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Côte d'Ivoire: Peacekeeping Continued
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Aug 5, 2004 (040805)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
West African leaders and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a late
July summit in Accra, Ghana, won an unexpected new agreement from
Ivorian leaders for a timetable to implement the peace settlement
signed in January 2003. Some 3,500 UN peacekeeping troops, out of
an authorized strength of 6,240, are in the country, with the
largest contingents from Bangladesh, Benin, Ghana, Morocco, Niger,
Senegal, and Togo. But the country is still divided, and it is
clear that meeting the new timetable for disarmament and new
election procedures will depend on continuing pressure on Ivorian
leaders.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains two recent updates from the UN's
Integrated Regional Information Networks, and the executive summary
of an extensive analysis of the obstacles to peace in Côte
d'Ivoire, published by the International Crisis Group earlier in
July.
A summary of the background to West African and UN mediation and
peacekeeping efforts in the country is available at
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/minuci/background.html
Additional information on the current UN operation is at
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unoci
For additional background and links on Côte d'Ivoire, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/cotedivoire.php
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Côte d'Ivoire: Peace summit sees disarmament starting in October
President Laurent Gbagbo gets another month to drive through
political reforms
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)
http://www.irinnews.org
ACCRA, 1 Aug 2004 (IRIN) - Under heavy pressure from a dozen
African leaders and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the leaders of
the rival factions in Côte d'Ivoire have agreed to a new timetable
to put the country's faltering peace process back on track, with
the aim of starting a disarmament programme on 15 October.
An agreement signed on Friday night after two days of talks in the
Ghanaian capital Accra committed them to enacting all the political
reforms demanded by the French-brokered Linas-Marcoussis peace
agreement of January 2003 by the end of August.
The key reforms are: a new nationality law to make it easier for
West African immigrants to Côte d'Ivoire and their descendents to
gain Ivorian nationality, a new law to make it easier for such
immigrants to gain title to the land they work and allow their
children to inherit such land and, finally, a reform of the
constitution to make it easier for Ivorians of immigrant descent to
become president.
The Accra agreement also commits President Laurent Gbagbo to
issuing a decree to formally delegate executive powers to Prime
Minister Seydou Diarra, the independent head of a power-sharing
government which collapsed at the end of March.
In the past, Diarra's decisions were often been over-ruled by
Gbagbo, who enjoys near absolute authority under the terms of Côte
d'Ivoire's constitution.
The Accra accord aims to prevent this situation from recurring. It
demands that Gbagbo enshrine in law the delegation of specific
powers to Diarra to implement the Marcoussis peace agreement. These
powers were outlined in a letter from the president to the prime
minister on 12 December.
With the reform process apparently back on track, the rebel
movement occupying the north of Côte d'Ivoire and the four main
opposition parties represented in parliament agreed to return to
the government of national reconciliation.
They withdrew their 26 ministers at the end of March in protest at
the security forces's heavy handed repression of a banned
opposition demonstration in Abidjan. UN investigators said at least
120 people died in two days of political violence in the city.
Diplomats said Gbagbo had meanwhile agreed to reinstate three
opposition ministers whom he fired in May, including rebel leader
Guillaume Soro.
This obligation was not specifically mentioned in the joint
statement published by Gbagbo and his opponents at the end of the
Accra agreement
Along with the resurrection of the power-sharing government and the
enactment of political reforms by parliament, the Ivorian factions
committed themselves to starting a long-delayed process of
disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation (DDR) "by October 15
at the latest."
The Accra agreement stated "The DDR process will include all
paramilitary groups and militias."
Diplomats said this made clear that paramilitary groups supporting
Gbagbo as well as the rebel forces which have occupied the north of
Côte d'Ivoire since the country erupted into civil war in September
2002 would have to be disbanded.
Several previous efforts by the international community to put the
faltering Ivorian peace process back on track have failed.
Each time, Gbagbo has stalled on implementing political reforms
demanded by the Marcoussis accord.
The rebels have meanwhile have refused to hand in their weapons and
allow government administrators back to the north, saying ther were
sufficient guarantees in place for free and fair presidential
elections to be held in October 2005.
But this time, the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS), the African Union and the United Nations have set up a
joint team to monitor implementation of the Accra agreement closely
and issue a joint progress report every two weeks.
Ghanaian President John Kuffuor, who chaired the Accra talks in his
capacity as ECOWAS chairman, predicted that there would still be
problems ahead. But he warned that ECOWAS might apply sanctions to
any party which failed to fulfil its side of the latest peace deal.
"The going may be tough tough. It may not be easy, but the parties
must persevere," Kufuor told a press conference at the end of the
talks.
These were attended by 11 other African heads of state, including
Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, and
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
"ECOWAS might impose sections if the various parties fail to live
up to the accord," Kufuor warned. "I hope our other parties will
support us when it comes to that," he added. "Côte d'Ivoire must
succeed. We cannot sit by and let a sister nation fail."
Addressing the same press conference, Annan declined to say whether
the United Nations might also impose sanctions on erring parties to
the Ivorian peace agreement.
"I do not want ot prejudge what the (Security) Council might do if
the parties failed to live up to the agreements they themselves
have signed," the UN Secretary General said.
