Abidjan — French military forces - who agreed Friday to act as a buffer force between loyalist and rebel troops in Cote d'Ivoire until the arrival of a West African ceasefire monitoring force - held initial meetings Sunday with dissidents soldiers in their central stronghold of Bouake.
Meanwhile, leaders from six West African countries, who make up the contact mediation group set up to broker peace in Cote dIvoire, are scheduled to meet in the economic capital Abidjan this week, six days after a ceasefire deal was agreed by rebel soldiers and the Ivorian government.
The deputy executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), Malian General Cheick Oumar Diarra, told allAfrica.com that the presidents of Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Niger, Nigeria and Togo would hold their inaugural session Wednesday in Abidjan to work out implementation of the peace plan agreed last week.
Diarra said the presidential discussions would be preceded by the arrival, Tuesday, of a regional military reconnaissance mission. He said the team would immediately begin a military assessment and evaluation exercise in Cote dIvoire, ahead of the expected deployment of West African peacemakers in the next two weeks to monitor the ceasefire.
The Ecowas deputy chief said negotiations between the government and mutineers should begin as soon as the presidential contact group had designated one or more mediators among them.
Reports said the French troops began deploying along the frontlines, Sunday, after strengthening their checkpoints on Saturday with sandbags, wire and concrete block at Tiebissou, south of Bouake.
It has fallen to Paris, the former colonial power in Cote dIvoire, to provide security and military supervision. The French troops have agreed to monitor the military situation, ensuring that both sides stay in their current positions and strictly observe the ceasefire. The truce came into force at midnight last Thursday night after a frenetic week of negotiating between the government and rebels via West African peace envoys.
Speaking at the summit of the Organisation of French-speaking Nations (OIF) in Beirut, Lebanon at the weekend, French President Jacques Chirac said his military would continue helping in Cote dIvoire and provide logistics for the West African force. "Fighting is not a solution. The path of dialogue must be found," said Chirac.
Until now, the formal role of the French force - which has had a permanent military base in Cote dIvoire since independence in 1960 - had been to secure and evacuate its nationals and other foreigners from its former colony. But the strategic French military presence, about half-way between loyalist and rebel troops frontline positions, effectively blocked the mutineers advance south towards the political capital, Yamoussoukro, and onto Abidjan, the city they failed to seize during their coup attempt on September 19.
The rebels still hold much of the north and centre of Cote dIvoire, though they lost the countrys western cocoa capital, Daloa, to government forces after a series of bitter battles last week. Cote dIvoire is the worlds top cocoa producer. Market prices - which hit 17 year highs at the peak of the fighting - fell heavily Friday, with news of the ceasefire, closing more than seven percent down the same day.
Serious violations
West African mediators have come up with an ambitious peace initiative to try to end the rebellion, but analysts say the devil is in the confusing detail of how the plan will work, as well as the implementation and interpretation of the truce, which the Patriotic Movement of Cote dIvoire (MPCI) rebels signed Thursday and President Laurent Gbagbo accepted later that night.
So far, there have been no reports of any ceasefire violations. But the same cannot be said of human rights abuses. The watchdog group, Amnesty International, sent an assessment team to Abidjan for 10 days and issued a damning report, Friday, accusing both government and rebel forces of serious violations. The organization reported summary executions committed by both sides.
Among the reported extrajudicial killings, by government troops, were the former military leader, General Robert Guei and his wife Rose, both shot dead on the first day of the attempted coup in Abidjan. Eight close associates of Gueis, including his two aides de camp and the family chauffeur, were also killed on 19 September.
Amnesty reported that the rebels and loyalists had targeted and harassed civilians suspected of sympathising with their rivals. This, said Amnesty, had led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people fleeing the conflict zones, prompting a serious humanitarian crisis.
Amnesty International also pointed a finger at elements among the security forces in Abidjan, who it said deliberately destroyed the shantytown homes of immigrant workers and poor Ivorians, accused of "harbouring rebels".
"Certain media organizations, including state radio and television, contributed to an atmosphere of exacerbated nationalism," reported Amnesty, "inciting civilians and the military to take out their frustrations on immigrant populations, especially the Burkinabe," said the report.
The Ivorian authorities have obliquely accused Cote dIvoires northern neighbour, Burkina Faso, of backing the rebellion. Burkina is widely suspected of having allowed its territory to be used to train dissident Ivorian troops and army deserters.
Many of the rebel troops are Muslim northerners and accuse the government of discriminating against their part of the country and concentrating on the largely Christian south. Some of their commanders said it would be difficult to convince their fighters to accept a ceasefire. "They are worried because they do not understand politics. They want to know if they can obtain what they have been fighting for," rebel Sergeant Cherif Ousmane told reporters in Bouake.
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Amnesty also said it had received reports that the rebels forcibly recruited young men into their ranks. Loyalist forces were accused of intimidation and extortion.
The fighting in Cote dIvoire has left hundreds dead, displaced more than 200,000 and intensified ethnic, political and religious tensions in a country once hailed as a peaceful haven in a turbulent region.
Now Ivorians hardly recognize their nation and cannot believe that the turmoil they once witnessed across their borders during the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone is now seriously threatening their own country.
After holding their breaths for one long month, during four weeks of fighting and uncertainty, the people of Cote dIvoire - and the millions of immigrants who have chosen it as their adoptive home - breathed a sigh of relief Thursday night, when the ceasefire was agreed.
They will now have to wait to see whether both sides are prepared to give peace a chance.
