes ennemis...". 3 November 1998.

Klinghoffer, Arthur Jay. The International Dimension of Genocide in Rwanda. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998.

La Lettre du Continent. "Scénario catastrophe portugais". 5 November 1998.

Libération [Paris]. Nicolas Balique. "Casamance, le dossier explosif du prochain septennat". 23 February 1993.

Mark, P. "L'Islam et les masques d'initiation casamançais". Islam et sociétés au sud du Sahara, 4 (1990).

Le Monde [Paris]. "Le gouvernement sénégalais et les séparatistes de Casamance s'engagent sur la voie de la paix". 4 April 1996.

"La disparition de quatre Français souligne le caractère endémique de la crise en Casamance". 18 April 1995.

Le Monde Diplomatique [Paris]. "Ligne dure face à la Casamance". October 1998.

Sophie Bessis. "Deux régimes affaiblis face à face: Le Sénégal, la Mauritanie et leurs boucs émissaires". July 1989.

Jean-Claude Marut, "Les deux résistances Casamançaises", January 1996.

O'Brien, Donal Cruise, Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organisation of a Senegalese Peasant Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Reuter. "Guinea-Bissau: Peace Pact May Mark End to Guinea-Bissau Crisis". 11 November 1998.

"Guinea-Bissau: Senegalese Foreign Minister Says Foreign Troops in Guinea-Bissau Will Leave". 11 November 1998.

"France: President Urges France Not to Forget Africa", 23 October 1998

"Senegal: Rebel Landmine Kills Two Soldiers". 20 October 1998.

"Senegal: Four Killed in Senegal Attack, Rebels Suspected". 12 October 1998.

"Guinea-Bissau: Landmines Destroyed To Make Amends Gunrunning to Senegal Rebels". 8 February 1998.

Le Soleil [Dakar]. "Normalisation des rélations sénégalo-mauritaniennes" (governmental communique). 24 April 1992.

United Nations. Integrated Regional Information Network West Africa . IRIN Update. No. 329. 2 November 1998.

Vengroff, R. and Lucy Creevey. "Senegal: the Evolution of a Quasi-democracy" in John F. Clark and David E. Gardinier (eds.). Political Reform in Francophone Africa. Boulder CO: Westview, 1997.

Villalón, L. Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciple and Citizens in Fatick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

1. Reuter, "Guinea-Bissau: Peace Pact May Mark End to Guinea-Bissau Crisis", 11 November 1998

2. Leonardo A. Villalón, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal: Disciple and Citizens in Fatick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 47-9

3. Peter Mark, "L'Islam et les masques d'initiation casamançais", Islam et sociétés au sud du Sahara, 4 (1990), p. 30; Villalón, pp. 201-12

4. Donal Cruise O'Brien, Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organisation of a Senegalese Peasant Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) and C. Coulon, Le Marabout et le Prince:Islam et Pouvoir au Sénégal (Paris: A. Pedone, 1981) are the two best analyses of this process.

5. Ousseynou Faye, "La crise casamançaise et les rélations du Sénégal avec la Gambie et la Guinée-Bissau (1980-1992)" in Momar Coumba Diop (ed.), Le Sénégal et ses voisins (Dakar: Sociétés-Espaces-Temps, 1994), p. 195

6. Le Monde Diplomatique [Paris], Jean-Claude Marut, "Les deux résistances casamançaises", January 1996

7. See Cruise O'Brien, Chapters 2 and 4; Moumar Coumba Diop and Mamadou Diouf, Le Sénégal sous Abdou Diouf: état et société (Paris: Karthala, 1990)

8. Africa South of the Sahara 1998, "Senegal: Agriculture" (Europa Publications, 1998), p. 876

9. International Financial Statistics Yearbook 1997 (Washington: International Monetary Fund, 1998), pp. 728-31; Global Development Finance 1997 (Washington: World Bank, 1998), p. 464

10. G. Durufle, Le Sénégal peut-il sortir de la crise? (Paris: Karthala, 1994)

11. Olivier Barbary, "Dakar et la Sénégambie: Evolution d'un espace migratoire transnational" in Diop (ed.), Le Sénégal, pp. 146-7, 150-5

12. Faye, "La Crise" in Diop (ed.), Le Sénégal, p. 197; Africa Confidential, "Senegal: Crisis in Casamance", 23 November 1990

13. Délégation des cadres casamançais élargie, "Mémorandum rélatif aux évenements de Zinguinchor", Zinguinchor, April 1984 (photocopy of unpublished document)

14. Africa Confidential [London], "Senegal: Friends and Foes", 9 April 1986

15. Faye, "La crise" in Diop (ed.), Le Sénégal, pp. 197-99; Africa Confidential [London], "Senegal: Casamance", 21 January 1987

