Foreign Affairs editor Stuart Reid discusses his project, "Gambia's Dictator and the Failed Coup" where he reports on Gambia, a West African country that is home to fewer than two million people.
In 1994, a 29-year-old lieutenant named Yahya Jammeh took power in a military coup d'état. Under Jammeh, Gambia's once-open society began to contract. Activists were harassed; journalists disappeared. In December 2014, a group of Gambians from the diaspora decided to take matters in their own hands, and they launched an attack on Gambia's presidential residence. Things did not go as planned.