The most important question in politics, business and at company lunches is “who is going to pay for this?” The questions we ask about conflict and war usually revolve around “who threw the first rock?” But that’s the wrong question. Here, too, we need to follow the money and understand “who pays for this?” and “who gets a free lunch?” Then suddenly you can see how looters and profiteers can drive a country like Togo to the brink of civil war.

I’ve pointed out elsewhere that the turmoil in Togo right now has a significant ethnic dimension, and it is important to understand this. But only because it helps to see where the money goes and who gets stuck with the tab.

Togo has at least 37 ethnicities. In the South, the Ewe (pronounced Eh-veh) tribe is dominant, and they are the largest ethnic group in Togo (just under 50 percent). The Ewe lands stretch from Lake Volta in Ghana into Benin and Nigeria. The Kabyé people are another ethnic group of significant size in Togo. Traditionally they were often migrant farm workers and sharecroppers.
Because most of the land in Noth part of Togo where the kabye settled was made of rocky mountains where crops could not grow very well, most of young strong kabye before the independence of Togo (1960), had to work on lands owned by Ewe in the south part of Togo.

This group is concentrated around the city of Kara in northern Togo, but they are scattered all over southern Togo, because they often work on land owned by Ewe. Traditionally, the Ewe looked down on the Kabyé, as they were not as closely connected to the land they lived on.
Togo was colonized by Germans from 1884-1919 (towards the end of World War 1) then by French who will give a part of the Togoland territories in recompense to English in Gold Coast (actual Ghana) who helped them win over Germans in Togo. Togo will have its independence in 1960 after strong struggle of the people and Sylvanus Olympio would be elected first president of the new Nation. Eyadema helped in the French army fight in Indochina (actual Vietnam and Cambodge …). When Eyadema returned to Togo after his military experience, Togo had its Independence and he and some of his fellow soldiers wanted the new president to build an army that they could be part. But olympio didn’t by that idea. Eventually Eyadema and his fellows with the help of France allegedly did the first coup d’Etat after independence Africa.

But in 1963, a Kabyé soldier by the name of Gnassingbe Eyadema, newly returned from the French colonial army, killed the first president of Togo, Sylvanus Olympio, in the first military coup in post-colonial Africa. Two years later he made himself president of Togo, and his rule ended with his death on Feb 5, 2005, after ruling Togo for 38 years.

Eyadema’s rule was strongly supported by the French government, which regards West Africa as its back yard. That was despite the fact that Togo does not have a lot of natural resources. It has rich Phosphate mines. That’s it. It does not have Ghana’s gold and diamonds, Nigeria’s oil, or Ivory Coast’s coffee and cocoa. But Eyadema managed to maneuver tiny Togo into a position of strategic importance to France, and so the French government armed and trained his troops.

Eyadema recruited a loyal military from his own tribe, the Kabyé, and soon the Kabyé dominated all the security forces by roughly three quarters, while they only represent less than 20 percent of the total population. For a long time this disproportion was not a major point of contention (from what I understand). However, it is clear now that the Gnassingbe clan started skimming the profits of what modest resources Togo had. And it seems obvious that the French would have not been so forthcoming with military aid, if the bottom line was not favorable to them.
Most of the young kabye recruited in the Army were farmers and being recruited in the Army was a great opportunity for them and their families

In the early 90s, when I was in Togo, the rumors often circled around the trade of illicit drugs. At one point I read that one of Eyadema’s sons was caught in France with a huge amount of cocaine stashed in his private jet. But there were never any charges filed, and he left France hours later. There is no doubt in my mind that Lomé was (and probably is) a significant hub for trafficking a vast array of illicit goods. Considering the total control the Gnassingbe clan had of Togo, and the cosy relationship Eyadema enjoyed with Mitterand, and later with Chirac, I don’t see how all this money could have gone unnoticed by these gentlemen.
With the 1990 democracy movement, Eyadema and his collaborates tried to paint and make people believe that the problem was a conflict between the Ewe of the South and the Kabye of the North or the North against the South when in fact it wasn’t like that. Eyadema did all this to gain the political and military support of the Kabye and other Northerners for himself. Some people in the North chased away Souherners who were working in the North in 1990’s unrest and in the South some peopletried to chase Northers. I can say we were lucky this kind of situation didn’t go too far because it would have been a real mess. Thanks God! They tried to convince people falsely that the first president of Togo Sylvanus Olympio (who is Ewe) never cared about people from the North or the kabye and was only going to develop the South and if it wasn’t for him Eyadema who came in power the kabye would have been screwed forever. While in fact his wasn’t through. Eyadema tried during his life and presidency to paint himself as a good patriot and used propaganda to build himself an image of peace maker. They had people dancing and singing for him everywhere he went in Togo portraying him as the savior and the unifier of Togo under one national party RPT. They even made us learn in school the names of the Prfets and the RPT leaders and some others.

Traditionally, the relationship between the Ewe and the Kabyé had been tense, but restrained. That’s the Ewe view, at least. The Ewe needed the hardworking northerners as laborers, and the Kabyé needed the jobs. But that relationship was one of dependency, and sometimes exploitation and violence. When tensions grew in Togo, Eyadema started arming “his people” – the Kabye – and the Ewe started getting scared of the Kabyé among them. In 1990, during the unrest then, this tension sometimes exploded into regular genocide. In several villages in the region I was familiar with, serious, but relatively minor violent incidents between Ewe ad Kabyé led to the total annihilation of several Kabyé villages. In our village, the chief demanded that all Kabyé turn in any weapons they possessed. In turn, he offered security guarantees to these people, who lived way up in the hills, on remote farms. To my knowledge, these guarantees were kept.

