Word: coupes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...costly war provokes a coup...
...coup-which leaves 22 of Africa's 50 independent countries controlled by the military-was a bloodless one. Daddah was arrested at home and bundled off unharmed to a site outside the capital. Salek, the chief of staff, announced that government was in the hands of an 18-man "Military Committee for National Redress," composed of 16 other officers and a police commissioner...
...officers accused Daddah of corruption, but a more likely reason for the coup was Mauritania's woeful record in the drawn-out guerrilla war it is fighting, alongside Morocco, in the former Spanish Sahara. The two countries moved into the phosphate-rich colony in 1975, when Spain agreed to withdraw its troops. Despite military help from Morocco and France, Mauritania has been battered by the 5,000 members of the Marxistoriented, Algerian-backed, Polisario guerrilla movement, which demands independence for the region...
...country that trail-blazed black African decolonization 21 years ago has since had an unhappy political record. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's Osagyefo or Redeemer, was deposed by a 1966 military coup because his grandiose economic mismanagement had hobbled the nation with debt at the same time that the world cocoa market slumped. The next civilian government lasted only three years before Prime Minister Kofi Busia was ousted by the army. Last week General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, 46, who took over in 1972, met a similar fate. Acheampong suddenly resigned from the army and as chairman of the ruling Supreme...
...self-interest is partly political: poverty in the LDCs provides fertile soil for demagogues. So far this spring, there have been three political outbreaks: a Marxist coup in Afghanistan, bloody riots in Peru, a guerrilla invasion of Zaïre. Each has had special causes, but the potential will exist for many more such explosions until the 3 billion or so citizens of LDCs can see some prospect for improvement in their lives. A few years ago, a French author wrote a futuristic novel in which the world's hungry banded together in a kind of vengeful crusade...