Or, how one man destroyed Mali in just one month.
by Gwynne Dyer
Imagine that you are a junior officer in a West African army. You joined the army at 18, you worked hard, you managed to get sent to the United States four times for various training courses, but somehow the promotions never came. You have just turned 40, and in 10 or 15 years you will have to retire on a captain's pension. What to do?
That is Capt Amadou Sanogo, and in March he finally figured out what to do. He launched a military coup and declared himself president of Mali. Nice work, if you can get it — but then the roof fell in on his empty head.
A military coup against an elected government rarely lasts long if the general population is willing to defend it that government: the soldiers can usually be driven from power by a general strike. However, Sanogo had some grievances to work with. Mali was extolled elsewhere as a beacon of democracy, but the government was actually both corrupt and incompetent.
The main thing you need for a junior officers' coup is the support of the ordinary soldiers. There's not really much in it for the men in the ranks, apart from the opportunity to loot: they're never going to sit in the president's chair, so they have to be deeply unhappy about the civilian government before they'll back a coup. Happily for Capt Sanogo, they were quite cross at President Amadou Toure…
About Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
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