On the other hand, the Kabye-dominated military frequently turned violent against Ewe civilians, and sometimes against anyone who crossed their path. I don’t know how many times I had drunk soldiers wave loaded assault rifles or pistols in my face at road blocks, just because they did not like my face, or I did not offer a large enough bribe. During the strikes, Ewe villages were harassed, razed and burnt down by the military. The prisons were full of Ewe dissidents and trouble-makers.

All the while, the weapons dealers, diamond smugglers, drug traffickers, and looters were getting richer and richer. The CIA estimates the 2003 annual per capita income in Togo at $1,600. That is comparable to Haiti, Nepal and North Korea, and quite a bit less than Bangladesh ($2,000), Viet Nam ($2,700) or neighboring Ghana ($2,300). Yet, in 2002, Eyadema’s personal wealth was estimated at $2.8 billion, and his personal financial advisor, Maurice Assor, at also over $2 billion. Eyadema owned a Fokker 28, Grumman helicopters, a DC-8, various Boeing jets and an arsenal of arms. (more info ). He owned numerous mansions all over Togo, and some prime real estate in places like Tokyo, Paris and Manhattan. Clearly he spread some of his wealth among his clan in his hometown of Pya, near Kara. But even Kara itself, does not particularly stand out among Togolese cities. Maybe the roads are nicer and the electricity is more predictable. But I heard from some Kabyé, who were not part of his clan, that the rest of “his people” didn’t see much of his wealth. The military was still underpaid and often they, too, had to wait a week for their paychecks. Yet, they were fiercely loyal, because they were simply scared of what would happen to them if Eyadema lost control of power.

Eyadema bought houses for French leaders in Europe and financed some of their political leaders’ campaigns when his own people is leaving way under poverty line (and $ 250 per capita earning YOU VERIFY AND SEE THE RIGHT ONE I’M NOT SURE)
In 1990’s after a national sovereign conference that grouped Togolese of all religions and political parties and intellectuals and scholars, a prime minister Joseph Kokou Koffigoh was elected and was supposed to lead a reconciliation transition towards presidential elections and democray. But it was without counting the military and and the strong will of Eyadema to stay in power. He attacked the office of the prime minister with tanks and a whole battalion of the army. They arrested the prime minister and that was the end of the transition and the begining of the fake democracy of Eyadema and the RPT regime until his death.
I heard from some friends students originally from Kabye and other ethnic groups of the North who were on campus that in the North part of the country only part of Eyadem’s antive village was electrified and developped with big houses of those who were in his goverment and the other half was in total darkeness and people still living in huts with no clean water. Tehy also told me that one of Eyadema’s many children called Ernest who was a military leader acted like the president of the North and had people who were not with him or his father beaten and killed as he wanted. Alot of people were scared of him in the North part of the country. They also told me that contrary to what people believed Eyadema and RPT leaders’ wealth was not benefiting the other people in the North part of the country and they also were victims of the regime. Eyadema’s regime run Togo without sharing from 1967 to today and teir regiem is like a mafia where either you’re with them or against them. Those who tried to say anything a little different than waht the boss taught were considere traders and treated like that. Dahuku Pere who is from Eyadema’s hometown Pya tried to reason him and make him become a little democratic but he was considered manipulated by the opposition and he almost got killed. Agbeyome Kodzo who was one of the hard bones of the RPT regime had the same treatment and he had to flee to France. He denounced every aspects of Eyadema’s regime and called for the effort to end Eyadema’s dictatorship and lack of democracy. Eyadema said of him” Ce garcon ne represente rien politiquement. Il est manipule par l’opposition.” (“This boy doesn’t represent anything politically and he is manipulated by the opposition”). To show the world that he wants to continue in his father’s footsteps Faure made Agbeyome arrested and thrown in prison in Kara after he returned to Togo just before the presidential elections of april 24, 2005. The vendetta Gnassingbe has just restarted.

Just like his father came in power with a coup, Faure also came in power with a coup February 5, 2005 just hours after the death of his father. What a good ressemblance! He later falsely resigned to come back in an election full of killings. It’s the beginning of the reign of Eyadema II. We should know that Eyadema’s or his son’s dictatorship is hurting all Togo people not just the EWE or people form the South but also the kabye, the soldiers and who are underpaid and every Togolese.Leaders of the RPT regime is just using the ethnic or political tension to stay in power and get richer.

With the French behind him, arming the Kabyé dominated military, and the Kabyé scared of retaliation from the Ewe (and others), and the Ewe under the boot of his dictatorship, Eyadema held Togo in a stranglehold that gave him unlimited power, vast fortunes and a bloody legacy. His son, Faure Gnassingbé appears determined to continue the “family business.” Just like under his father, he and his family and the looters and crooks that surround them, are getting a free ride. The Togolese people, Ewe as well as Kabyé, and everyone else, get stuck with the tab.
by Jurgen and Agbessi