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An African Paradise Lost

By Janine di Giovanni

November 16, 2004 (Wall Street Journal)

Before a series of violent coup d'etats shattered the tropical idyll of the Ivory Coast, life for the fortunate colonials who took up residence in the capital, Abidjan, was very Graham Greene. There were weekends on deserted Atlantic beaches; wonderful food and wine imported from France; sprawling villas with flowering trees and turquoise swimming pools tended by an army of servants. The world's largest producer of cocoa was a lush and sensuous place to live.

Two years ago, I was alone in our home there when I heard the first gunshots in the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 19. At first, there was a news blackout. No one knew who had launched the coup attempt, or why. It was not until evening that a few facts emerged. A number of junior military officers who had fled to Burkina Faso in 2000 after being detained and tortured under then-President Robert Guei's government had formed an organized movement, The Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI), and moved against the government in Abidjan. Most were former soldiers. Many were from northern ethnic groups or were strong supporters of the opposition RDR (Republican Rally) Party headed by the Alassane Ouattara, a Muslim who had been disqualified from presidential elections in October 2000, along with thousands of voters, under the country's racist citizenship law.

The election, and that disqualification, planted the seeds of the troubles that haunt the country to this day. In the past few years, the Ivory Coast was divided along ethnic and religious lines and between the Muslim north and Christian south. The government nurtured fierce xenophobia. The local press egged on the public to attack anyone "not 100% Ivorian," as if this was Rwanda a decade ago or the Balkans throughout the 1990s. Add to the local tensions a bad colonial hangover and deep-seated resentment against the French who control the businesses. Foreigners were attacked. The rebels from the north marched on the south. The French soon intervened, forcing warring parties to sign a peace deal in January of last year. But none of the key provisions were ever adopted. The rebels, in turn, refused to disarm.

The cease-fire was far too fragile to ever hold, and the hatred simmering beneath it had not been quelled. So it comes as little surprise that the Ivory Coast is in flames again. Unhappy with the original peace deal that left the country divided in half, and believing (rightly or wrongly) that it can win a renewed war, the government earlier this month attacked rebel positions in the north. Nine French peacekeepers were also killed.

The French retaliated by destroying Ivorian planes. The government called out the mobs into the streets, bringing riots and bloodshed. France rapidly deployed more troops. Last week, more than 400 people were wounded in Abidjan. There is no water or electricity in the north; in Abidjan, terrified expats are being helicoptered off rooftops and flown back home. There are reports of rapes of French nationals. I spoke to an American missionary from the International Christian Academy who sadly told me he was closing down the school, even after they had bravely endured the violence in 2002 to keep the school running. "I just can't guarantee the safety of my students," he said.

One wonders realistically how long it will be before Abidjan descends into the full-scale hell on earth of the wars in Liberia or Sierra Leone. The diplomatic process, and the French strategy, is now in tatters.

***

How did this African oasis of stability and peace get to this unhappy point? After independence from France in 1960, President Felix Houphouet-Boigny ruled the Ivory Coast uninterrupted for 35 years. At the height of prosperity, 50,000 French citizens lived there. Houphouet-Boigny adopted more liberal policies than his Marxist-Leninist neighbors in Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso. He actively courted French investment. The economy grew, on average, 7% during his reign.

But following the plunge of world cocoa prices in the 1990s, millions of immigrant workers – around a third of the population – who had flocked to the Ivory Coast seeking work were made scapegoats. Political successors to Houphouet-Boigny introduced the concept of "Ivorianess," resulting in the restrictive citizenship law.

Tensions mounted, culminating in 1999 in the first coup d'etat staged by General Guei. In elections a year later, Guei barred Mr. Ouattara on the grounds that, in their view, he wasn't a "true Ivorian." Thousands of protesters took to the streets after Guei dissolved the National Electoral Commission and declared himself president. His elite Presidential Guard fired on demonstrators, killing many. After his military and police abandoned him, Guei fled the country. Eventually, after more confusion and bloodshed, Laurent Gbagbo, candidate from the Ivorian Popular Front, who had led the polls, was sworn in. But Mr. Ouattara's angry supporters demanded fresh elections.

Their chance came in September 2002 when xenophobia and anger turned to real fighting. The vigilante attacks on foreigners were brutal. Government death squads began operating at night. Mass graves were found; child soldiers were recruited and sexual violence rose. From my garden, I saw the smoke rising from the burning shanties, and when I drove out there, the victims tearfully told of men friendly to the government raiding their houses, torching their possessions, screaming at them to leave the country, or they would be killed. One day, driving near Bouake, I saw government soldiers taking away a truckload of wide-eyed, terrified prisoners. A Red Cross officer later told me what I already knew: They might be going to a prison, but equally, the might be headed for a mass grave in the forest. It was ethnic cleansing, African-style.

Foreign reporters were intimidated as local newspapers and radio encouraged Ivorians to attack them because they were siding with the rebels. When a respected Agence France Presse journalist was assassinated by the Ivorian police in front of the Presidency Building last year, most agencies closed shop and moved to Senegal.

***

Over the past 18 months of "peace," France's relations with President Gbagbo have steadily worsened. The president has outwardly called for calm, but he is a nationalist who has exploited racist sentiments among his supporters in the Christian south, in the manner of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Today France doesn't have any clear strategy to stop the violence and put the country on a different track. Lacking that, it might be better off packing up and going home.

Jacques Chirac has said that the sole objective of the French deployment – there are currently 5,000 troops based in the Ivory Coast – has been to protect the 14,000 French civilians there. Locals are suspicious of his intentions. France guarantees the central African franc and its businesses still dominate the economy. Even Le Figaro, the pro-government French daily, is bewildered. "Hardly anyone in France understands what are our short-medium-or longterm policies in the Ivory Coast," it said recently. "Do we want to reoccupy our former colony to impose democracy ... do we more modestly want to consolidate the cease-fire, or will we be content mainly to protect what remains of French interests? No one knows." As for the once glamorous Paris of West Africa, it is gone forever. The expatriates who have not been evacuated are staying behind iron gates.

Meanwhile, refugees fleeing over the Liberian border reported that they saw Liberian fighters going the other way into Ivory Coast to work as guns for hire – triggering fears of a wider, regional war. Perhaps Ivory Coast will one day be able to get past the pain it is enduring, and go the way of a Sierra Leone, which now is undergoing something of a reckoning with its brutal past. Watching the images of Abidjan in flames, the anger on the faces of the protestors, the determination of both the government and of the rebels, one can not but think that the healing is still a very long way off.

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