Guinea-Bissau, 2000 — military coup attempt

Event Summary

The dataset records an event coded as an attempted military coupi in Guinea-Bissau on 23 November 2000 against President Kumba Iala, who had taken office earlier that year after the civil war that ousted Joao Bernardo Vieira, and against the backdrop of a violent power struggle with the country's dominant military figure, Brigadier General Ansumane Mane. Mane, the general whose 1998 revolt had triggered the civil war and who had briefly ruled before elections brought Iala to power, remained the most powerful man in the fractured armed forces and chafed under civilian authority. In late November 2000 the tension exploded: Mane, rejecting a round of military promotions ordered by Iala, declared himself head of the armed forces in what amounted to a coup attempt, plunging Bissau into armed clashes between his loyalists and government troops.

The revolt was crushed within days by forces loyal to Iala, and Mane was killed on 30 November as he fled. Iala survived and consolidated his hold, but his own erratic rule proved short lived; he was overthrown in a bloodless military coupi in September 2003, continuing Guinea-Bissau's chronic cycle of instability.