The New York Times reports: “American Special Forces flew to Guinea to train an elite military unit. But before the course was over, the Guineans stormed the presidential palace and violently seized power.”
The Special Operations Forces Report just published the piece: “U.S. Green Berets Were Training Guinea’s Special Operations Troops at the Time of the Coup.”
NETFA FREEMAN, netfa@ips-dc.org, @Netfafree
Freeman recently wrote the piece “Guinea and the Military Coup Incubator, AFRICOM,” which notes: “West Africa has just experienced its fourth attempted coup in just over a year, and seven coups over the last 13 years were carried out by African troops trained by the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). One was directly carried out by AFRICOM forces — Operation Odyssey Dawn against Libya in 2011, its first major military operation.
“On Sunday, September 5, 2021 soldiers detained Guinean President Alpha Condé and claimed control of the government. They suspended the constitution and closed all of the country’s borders. In a video recorded in the capital Conakry, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya of the Guinean Armed Forces (GAF) announced that the National Assembly had been dissolved.”Doumbouya, deemed the primary leader of the coup, was trained by the French military in France and, before turning against him, was called in 2018 by Condé to head a new Special Force Unit. Doumbouya and many others in the Guinean military also had AFRICOM training in Operation Flintlock 19. Operation Flintlock 19 occurred in early 2019 and, with participation from 34 African and other partner nations, was the largest annual exercise hosted by AFRICOM.”
Freeman notes that while “the coup in Guinea has been widely condemned by the U.S., the UN, the AU [African Union], ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States], and others,” it is “reminiscent of the coup in Mali that took place in May of this year” and that “Guinea seems to validate AFRICOM as an incubator of military coups in Africa.”
Freeman is an organizer in Pan-African Community Action and is on the coordinating committee of the Black Alliance for Peace. Netfa is also co-host/producer of the WPFW radio show and podcast “Voices With Vision.”
