A (MERCIFULLY BRIEF) HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 DAKAR 000681



SIPDIS



SIPDIS



DEPARTMENT FOR AF, AF/W, INR/AA, AND DS/IP/ITA

PARIS FOR D'ELIA



E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/15/16

TAGS: PINS, PGOV, PINR, ASEC, CASC, SG

SUBJECT:A (MERCIFULLY BRIEF) HISTORY OF VIOLENCE



REF: DAKAR 1243



DAKAR 00000681 001.2 OF 004





CLASSIFIED BY POLITICAL COUNSELOR ROY L. WHITAKER, FOR

REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D).



SUMMARY

--------------

1. (C) Senegal is rightly known as an orderly place of

dialog and consensus, but its elections have not always

been without incident. Concern at possible unrest or

repression in the coming presidential and legislative

campaigns has been sparked by four events: a new book

tracing political violence since Independence; unruly

student protests in Dakar and Saint Louis and a forceful

police reaction; mutual charges of political thuggery

between President Wade and a prominent leftist ex-ally;

and tensions or in one case serious roughhousing between

rival factions of Wade's ruling Democratic Party of

Senegal (PDS). END SUMMARY.



BRINGING THE PRESIDENT TO BOOK

--------------

2. (C) Marcel Mendy, author of two books on Wade's rise

and first years in power (Reftel),has just published "La

Violence Politique au Senegal: de 1960 a 2003." Mendy

works for the Interior Ministry, and his book is written

in carefully measured nuance.



3. (U) Mendy argues that violence has erupted usually

at specific stages in Senegal's electoral process:



-- 1) During "leadership renewal" (renouvellement des

instances de base),when parties sell membership cards

that provide the right to select leaders from

neighborhood to village, borough, department, regional

and national levels. Battles between "tendencies" in the

ruling party tend to be especially fierce;

-- 2) "Investiture" of candidates for parliament,

which gives party factions a last chance to compete for

top jobs;

-- 3) A one-month campaign offers the possibility of

conflict, although in fact Mendy's survey provides few

examples of violence at this stage; and,

-- 4) Election results have been followed either by

an immediate wave of opposition protest violence, as in

the presidential election of 1988; or by a months-long

series of incidents which may or may not have been

directly linked to the election outcome, as in 1993-94.



4. (C) We asked Mendy over lunch about his analysis and

prognosis for the coming election and found that in

private he is scathing and pessimistic. He believes

overt violence is inherent in Senegal's personality-based

(or "clientelist") politics, that this campaign or its

aftermath could be violent, but that violence will

probably not come from the opposition. While Socialist

and leftist leaders have warned loudly that they will

"take to the streets" in case they conclude the election

was unfair, he discounts their ability or willingness to

do so. "Socialists," he says, after 40 years in power,

"are all meek accountants or office managers."



5. (S) In contrast, Mendy explains, PDS leaders "have

come in off the street. They have no other careers or

prospects. Losing a government post means losing

everything, and they will not tolerate it." Wade and

the PDS, moreover, have always considered violence

appropriate to their political arsenal, he contends, and

have kept gangs of ruffians to do the rough work.

(Wade's well-known "calots bleus" were largely integrated

into police or gendarmerie after 2000, but some were

recruited as bodyguards by local PDS bosses.) Wade would

probably not order violence, Mendy says, and it remains

to be seen if he would allow or discourage it, but the

problem is that, once PDS violence starts, Wade "will not

be able to stop it even if he wants to."



SOMETHING ROTTEN ON CAMPUS

--------------

6. (SBU) The March 2 cover of "Nouvel Horizon,"

Senegal's main newsmagazine is entitled "Why the

University is Burning." It features a lone, helmeted

gendarme with tear gas grenade launcher, standing tense

and at the ready on a nearly deserted street strewn with

rocks and bricks with fire and billowing smoke in the

distance. In fact, student protest, with heavy rock

throwing, proceeded in two waves. The first provoked



DAKAR 00000681 002.2 OF 004





hardly any police reaction save an attempt to protect

nearby main roads. In the second, however, students were

by most accounts more unuly than they have been in

years. Some antagonied police (dropping boiling water

on them, for eample),and police reacted with an unusual

degreeof force, causing numerous injuries including some

serious ones. Sympathy protests were held in Sant

Louis, and police response there was muscularas well.



