Hamadou Tidiane Sy
29 January 2008
analysis
Dakar — Until a decade ago, Cote d'Ivoire was a rich and peaceful country of 17 million inhabitants bathing on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and was referred to as the "West African miracle".
Cote d'Ivoire, the top cocoa producer and exporter in the world used to be a little Eldorado country, attracting millions of migrants: some in search of work, others running away from neighbouring countries caught in political turmoil and violence.
Proudly erected in the south of the country is Abidjan, the former capital city and still a strategic and cosmopolitan urban centre. It continues to host the major political institutions, although Yamoussoukro has been officially named the political capital since 1983.
With its glittering lights, its modern highways and its four "glass towers", the vibrant city crossed by a few lagoons, used to be called by some - a bit exaggeratedly though - the West African "Manhattan".
Abidjan, was a West African business hub where western companies invested a lot and prospered.
Cote d'Ivoire was a small island of peace and economic boom, surrounded by restless nations such as Liberia or nations less favoured by nature, such as the dry Sahelian countries like Mali or Burkina Faso.
This was the case until 1999, when Cote d'Ivoire entered an era of turmoil, chaos and political instability.
Now the once hailed "miracle" stands as a divided nation, in search of peace, where the UN and other humanitarian organisations are desperately trying to bring things back to normalcy. But more desperate are the ordinary and weary citizens, some of whom are now scattered around the countries they used to look at with condescendence.
It all started in December 1999, when the four decade long history of political stability was suddenly brought to an end, following a military uprising on Christmas day. Ever since, the country is "in crisis" as the official terminology goes.
Several peace agreements have been signed and many solutions have been proposed and tried. Despite some little progress, none of these has yet produced the expected results. Final and definite peace is yet to be found.
True reconciliation is still a dream. For ordinary citizens, days of little hope alternate with days of despair. And it's been like this for almost a decade now.
"The absence of fighting does not mean the end of the war. Equally, the absence of gun shots does not mean the end of the crisis", President Laurent Gbagbo himself admitted on January 21, while extending his New Year wishes to the army, one of the main actors at the origin - and still at the heart of the lingering Ivorian crisis.
When the president was issuing this warning in the early days of the New Year, the country was yet again pregnant with rumours of a "failed military coup"! Army Sergeant Ibrahima Coulibaly (alias IB), believed to be the mastermind behind the 1999 uprising, was again on all newspaper front pages, accused of preparing another coup, an operation allegedly planned in Benin, where he was living in exile, and the objective of which was to "put a final end" to Laurent Gbagbo's rule.
Laurent Gbagbo, 63, a long time opponent to the first country's president Felix Houphouet Boigny came to power in October 2000, following post-election confusion.
For a few days marked by violent protests mainly in Abidjan, Mr Gbagbo's supporters took to the streets, saying "No" to what they considered as an attempt to rig the electoral process. The protesters finally managed to prompt the once hailed "saviour" General Robert Gueï to flee, and cleared the way to power for Mr Gbagbo.
His accession to the presidency took place through what Gbagbo, a history professor, named "calamitous elections".
He was a self-proclaimed winner, who actually came to power neither through the bullet nor through the ballot - despite the 59 per cent of the votes allegedly attributed to him.
Rather, he simply took advantage of the citizens violently expressed anger while the electoral commission was caught in internal contradictions, trying to please the incumbent, army General Roert Gueï who was already proclaimed the winner.
Like Mr Gbagbo, General Gueï was brought to power the preceding year, also after an uprising. But a military one this time, led by the same sergeant "IB". At the time young and disgruntled soldiers carried out a mutiny which suddenly turned into a full military coup d'etat. President Henry Konan Bédié - who replaced the "father of the nation" (Houphouet Boigny) after his death in 1993 - had to flee to save his life.
The mutinous soldiers were left with the power in their hands. They did not know what to do with it and went to find General Robert Guei and offered him the presidential seat on a silver plate. At least, so the story goes in Abidjan's "maquis", the local version of popular cafés. The coup was later nicknamed the "Christmas coup", or the "Millennium coup", as it happened in the very last days of 1999. The 20th century was slowly dying away, and with it, a whole era for Cote d'Ivoire.
But, neither Robert Guei (killed later in another uprising in 2002 while he was not in power anymore), nor his successor Gbagbo, managed to bring any good to the country.
But, contrary to Gueï who fled the throne to save his life when things turned tough, Mr Gbagbo, a tenacious fighter who had endured several forms of victimization, including imprisonment during his years in opposition is clinging to his presidential seat. And he has succeeded so far.
He has survived several episodes which could have ousted any ordinary leader from power, the most serious of which is the September 2002 assault against his regime. Last week Mr Gbagbo defiantly repeated: "Nor the United Nations nor France can chase me away from the presidency". Those who know the man can believe him.
In the course of the past five years, he has at several occasions given some evidence of his ability to always save his power, including when he was sitting in the most uncomfortable positions, or when he had to face the strong pressure from the "international community": The United Nations, France and the Economic Community of West African States.
Against all these actors, Mr Gbagbo has used one weapon whenever they expressed positions detrimental to his political survival: they are foreigners plotting against Cote 'Ivoire and its people, to better profit from its wealth.
It has worked and it sills works. It has created around him a sacred circle made of radical "Patriots", whose youth branch ("Les Jeunes Patriotes") is even more extremist, and who are ready to defend him in all circumstances.
More than his own political party (the Ivorian Patriotic Front, FPI) these are the people who have kept him in power ever since the September 2002 attack.
This extremely violent attack was carried out on the night of 22nd September 2002, while Mr Gbagbo was out of the country, a group of soldiers simultaneously attacked Abidjan and some of the major cities. They failed in Abidjan but succeeded in the second town, Bouake (north central), Korhogo (far north) and other areas in the Northern part of Cote d'Ivoire.
Poorly equipped
The regular army, poorly equipped and which has never been a strong one was easily overcome by the heavily armed insurgents. This weakness of the Ivorian army was a deliberate policy of successive regimes, starting from the very first one the country has experienced after independence and led by Felix Houphouet Boigny .
Always fearing to be toppled by soldiers, as was the trend then across Africa, the first Ivorian president, had never given neither real powers nor good training to the whole army; nor has he ever seriously equipped them. Mr Boigny and his different successors preferred to choose a very few selected battalions, mostly within the gendarmerie (a paramilitary body) for their own safety and to safeguard their respective regimes. The selection criterion was based on trust and loyalty.
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