While Gambian President Dawda Kairaba Jawara was traveling abroad on 30 July 1981, Leftist rebels led by Libya-trained Kukoi Samba Sanyang took control of the country. Jawara rushed to Dakar to invite the Senegalese to invade his country, put a stop to the putsch, and reverse the coup. Once Senegalese troops restored Jawara to power, the leaders of Senegal and The Gambia formed the Senegambia Confederation, which remained in effect only from 1982 to 1989. There seemed to have been little response to the coup from Marxist regimes or from Western-aligned African countries. Why? And why could Senegal and The Gambia not make confederation work? This paper tries to answer these questions while showing that the Confederation lasted only seven years because Senegambian elites failed to win popular support for it.
