João Bernardo Vieira ruled the tiny West African nation of Guinea-Bissau for 22 of the past 29 years before being shot at his house, close to his palace, by government soldiers on Monday morning. Vieira’s violent death was the culmination of a power struggle with the army chief of staff, General Batista Tagme na Waie, who was himself blown up by a bomb planted at his office the previous day — an act blamed by the commander’s supporters on the President himself.

The deadly rivalry of the two men was a reflection of ethnic tensions but was also widely believed to be fuelled by their involvement in the lucrative cocaine trade, run by Colombian cartels, which in recent years had been exploiting Guinea-Bissau’s feeble legal institutions to make it a key transit point for shipping the drug to Europe.

The power vacuum created by the assassination of the country’s two most powerful men has raised fears that the former Portuguese colony has become Africa’s first “narco-state”.

Joao Bernardo Vieira, or “Nino”, was a central figure in the history of Guinea-Bissau from the start of the war against Portuguese rule in 1963. A hero of the liberation struggle, he became army commander after independence in 1974 and seized power six years later. In 19 turbulent years in office he survived countless coup attempts before being deposed in 1999 after a civil war in which thousands were killed, wounded or displaced.

Forced into exile in Portugal, Vieira returned to Guinea-Bissau in 2005 after yet another coup and unexpectedly won election to the presidency standing as an independent candidate. This popular endorsement, however, could not mask that his authority had waned and was heavily compromised by his lack of a strong political base and by rival loyalties within the armed forces.

Vieira was born in 1939 in Bissau, the port city on the Atlantic coast which was the capital of the colony of Portuguese Guinea (Bissau was added to the name of the country after independence to avoid confusion with the neighbouring Republic of Guinea.) The first stirrings of the independence struggle were already in the air with the founding in 1956 of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, or PAIGC.

Vieira joined the party in 1960 and when it launched its liberation war three years later, he rose quickly through the ranks, becoming commander of the rebels’ southern front in 1964. The PAIGC quickly gained control of vast swathes of the interior, aided by the jungle terrain and porous borders through which shipments of arms came from the Soviet Union, Cuba and China. Vieira himself was sent for military training in China.

The war was to last 11 years until a coup in Lisbon ended the right-wing military dictatorship that had underpinned colonial rule and this resulted in independence for Guinea-Bissau along with all the other Portuguese colonies in Africa. The country’s first President was Luis Cabral, brother of the assassinated father of the independence struggle, Amilcar Cabral. Vieira became one of Cabral’s closest aides, and by the late 1970s was serving as both Prime Minister and army commander.

Guinea-Bissau’s leaders had inherited an impoverished and underdeveloped state with low literacy and widespread malnutrition and disease. The mood in the country was also poisoned by the anger of retribution against black people who had served in the Portuguese Army, of whom thousands were slaughtered. By 1980 dissatisfaction with the Government, whose socialist economic policies had failed, was widespread, and Vieira led a bloodless coup, which toppled Cabral. Justifying his action on the basis of the regime’s alleged corruption and mismanagement, Vieira suspended the constitution and became head of a nine-member military “Council of the Revolution”.

Despite his position, Vieira’s relationship with the army was uneasy. There was a serious ethnic split: most officers were Balantes, the country’s dominant ethnic group, while Vieira was a Papel, a far smaller ethnic community representing 5 per cent of the population. These tensions came to a head after an attempted coup, prompting Vieira to establish a military tribunal that purged the top Balante officers, sentencing many to death. Fatefully, General Batista Tagme na Waie was exiled to a deserted island off the coast and left there for years before being allowed back.

Having established his authority over the armed forces, Vieira adopted a free-market approach to the economy. Some progress was made in attracting foreign investment and encouraging the emergence of local entrepreneurs, but critics accused Vieira of “crony capitalism”.

Having ensured greater political stability by the end of the 1980s, he felt confident enough to embrace the demands for political pluralism which were sweeping Guinea-Bissau along with the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. A ban on political parties other than the ruling PAIGC, was lifted in 1991 and elections were organised. Through this process Vieira achieved democratic legitimacy, winning a second-round run-off in a presidential poll which observers deemed free and fair. He was sworn in as Guinea-Bisau’s first democratically-elected President in 1994.

His dismissal in June 1998 of his chief of staff, General Ansumane Mané, whom he accused of allowing weapons to be smuggled to rebels in neighbouring Senegal, triggered a revolt that split the army into rival factions. The fighting lasted almost a year before Mané’s forces got the upper hand and toppled Vieira, who fled to Lisbon. To add insult to injury, he was expelled from the PAIGC for treason and incitement to warfare.

It would take another coup — this time removing his successor, President Kumba Yalá — before Vieira was allowed to return home in April 2005. After the Supreme Court ruled him eligible to run in presidential elections he put himself forward as an independent candidate, emerged victorious in a run-off and was sworn in as president in October 2005.

More than 30 years after independence, Vieira was once again ruler of a country plagued by economic and social problems, with massive foreign debts and heavily dependent on foreign aid. Its ragged, unpatrolled coastline was about to become a haven for the smuggling of people and drugs, with the criminal networks involved allegedly well connected to the ruling elite. Within weeks of resuming office, Vieira dismissed the Government, but his attempts to form a stable majority in parliament were to face constant setbacks, culminating in the defeat of his supporters in elections last November. The loyalty of elements of the armed forces was again an issue: the chief of staff in place when Vieira returned to the presidency was none other than General Batista Tagme na Waie.

The two were set on a collision course that was to result in both their deaths. Vieira narrowly survived an assassination attempt in November when his presidential guard, drawn exclusively from the Papel ethnic group, fought off soldiers in a three-hour gun battle. He responded by arresting a dozen Balante military personnel known to be close to the general. In January General na Waie was nearly killed in an attack on his car that he blamed on Vieira’s men.

João Bernardo Vieira, President of Guinea-Bissau, was born on April 27, 1939. He was murdered on March 2, 2009, aged 69