The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on Monday began deploying military troops to Guinea-Bissau to help stabilize the country after a failed coup earlier this year, reported Reuters.
According to the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, the Guinea-Bissau Stabilisation Support Mission comprises some 600 troops from Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Ghana.
The mission’s military chief Mohammed Alhassan said the troops will cover the entire country.
ECOWAS Commissioner for political affairs, peace, and security, General Francis Behanzin, said the mission will last one year and is renewable.
Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo escaped a coup attempt in February this year that left 11 people dead. The 49-year-old president escaped the five-hour gun battle unharmed, which he described as a plot to wipe out Guinea-Bissau’s government.
ECOWAS decided the same week to send a stabilization force to the country. The bloc had previously deployed a force for stability and security in Guinea-Bissau after the April 2012 coup that overthrew Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior. But, the force, which consisted of more than 1,000 soldiers and police officers, left the country in September 2020 at the end of its mandate.
“It is the same mission… since the situation has not completely stabilized,” ECOWAS Commissioner Behanzin said.
Guinea-Bissau, a small nation of around two million people bordering Senegal and Guinea, has experienced four of them since independence from Portugal in 1974, the last of which was in 2012.
There has still been unrest but with reduced violence since 2014.
Tensions persisted after Embalo was elected president in December 2019.
In May, Guinea-Bissau’s president dissolved parliament, which he accused of having become a space for political guerrilla warfare and conspiracy. He cited “persistent and unresolvable differences” between the national assembly and other government branches, justifying the dissolution of the parliament.
Embalo has set December 18 as the date for legislative elections.
