Gambia, 1981 — rebel coup attempt
Event Summary
On 30 July 1981 a violent coup attempt broke out in the Gambia against President Dawda Jawara, who was in London attending the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. The insurrection was carried out by leftist rebels of the Gambia Socialist Revolutionary Party, led by Kukoi Samba Sanyang, together with disaffected members of the paramilitary Gambia Field Force, the small country's only armed body. The plotters, some of whom had trained in Libya and the Soviet Union, seized the radio station and key points in the capital Banjul, took hostages including members of Jawara's family, and proclaimed a revolution.
But Jawara invoked a mutual defense treaty and appealed to neighboring Senegal, which surrounds the Gambia; Senegalese troops intervened in force and, after several days of heavy fighting that left between 500 and 1,000 people dead, crushed the rebellion by early August. Jawara was restored to power. The trauma of the coup led directly to the creation of the short-lived Senegambia Confederation in 1982.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
42007291981- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-420-1981-07-29
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Dawda Jawara was restored after Senegalese troops crushed the July 1981 coup while he was abroad.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Washington Post
Globe and Mail
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →