Coup Atlas Research Database
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40406071998AttemptedMilitary coup

Guinea-Bissau, 1998 — military coup attempt

Guinea-Bissau (GNB)West Africa, AfricaJune 7, 1998

Event Summary

On 7 June 1998 Brigadier General Ansumane Mane launched a military revolt against President Joao Bernardo Vieira of Guinea-Bissau, an attempted coup that failed to seize power outright but triggered a devastating year long civil war. The crisis was sparked when Vieira dismissed Mane as armed forces chief of staff, blaming him for an arms smuggling scandal, the supplying of weapons to the Casamance separatist rebels in neighboring Senegal, despite a report implicating Vieira's own presidential guard. The day after his dismissal, Mane rose in rebellion, and his forces, backed by most of the army, seized the Bra barracks and the airport in Bissau and demanded Vieira's resignation and fresh elections.

Vieira, who had ruled since his own 1980 coup, clung to power only with the intervention of some seventeen hundred Senegalese and four hundred Guinean troops sent to prop him up, sparking heavy urban fighting that displaced hundreds of thousands. The war ground on through fragile ceasefires until May 1999, when Mane's forces finally overthrew Vieira, who fled into exile in Portugal.

Researched Details

Researched

Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.

Target identified in Coup Atlas research: President Joao Bernardo Vieira survived the June 1998 revolt only with foreign troops, but was overthrown in 1999
RESEARCHED NAME
Key figures
Joao Bernardo Vieira (president of Guinea-Bissau, target)
Ansumane Mane (dismissed army chief, revolt leader)

Sources

The 1998 Guinea-Bissau coup attempt was a military overthrow attempt led by Brigadier General Ansumane Mane against the Joao Bernardo Vieira government, which plunged the country into a year long civil war.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, 1998 Guinea-Bissau coup attempt open source ↗
The failed coup was caused by Vieira's dismissal of Mane as chief of staff following an arms smuggling scandal involving the Casamance separatists in Senegal.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, 1998 Guinea-Bissau coup attempt open source ↗
On 7 June Mane's rebelling troops seized the Bra military barracks and the airport in Bissau, demanding Vieira's resignation, and government forces were backed by 1,300 Senegalese and 400 Guinean soldiers.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, Guinea-Bissau Civil War open source ↗
Vieira was overthrown in a second coup on 7 May 1999 and sought asylum in Portugal.
SOURCE REVIEWED Wikipedia, 1998 Guinea-Bissau coup attempt open source ↗

Editorial Note

Date match to the 7 June 1998 Mane revolt against Vieira. Dataset codes it a military coup with leader unharmed, accurate for Vieira at this stage (he survived until May 1999). Extensively documented. Continues the Guinea-Bissau run, after the 1980 Vieira coup era; this attempt triggered the civil war that eventually ousted Vieira.

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
40406071998
Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-404-1998-06-07

How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.

Outcome and Target

Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Joao Bernardo Vieira survived the June 1998 revolt only with foreign troops, but was overthrown in 1999.

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

Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset, v2.2.2
Peyton, Buddy, Joseph Bajjalieh, Michael Martin, and Andrea Gerald. 2026. Cline Center Coup d’État Project Dataset. Cline Center for Advanced Social Research. V.2.2.2. February 17. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. doi: 10.13012/B2IDB-9651987_V10
⚑ This citation establishes the coded baseline record; use the claim-level sources above for the researched narrative.

Baseline Source-Document Entries

CSP

Named in the baseline source document; no article citation was recorded.

Wikipedia

Financial Times

“Guinea Bissau coup foiled,” June 8, 1998

Xinhua News Agency

“U.S. Condemns Coup Attempt in Guinea-Bissau,” June 8, 1998

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 →

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