7. (U) The immediate cause of the prtests was a

complaint that the campus cafeteria's meat was spoiled

and "covered with worms." Daka's campus, built for

6,000 students, now has 47,500. Campus housing, with

beds for 5,200, now holds over 20,000: there is said to

be "sub-letting of bed or floor space." In large classes

throughout the Faculties of Letters, Law and Management,

students must often stand for lectures. The Faculties of

Medicine and Pharmacy are also said to be deteriorating.



8. (C) In tandem with infrastructure deficiencies,

there is deepening politicization. In the past, student

politics was relatively simple: each party had its

militants. Interior Minister NGom seems to believe the

old model holds true. With the opposition in mind, he

declared: "There is clearly serious reason to believe the

student movement has been infiltrated and taken over.

Clandestine forces have made student movements their

instruments in order to achieve, for undisclosed ends,

the destabilization of authority." Students and others

on campus doubt that NGom understands what is happening.



9. (C) University Ombudsman, Bouba Diop, formerly head

of the CONGAD umbrella group of NGO's, is charged with

reconciling different and competing campus interests.

Yet Diop tells us there is no single association with

authority to negotiate on students' behalf. Politics is

amorphous, disorganized, dispersed... about the only such

word he did not use was chaotic. Student rivalries are

cross-cutting: faculty versus faculty, religious versus

secular, political party versus party, and, extremely

severe, between warring factions of the ruling PDS.

Overall, campus life has degraded into "a culture of

violence." A Diop colleague adds that ruffians are

readily available on campus: protesters, like other

Senegalese, sometimes employ unemployed wrestlers as

bodyguards, he says, while other groups, mostly but not

exclusively enrolled students, study martial arts to use

during protests or competition for campus influence. For

PDS MP and professors' union head Ngokhobaye Diouf,

campus congestion "concentrates violence in the student's

blood."



10. (S) What most Senegalese who know the university

agree on is that the campus PDS is badly splintered, to

some extent reflecting the split between Wade and ex-PM

Idrissa Seck, and that the PDS has lost whatever campus

control it had at the start of Wade's presidency. The

founder and long-time leader of PDS university and youth

movements, ex-Minister of Environment Mamadou Diagne

Fada, lamented to us that PDS students now reflect

national-level factional divides. The university, he

predicted, must and will be aided financially to get

through this school year, because "2007 will be turbulent

on campus, and the government cannot allow two "annees

blanches" (cancelled school years) in a row.



ONE-TIME ALLIES TRADE RECRIMINATIONS

--------------

11. (C) Wade charged that student protests were

inspired by the Opposition in complicity with an unnamed

country that everyone quickly figured out meant Laurent

Gbagbo's Cote d'Ivoire. Almost no one believed the

foreign-hand accusation, and it was clear Wade was

fingering his long-time leftist ally Abdoulaye Bathily.



12. (C) Bathily responded quickly, but to avoid charges

of libeling the Chief of State, he penned an open letter

to "PDS Secretary General Wade." After denying he had

organized current campus protests, Bathily said that in

1988, he opposed PDS booby-trapping of cars and tracts

"calling for armed forces insurrection." In 1989, he

accused Wade, "without consulting (coalition allies),you

called for fighting forces of order with machetes, stones

and bicycle chains." Recalling the 1994 killing of a

constitutional judge and 2003 beating of a young critic,

Bathily concluded, "observations I have made of your road

to power, and notably your way of treating adversaries of



DAKAR 00000681 003.2 OF 004





the moment, lead me to believe that henchmen who have

targeted me for the last two years are ... not acting in

isolation or on their own initiative," but that they are

"orchestrated by a master's hand."



13. (S) Over lunch, Bathily and Wade's long-time Labor

Minister Yero De, emphasized that Wade was accustomed to

using force, and that he would allow or even order

supporters to "do anything necessary" to hold onto power

if the PDS loses the coming presidential election.



