"Assassins fail in bid to kill Guinea leader" July 20, 2011|Associated Press
CONAKRY, Guinea - Guinea’s president survived an assassination attempt yesterday after gunmen encircled his home overnight and pounded it with heavy artillery, throwing into doubt the stability of the country’s first democratically elected government in a part of the world that has long been ruled by the gun....
What part of the world hasn't been?
It remains unclear who was behind the first coordinated attack. The second was led by a fighter dubbed “De Gaulle’’ who was a bodyguard of the country’s former military strongman and who was arrested at the scene, said Francois Louceny Fall, a minister at the presidency who acts as Conde’s chief of staff....
Soldiers fanned out across this capital city, located on a peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean on Africa’s western coast. They tied ropes between trees at intersections, and traffic was at a standstill as each car was stopped and drivers were told to open their trunks. Military helicopters circled overhead.
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"Guinean president survives assassination attempt" by Boubacar Diallo and Rukmini Callimachi Associated Press / July 19, 2011
CONAKRY, Guinea—Guinea's president narrowly survived an assassination attempt Tuesday after gunmen surrounded his home overnight and pounded his bedroom with rockets, throwing into doubt the stability of the country's first democratically elected government in a part of the world that has long been ruled by the gun....
Which was it?
Tens of millions of dollars were invested by the international community to ensure last year's transparent vote, and a coup would be a major setback for the region, analysts said....
Until last year, Guinea was one of the continent's failed states, a country with an abominable human rights record whose destiny was determined not by the ballot box but by the mood of officers inside the capital's barracks.
The first coup in 1984 brought a colonel who ruled until his death 24 years later. After his death in 2008, another coup brought an army captain to power known for his frightening temper and his taste for televised interrogations of opponents. Capt. Moussa 'Dadis' Camara was deposed a year later when his bodyguard shot him in the head.
In between, his men led a massacre of pro-democracy protesters whose bodies were buried in mass graves, according to Human Rights Watch. Women who had dared question military rule were gang-raped by soldiers who silenced their cries by stuffing their red berets in their mouths....
Frustration has grown because Conde has failed to create an inclusive government, instead stacking it with members of his ethnicity, and because the country's grinding poverty has not yet been alleviated despite Guinea's considerable mineral wealth, which includes the world's largest supply of bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum....
Yale University anthropologist Michael McGovern, an expert on Guinea, said the country's military quadrupled in size during the final years of the military regime. It went from 10,000 to over 40,000, he said, as each strongman launched recruitment drives aimed at filling the ranks with their ethnic kin. The bloated army has become not only a security risk, but also an enormous drain on the budget....
Sound familiar, America?
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Related: US condemns assassination attempt on Guinea leader
Gee, all I got was the top article in my newspaper.
