However, I at first thought that it was all about Mr Sedia Bayo again, the “French Gambian” activist constantly poking his nose in the political affairs of the Gambia with a hostile intention of overthrowing the APRC government, until I came to realise that Dr Amadou Scattred Janneh was also involved in the fracas that was more than just a deliberate assault and humiliation of Mr Samba in Dakar. The incident, on the whole, had a lot to do with the convergence of Gambian dissidents in Senegal, practically under the leadership of Dr Janneh to provoke the same kind of political crisis in The Gambia that recently caused the leadership change in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. The evidence gathered further confirmed that Dr Janneh’s tactics to oust President Jammeh out of power was literally the same he had applied in 2011 but failed miserably, culminating to his arrest and subsequent conviction to life in Gambia’s Mile 2 Central Prison. Thanks to the intervention of Rev Jesse Jackson, in January 2012, Dr Janneh, a naturalised American citizen of Gambian descent was pardoned by President Jammeh and allowed to return back to the USA with the civil rights leader. It is however worth mentioning that in 2005, Dr Janneh on his own discretion left the USA with his entire family to take up a high-profile position of employment from President Jammeh’s government which he eventually lost in 2006, perhaps sooner than he had expected, which as a result seemed to have radicalised him into a defiant anti-Gambia-Government activist.
Anyway, to abandon whatever he was engaged in for the infantile tactic of clandestinely distributing T-shirts and banners inscribed with slogans of dissent against the Gambia government and believing that it could spark political commotion that might unseat President Jammeh was at best naïve and at worst irrationally desperate. How the former American college tutor and former Gambian Minister of Information thought he could apply the same tactic that had failed to yield any positive result in 2011 and expect a different upshot in 2014 demonstrates an enormous perceptual flaw. He did not only fail to achieve anything constructive but also ended up violating the trust and confidence of many people including the wonderful Gambian businessman Mr Amadou Samba known for his generosity and civility and who had always treated him as the trustable brother-in law he thought he was. And what about Rev Jesse Jackson who had in 2012 flown all the way from the USA to The Gambia to plead with President Jammeh for his freedom?
Let me say this before elaborating on the Reverend’s position on the whole issue. It beats my imagination or, saying that differently, I find it hard to come to terms with what folks like Dr Janneh really want in life. Did he miscalculate his priorities when he left whatever he was doing in USA in 2005 to take up employment from the Gambia government? Or was it just about those familiar intellectual adventurists whose fascination with hopping from one occupation to another is all that matters to keep them relevant in a world they find practically difficult to fit in satisfactorily? However, unless he is faced with the problem of tenure as a professor, I see no reason why he couldn’t have come right back to his old college job after he had fallen apart with the Gambia government in 2006. I honestly refused to entertain the notion that like most of those diaspora misfits Janneh is simply unequipped to rectify whatever setback, if there was any, that had compelled him to quit the American academic world for the ministerial job in The Gambia. I will not necessarily question Mr Janneh’s decision to commit his life on what he things best for him and his family given his level of academic achievement; nevertheless, I have also seen time and again that education like wealth is no guarantor of rational behaviour. After all instead of being motivated by what we know, most of us are sometimes seriously controlled by the satisfaction we derived from our wild imaginations.
So, for Rev Jesse Jackson on this whole issue, imagine how he will feel if told that Dr Amadou Janneh, the American-Gambian he had rescued from Gambian prison in 2012 was again engaged in the same activities against the Gambia government that had led to his conviction in the first place? This will not just be a slap in his face for betraying the trust of the Gambian people and leadership but might as very well discourage him from ever helping such types of Americans in trouble. It was not the first time and certainly not the last for Rev Jackson to go out of his way to rescue Americans in foreign jails; but in the case of Dr Janneh’s with all the ongoing negative publicity, I think it will in effect undermine the Reverend’s confidence in future ventures over similar humanitarian reaches.
And don’t be fooled by how Americans project their global political and ethical images as being the greatest or the best ever in existence; at the end of the day, such boastful mentality coupled with the mere lack of good answers to our messy track records that are often conveniently dismissed as negligible human errors only help in incubating more hate, despise and vengefulness from angry people all over the world. In other words many people who we at time think we are out to help believe that America has much to atone for, both abroad and domestically. For instance, in America’s arrogant mistake to shape the political destiny of Iraq, we have all witnessed the open-ended devastation triggered in that country by starting a war based on proven false pretext. With the monumental effect of calamity caused by dismantling the stabilising components of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, compounded by the unintended consequences of plunging the entire region into a vicious cycle of senseless violence, former President George W Bush still believes that America was right in attacking the country for allegedly harbouring “weapons of mass destruction.” After all weapons that never were.
The loud and clear statement of hate and vengeance made by the Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi on 14 December 2008 when he threw his shoe at President George Bush in Bagdad and called him a dog was a clear testimony of most Iraqi’s dissatisfaction with what America did to their civilisation under the guise of liberating them from Saddam Hussein. Invariably, it is only the American who expects to be taken seriously when he unequivocally assert to the world that torturing captured enemy combatants is unjustifiable but still justify the dropping of a smart bomb on a wedding ceremony in Afghanistan or Pakistan to only kill “Abu Jihadist” – one enemy combatant- suspected of being present there and dismissing the death of the innocent men, women and children in the crowd as collateral damage. No wonder when the American war-mongers started re-kitting for another global military adventure into Syria, neglecting the mess they turned Iraq and Libya into, Russia defiantly stood up against it with a stern warning of never to sit and watch while America deliberately ignites unjustifiable wars they usually seem unable to extinguish. As the Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, summed it up in one of his assessments of American foreign policy: “The American government does not judge itself by the same moral standards by which it judges others… Its technique is to position itself as the well-intended giant whose good deeds are confounded in strange countries by their scheming natives, whose markets it’s trying to free, whose societies it’s trying to modernise, whose women it’s trying to liberate, whose souls it’s trying to save… It has conferred upon itself the right to murder and exterminate people “for their own good”. That may sound somewhat far-fetched until one actually factors in the domestic genocide committed on native Americans and the dehumanisation of African captives over 200 years of slavery that still bear some terrible and permanent residual effect on their living conditions. Until a week ago when the NYPD finally took steps to correct their racial policies of targeting young black men and Latinos for low-level marijuana possession that earned New York City the infamous title of being the “Marijuana Arrest Capital of the World”, about 140 people on the average were arrested daily with 86% being blacks and Latinos. Although research has consistently demonstrated that young whites use marijuana at higher rates. Unfortunately for these young minorities arrested, almost 70% are under the age of 30 years which meant criminalising their profile and automatically ruining their prospect of being productive in a government or work establishment with minimal or zero tolerance for such minor convictions. But now that New York has passed a law decriminalising the possession of marijuana quantity of not more than 25 grammes, what now should they do about those criminalised in the past for merely being caught with a single joint? And it’s not just in New York but all over the country where millions of young people’s lives have been destroyed because of such petty crimes. So if Dr Janneh wants to fight for the human and civil rights of the underprivileged or underdogs he could have his hands full by starting to help American youths in their millions, criminalised for what is now viewed as unnecessary convictions. I could go on highlighting a lot of facts that clearly indicate that the America we often portray as the citadel of political, moral and social purity is not always necessarily so.
To be continued tomorrow.
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