EXORCISM IN THE PDS

--------------

14. (C) There are numerous fault lines within the PDS,

including: a) Idrissa Seck's fans versus his enemies; b)

old-line PDS loyalists versus Socialist turn-coats whom

Wade has co-opted with senior government positions or

parliamentary seats; c) local rivalries at the city or

regional level that have little to do with national

loyalties; and, increasingly, d) serious differences

between PM Macky Sall and the machine he is trying to

establish, versus a line-up of old-time Wade intimates.



15. (C) PDS "renewal," or selection of new leaders, is

not going smoothly, but few are surprised by the problems

PM Macky Sall is having bringing local bosses to heel.

He was, for example, blocked by a coalition of powerful

local PDS barons from changing local structures in Saint

Louis. At least Sall has not been chased from the

podium, as happened to Dakar Regional Council President

Abdoulaye Faye when he tried to manage renewal in Thies.

A chair-throwing mano-a-mano between Wade's people and

Seck's hometown fans led to dissolution of the Thies PDS,

a move even Sall had to admit was "extreme." There has

also been some untoward internal PDS scuffling at Dakar's

tony Meridien Hotel, and in Ziguinchor, invasion of a PDS

session by a rival faction's toughs "sent everyone

running in an every-man-for-himself."



16. (S) Ex-Minister Fada told us he was ousted from the

cabinet because "neutrality was not enough" for those who

demanded that he denounce his "good friend Idrissa" Seck.

The press talks of anti-Seck "falcons" around Wade, Fada

said, but there are really only two: PM Sall and Wade's

son Karim. With sophisticated contempt, Fada described

Sall's attempts to renew the PDS as contrary to law and

PDS practice and without regard to those who fought for

so long for Abdoulaye Wade. "Who says," he demanded

rhetorically, "that Macky Sall has the right to head the

party, while Aminata Tall, Assembly President Pape Diop

and I are left outside?" (Tall "resigned" her Ministry

March 14 after bitter exchanges with the PM.) Fada

foresees disappointed PDS loyalists simply staying home

during the elections, and said there is speculation that

a new Liberal party could be formed outside the PDS.



COMMENT

--------------

17. (S) Fortunately for Senegal, predictions or threats

of violence are more frequent than violence itself.

Senegalese, though, are political hypochondriacs who love

to fret about possible post-election violent scenarios

that include: a) Wade wins the presidency but loses

Parliament, leading to a period of government stasis and

opposition attempts to weaken Wade by taking to the

streets; b) Wade wins Parliament and Presidency in what

is perceived to be a rigged election; opposition protests

are reinforced by popular discontent; and Ousmane NGom's

Interior Ministry uses force at its disposal to restore

calm; or, c) in the worse case scenario, Wade loses the

Presidency; PDS hard-line ministers use force to retain

power; and Wade permits them free rein or tries but fails

to restrain them. None of these pessimistic scenarios

reflects or even allows for Wade's long-term commitment

to democratic governance and free elections.



18. (S) What we can expect over the next year are more

bitter disputes within the PDS and possibly some

physicality during current organizational "renewals" or

when parliamentary candidates are chosen toward the end

of the year. In areas where Seck's fans are strong, like

Thies, factional violence is possible but should not

greatly affect community peace. Aminata Tall is a wild

card in the process. Interior Minister Ousmane NGom and

Justice Minister Cheikh Tidjane Sy also have roles to

play. More probable is intensified protest or conflict

at a Dakar university campus increasingly characterized



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by uncontrolled growth, inadequate budgets, an unable-to-

cope management, proliferation of uncoordinated and

competing student political groups, a religious

component, and gestation of a "culture of violence" in a

small confined space.



19. (S) If the government approaches the university as

a social order problem to be resolved, it no doubt has

the capacity and even the funding to start working toward

a solution. There is concern though, that Wade and PM

Sall will instead see virtually everything over the next

year through the prism of elections and the search for

political advantage.

Jackson