The reckless plot to overthrow Africa's most absurd dictator

[Jonathan Fairfield]

The long read

The reckless plot to overthrow Africa's most absurd dictator

Andrew Rice

In December, a handful of middle-aged American immigrants attempted to topple the autocratic ruler of the Gambia. They had few weapons and an amateurish plan. What possessed them to risk everything in a mission that was doomed to fail?

After the coup failed, the raids began. On New Year’s Day this year, FBI agents descended on a blue split-level house in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the dead of night, near Austin, Texas, they searched a million-dollar lakeside villa. Agents interrogated an activist at his house in the working-class town of Jonesboro, Georgia. At a rundown townhouse development in Lexington, Kentucky, they found the wife of a US soldier, with a refrigerator full of her husband’s favourite Gambian delicacies – dishes prepared for a triumphant homecoming and repurposed for mourning.

When the employees of Songhai Development, an Austin building firm, arrived at work on Monday 5 January, they discovered the FBI had visited their offices over the weekend and seized all the company’s computers. The company’s owner, Cherno Njie, was spending the holidays in west Africa. But Doug Hayes, who managed construction for Njie, expected his boss back at any moment – they had an apartment project that was about to face an important zoning commission hearing.

“I guess he really had a two-track mind,” Hayes said in May, with a rueful laugh, over lunch at his favourite Texas barbecue joint. “He had that going, and he also wanted to be president of the Gambia.”

By the end of that Monday, Njie’s name was all over the international news.

Read the full story here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/21/how-former-us-army-officer-launched-disastrous-coup-the-gambia

[HerbalEd]

These fools watched way to many spy movies.

[Lokie]

With the headline 'The reckless plot to overthrow Africa's most absurd dictator' I thought it would be the poor bankrupted country of Zimbabwe?

[Lissos]

Read that article yesterday, and it immediately reminded me of this...

[DeepInTheForest]

Despite what you may assume initially, the article is well worth a look. (Warning: it's quite a long piece, so be prepared to sink into it.)

It highlights some of the many dilemmas of our age, and the two men profiled, as well as the dictator of Gambia, are somewhat emblematic of a world system that fails us all. In a complicated and surreal life, one of them, Njie was, in turn, an African immigrant to the US, a student of politics and planning with a determination to succeed, a corrupt Texas housing bureaucrat, a dodgy but at times altruistic housing developer, and a revolutionary. His closest business associates had no clue about his revolutionary activities.

It's a compelling and thought-provoking read. What happens when people from developing countries find themselves in a sea of unrestrained crony capitalism and neoliberal groupthink, in a hyper-militarized society that believes in violence as the first solution to reach for... ? Empire and money have a way of corrupting people. The story of individuals caught up in dizzying change should make us stop and think. Among us are many such people, struggling with changes in cultural mileu, personal issues, and global events. Where are we going, and what are the social values that guide us?

Edited July 22, 2015 by DeepInTheForest

[Seastallion]

So, the American government invokes a 220 year old archaic law against it's own citizens in support of a crazy tyrant.

If Jimmy Carter was prez, I'd understand his desire to increase his peanut farm holdings......but he's not, and the Gambia doesn't have oil.

Sounds very odd to me.

[ABCer]

A few rules I've learned in this life:

- Altruistic dictators like Stalin, Hitler, Mao - were the bloodiest of them all.

- Any failed plot automatically becomes reckless.

- Very small percentage of people are guided by social values.

- Ability to think is a rare commodity but it's never requires stopping - one can think in motion.

Honestly, - not prepared to sink into the original article.