16. For general background to this section ee Diop (ed), Le Sénégal

17. Le Soleil [Dakar], "Normalisation des rélations sénégalo-mauritaniennes" [governmental communique], 24 April 1992; Le Monde Diplomatique [Paris], Sophie Bessis, "Deux régimes affaiblis face à face: Le Sénégal, la Mauritanie et leurs boucs émissaires", July 1989

18. Africa Confidential, 23 November 1990

19. Africa Confidential, "Casamance Won't Go Away", 17 April 1992

20. Libération [Paris], Nicolas Balique, "Casamance, le dossier explosif du prochain septennat", 23 February 1993

21. Africa Confidential, "On the Campaign Trail in Casamance", 19 February 1993

22. Personal observations, Dakar and Banjul, April-June 1992

23. Personal observations. For the regional politico-military context, see Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Reports and Country Profiles, 1995, for Côte d'Ivoire and Mali; Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia; and Senegal.

24. Le Monde [Paris], "La disparition de quatre Français souligne le caractère endémique de la crise en Casamance", 18 April 1995

25. Personal interviews with French embassy officials. Dakar, 1995

26. Amnesty International, Senegal: Widespread Use of Torture Persists with Impunity, while Human Rights Abuses also Continue in Casamance (London, 28 February 1996)

27. Le Monde Diplomatique, Jean-Claude Marut, "Ligne dure face à la Casamance", October 1998

28. Le Monde Diplomatique, January 1996

29. Africa South of the Sahara 1997, "Senegal: Separatism in Casamance" (Europa Publications, 1997), p. 815

30. Le Monde [Paris], "Le gouvernement sénégalais et les séparatistes de Casamance s'engagent sur la voie de la paix", 4 April 1996

31. See Economist Intelligence Unit, Congo, Sao Tomé, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde: Country Report Second Quarter 1997 (London, June 1997), pp. 21ff.

32. Africa Analysis [London], "Guinea-Bissau Backs Senegal Against Rebels", 6 February 1998; personal interviews with Senegalese diplomatic officials, London and Paris, June-July 1998

33. Reuter, "Guinea-Bissau: Landmines Destroyed to Make Amends for Gunrunning to Senegal Rebels", 8 February 1998

34. Jeune Afrique [Paris], Francis Kpatindé, "Les ennemis de mes ennemis...", 3 November 1998

35. Africa Confidential, "Pushing for Praia", 11 September 1998

36. Africa Confidential, "Mane's Men", 26 June 1998

37. La Lettre du Continent [Paris], "Scénario catastrophe portugais", 5 November 1998

38. Reuter, "Guinea-Bissau: Senegalese Foreign Minister Says Foreign Troops in Guinea-Bissau Will Leave", 11 November 1998

39. See Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, The International Dimension of Genocide in Rwanda (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 154-64, for a useful comparative summing up of this process in post-Cold War Africa.

40. The Guardian [London], Alex Duval Smith, "Refugees Trudge into New Civil War", 24 June 1998

41. BBC interview, quoted in United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network West Africa, IRIN Update 329, 2 November 1998

42. Amnesty International, Senegal: Climate of Terror in Casamance (London, February 1998)

43. African Topics [London], B. Diagne and Alex Vines, "Senegal: Old Mines, New Wars", January-March 1998

44. African Topics, "Ouaga Seminar Piles On the Pressure", May 1998, p. 21

45. Agence France Presse, "60 rebelles et 4 soldats tués au cours d'accrochages", 28 August 1998

46. Reuter, "Senegal: Four Killed in Senegal Attack, Rebels Suspected", 12 October 1998

47. Reuter, "Senegal: Rebel Landmine Kills Two Soldiers", 20 October 1998

48. United Nations, Integrated Regional Information Network West Africa , IRIN Update, No. 329, 2 November 1998

49. L'Indépendant [Conakry], Saliou Samb, "Elections législatives au Sénégal: on calme les nerfs...", 21 May 1998

50. Agence France Presse, "Le PDS demande le retrait immédiat des troupes sénégalaises de Bissau", 15 August 1998

51. Reuter, "France: President Urges France Not to Forget Africa", 23 October 1998; Jeune Afrique, Francis Kpatindé, "Diouf à Paris", 27 October 1998

52. L'Autre Afrique [Paris], "Etat de sémi-démocratie", 20-26 May 1998

53. Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1998; Africa Confidential, 26 June 1998

54. Personal interviews with Senegalese diplomats. London and Paris, May, June and September 1998

55. See Jean-François Bayart, Stephen Ellis and Béatrice Hibou, La criminalisation de l'état en Afrique (Brussels: Editions Complexe, 1995), pp. 38-54

56. Economist Intelligence Unit, Senegal: Country Risk Service Report for Second Quarter 1998 (London, 17 June 1998)

57. Richard Vengroff and Lucy Creevey, "Senegal: The Evolution of a Quasi Democracy" in John F. Clark and David E. Gardinier (eds.), Political Reform in Francophone Africa (Boulder CO: Westview, 1997), p. 205

58. Faye, "La crise" in Diop (ed.), Le Sénégal, p. 196