By Mathew K Jallow

Look; it is a mannequin; no it is a statue; no it is a scarecrow; no it is Yahya Jammeh. Over the past couple of days, the Washington, DC and New York City areas have been abuzz with false sighting of Yahya Jammeh and his military entourage; days filled with frustrating guesses and disappointing anticipation. It was like a game of wits fraught with intoxicating optimism and annoying misses, but now, four days into this act, the cat and mouse game has gone on far too long, and the longer that the artful dodger, Yahya Jammeh, remains unseen and unheard from, the more the mystery and conspiracy theories around his abrupt departure from Gambia and visit to the US will deepen. On so many levels, Yahya Jammeh’s visit is as intriguing as it is seems out of character and out of the ordinary. To begin with, Yahya Jammeh did two most unusual things; first he flew out to New York on a commercial flight, and secondly, as if to add to that rare event, he left Gambia at an incredible short notice. For many though, the intense interest in Yahya Jammeh’s whereabouts in the U.S is driven more by events back home than by caring about his wellbeing. At issue is whether he will return home in time to attend the so-called Diaspora summit slated for today Tuesday and tomorrow Wednesday.

To those who care and give a hoot to the fake Diaspora summit, the significance of their host Yahya Jammeh’s presence is not lost to anyone. The summit’s verve, luster and indeed its credibility hinges on his participation, and if he cups out, the impact on participants’ morale cannot be minimized by the bright, mesmerizing lights of the pomp and pageantry, or by the self-gratifying orgasmic platitudes that are but the epitome of the abstractions of reality and delusional foolery. But for now, theories abound about why Yahya Jammeh is in the U.S and they range from concern for his health, to desperate attempts to coral the support and indulgence of prominent United Nations officials following President Abdoulaye Wada’s newly found determination to do what he should have done all these years; follow Cassamance rebels inside Gambian territory. Whether President Wada’s Cassamance epiphany is merely a campaign strategy or not, the time for Senegal to pursue the Cassamance rebels inside The Gambia is long overdue. The rebels, armed, financed, trained and harbored by Yahya Jammeh, have acted with impunity knowing full well they can escape and use our country as a sanctuary from where to launch forays inside Cassamance, killing, maiming and displacing helpless villagers.

And now that Yahya Jammeh has brought the Cassamance war to our doorsteps, Senegal has the right of self defense to enter Gambian territory in-order the remove the threat posed by the MFDC rebels. Hopefully by now, President Wada has recognized that Yahya Jammeh has mistaken his neighborly restraint as succumbing to his provocative use of the Cassamance conflict as blackmail against the Senegalese government. But beyond that, Yahya Jammeh’s regime is embroiled in a serious political dispute with ECOWAS over the legitimacy of the recent elections, and the opposition parties, in particular, the United Democratic Party, having refused to concede defeat, citing the same issues that troubled ECOWAS has put the Gambia on a path to Constitutional crisis. And recognizing the seriousness these pressures will bring to bear, Senegal’s threats of incursions into Gambian territory in self-defensive pursuit of Cassamance rebels is only an icing on the cake. The culmination of these events does not augur well for Yahya Jammeh and a regime whose calamitous adventures and destructive propensity has put Gambia on the spot for all the wrong reasons. But coming back to Yahya Jammeh’s U.S visit; it would seem, to many, that for a man who is adept at walking on eggshells, Yahya Jammeh may again appear to be living up to his notoriety as West Africa’s true and tested Teflon don. For despite the semblance of surface calm, turmoil of significant proportion is slowly brewing beneath Gambia’s appearance of normalcy, and Yahya Jammeh, once again, hopes to use his most lethal weapon; money, to quell another disaster, and in so doing, escape unscratched from the tight corner he has put himself into once again.

Given these developments, the so-called Diaspora summit is under these circumstances, only a distraction that will give Yahya Jammeh the opportunity to present a veneer of legitimacy and consciousness at a time when he is most vulnerable. True, Yahya Jammeh has been a formidable opponent, with a weapon whose power is limitless; money, and he has used it both brutally and mercilessly to his advantage. Many prominent Senegalese politicians, who ought to be mad over the intermittent murders of young Senegalese soldiers by the Gambia based Casamance rebels, are in fact in Yahya Jammeh’s pockets. The IMF and World Bank officials, who ought to cease the practice of giving the highly indebted Gambian regime any money, instead write glowing financial reports that contradict every known fact on the ground in Gambia. The African Union, the Gambian people’s point of last resort inside Africa, has over the years, turned a blind eye to Yahya Jammeh’s atrocities. Even ECOWAS under its previous leaders, is equally guilty of silence in the face of the genocidal murders and disappearances of innocent citizens since Yahya Jammeh’s ascension to power in 1994. And now, if President Wada lives up to his promise, he will send in the cavalry to march inside Kanilai and pulverize the MFDC sanctuary there and the centers of promiscuity and debauchery Yahya Jammeh built.

But now, as day one of the Diaspora summit has ended with a whimper, and attendants giddy with empty bluster luxuriated in the opulence of seaside hotels, far from the dangerous stench and choking dust of inner-city Serekunda, the man of the hour, Yahya Jammeh, was still nowhere to be seen; not in Washington, DC, not in New York City and not in Banjul. Even then rumors were swirling around Banjul about the dismissal of seventeen military officers and the torment of not knowing where Yahya Jammeh is did not make the frustration any much easier. Meanwhile, nothing in the recent past is as cruel and upsetting as the trial and incarceration of four Foni Batabut villagers for the “crimes” of excessive enthusiasm, but what made their case particularly unsettling and scandalous is the fact that two of the victims are lactating mothers with children barely a year old. Yahya Jammeh has demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt his insensitivity to the suffering of people, even to the extent of criminalizing babies and throwing them behind bar in prison with mothers whose only crime was being overjoyed and playfully obstructing traffic to make that point. For a man who has in the past seized every opportunity to show women that he champions their causes, the incarceration of two mothers with their babies, finally exposes to Gambian women the true colors of Yahya Jammeh, as a wicked, desensitized megalomaniac. But for now, whether Yahya Jammeh is lying somewhere in a Washington, DC or New York City hospital or wasting the ill-gotten loot from Gambia’s treasury in an exquisite high-end hotel, the longer he stays away from our country, the more blessed by his absence we will be. And hopefully he never returns. That is my prayer for our country.