Observers of Guinea’s political crisis have raised concern that the seeds of Africa’s next civil war are being sown in that country. Giving credence to this alarm is a sprawling camp, where white contractors are getting military training to an estimated 1,500 to 4,000 men from one of Guinea’s smallest ethnic groups.

The trainees, say a camp employee, a government official and several diplomats, are almost all Guerze, the tribe of Guinea’s troubled leader.

The camp is one more sign of the growing instability in this West African nation of 10 million, where President Capt. Moussa “Dadis” Camara was shot at and lightly wounded by his own presidential guard last Thursday. Isolated and increasingly fearful for his safety, Camara appears to be tapping the dangerous sentiment of tribal allegiance in a bid to hold onto power.

Dictators have used such tactics throughout the continent, in some cases plunging countries into civil war. War in Guinea could also spread across the region along ethnic lines, because Guinea shares its largest ethnic group, the Peul, with five neighboring countries.

“We worry that he is recruiting and training this ethnic militia so that it can carry out blows below the belt,” said Mamadou Baadikko, president of the Union of Democratic Forces, an opposition party. “If this doesn’t stop, the risk of civil war is real.”

The 45-year-old Camara led a military coup last December, hours after the death of former strongman Lansana Conte. His first speeches were stirring, promising to crack down on corruption in the dirt-poor country and to hold elections in which he would not run. Many hoped he would reach out beyond his immediate clan because it makes up just 0.05 percent of the population, and because he is Christian in an 85 percent Muslim country.

But nearly all the top ministries were handed to men from his ethnicity. And only a few months later, Camara, 45, began hinting that he planned to run for office.

When opposition leaders led a rally on Sept. 28 to demand he step down, the presidential guard opened fire on the thousands of protesters, killing at least 157. Witnesses say the protesters were mostly Peul, while the soldiers who attacked them were overwhelmingly ‘forestier,’ the ethnic groups from Guinea’s forested southeast, including the Guerze.

It was just a few weeks before the massacre that residents of Forecariah, a dusty town 80 miles south of the country’s capital, began seeing buses arrive loaded with young men who spoke only forestier dialects.

The training camp for the militia is inside the former campus of the national gendarmerie academy in the village of Kalia, 2 1/2 miles up a dirt road from Forecariah, said a camp employee who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. He said that in mid-summer, the academy’s director and staff were replaced by men from the president’s ethnic group.

Eighty percent of the recruits, he said, are Guerze. The rest are from the related forestier tribes. Only a handful are from the country’s major ethnicities, including the Peul, which make up 40 percent of the population, and the Soussou, which account for 20 percent.

Local residents said the foreign trainers were speaking English and two other languages which sounded like Hebrew and Afrikaans.

Parked outside were several four-wheel drive vehicles and a large bus with license plates beginning with “AG,” designated for the “Armee Guineene,” French for the Guinean Army. Locals say the bus ferries the men to and from the camp.

Idrissa Cherif, the junta’s minister of communication, said media reports that mercenaries are in Guinea are “lies.” He said Israelis are at the camp in Kalia on an official mission to train the Guinean army.

“Yes, there are Israeli citizens here,” Cherif said. “They are training our army … why do they want to tarnish the image of my country by calling them mercenaries?”

But the Israeli government said no permits have been issued to Israeli companies or individuals to operate in the security sector in Guinea. “Those doing so are acting in violation of Israeli law and may face criminal charges in Israel,” said Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.