Hours before he spoke in Accra, the Security Council threatened to
take unspecified measures against the government of Sudan if it
failed to disarm the Janjawid militia movement, accused of
commiting extensive atrocities in the country's troubled Darfur
province, within 30 days.
The situation is Sudan was also discussed by the African summit in
Ghana.
Obasanjo said as he left the meeting on Friday that the situation
in Darfur had deteriorated since the beginning of July, when it was
discussed at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
The Nigerian president, who is the current chairman of the African
Union, said the organisation therefore needed to beef up the force
of 270 troops from Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda which it was
committed to sending to Darfur, in support of 96 African Union
peace monitors already deployed in the region.
"With what we have on the ground now, it appears we must have
additional forces of protection," Reuters quoted him as saying as
he left the Accra summit.
Over the past week, there have been suggestions that western
powers, including Britain, might also send troops to Darfur, but
the Sudanese government has flatly rejected the idea of such a
deployment.
On Saturday, France announced that it was moving 200 of its troops
stationed in the Chadian capital N'djamena up to the Sudanese
border to help Chad's own security forces prevent further raids
across the frontier by Janjawid militia groups.
France said it had also made available its Transall military
transport planes based in N'djamena to help airlift relief supplies
to nearly 200,000 refugees from Darfur who have crossed into
eastern Chad. Heavy rains have cut the dirt road which links the
remote region to the capital.
France's ambassador to Chad, Jean-Pierre Bercot, told the French
news agency AFP on Sunday that two French military helicopters were
flying these supplies onwards from the eastern town of Abeche to
individual refugee camps.
This material site comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian
information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the
United Nations or its agencies.
Côte d'Ivoire: UN Finds 99 Bodies in Mass Graves After Rebel
Clashes
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
August 3, 2004
Abidjan
UN human rights experts have uncovered three mass graves packed
with at least 99 bodies in the northern town of Korhogo where heavy
clashes between rival rebel factions took place in June, the UN
mission in Côte d'Ivoire (ONUCI) said.
"Some of these people were killed by bullets. And according to
reliable and consistent witness accounts, others suffocated to
death," ONUCI said in a statement on Monday night. It said that the
UN team which visited Korhogo to probe the clashes would publish
its final report as soon as possible.
A bulletin from the UN's World Food Programme, issued on Friday,
suggested an even bleaker picture.
"The UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire is investigating reports of human
rights abuses in Korhogo... So far, four mass graves have been
found with 150 corpses. The investigation continues," it said.
On 20 and 21 June, clashes erupted in the rebel capital Bouake, in
central Côte d'Ivoire, and Korhogo, a rebel-held city 225 km to the
north.
Fighters loyal to rebel leader Guillaume Soro said at the time they
had fought with supporters of Ibrahim Coulibaly, a former army
sergeant known by the initials "IB." He lives in France, but is
widely seen as a challenger to Soro for the rebel leadership.
The New Forces rebel movement accused President Laurent Gbagbo of
masterminding the two attacks as an act of provocation in
conjunction with President Lansana Conte of Guinea. It said that 22
people died in the clashes, but diplomats and humanitarian sources
suspected from the start that the death toll was much higher.
Several residents in Korhogo told IRIN that the number of dead
could reach 500, since many people were killed in the city after
the fighting when supporters of Soro went on a manhunt for people
suspected of backing IB.
The same sources said that those who died of suffocation had been
crammed into a container which for several months has been used by
the rebel forces in Korhogo as a makeshift prison.
In its statement, the ONUCI human rights team said it remained
concerned about those people still in detention.
New Forces officials declined to comment on the statement, saying
they were waiting to see the United Nations' final report on the
Korhogo clashes.
"We are surprised because we participated in the investigation and
we haven't yet received the findings," rebel spokesman Antoine
Beugre told IRIN by telephone from Bouake.
A spokesman for IB told French news agency AFP that Soro's troops
had engineered the massacre in the north to dispose of any
opponents to his regime.
"The existence of these mass graves prove that UN peacekeepers must
be deployed rapidly around the country, both in the north and the
south, to ensure the protection of all people," Vincent Rigoulet
said from Paris.
The ONUCI team spent 17 days investigating allegations of human
rights abuses, wrapping up on 26 July.
However, the statement of its initial findings was only published
a week later after a West African summit in the Ghanaian capital
Accra aimed at putting the faltering peace process in Côte d'Ivoire
back on track.
"They waited because they did not want it to obstruct the Accra
meeting," one West African diplomat told IRIN..
The two-day summit on Thursday and Friday last week extracted a
fresh pledge from all sides in the conflict to implement the
political reforms demanded by the French-brokered Linas-Marcoussis
peace agreement of January 2003. It also committed the government
and rebels to start a long-delayed process of disarmament by
October 15.
The West African diplomat said the ONUCI statement would pressure
the rebels into "keeping up their side of the (Accra) bargain" and
remind them that the international community was keeping a close
eye on them.
It would also send a positive signal to those Ivorians who think
that the UN has been shielding the rebels, he added.
Last May, the government of President Laurent Gbagbo was severely
criticised by a UN human rights investigation for its bloody
repression of a banned opposition demonstration in the commercial
capital Abidjan on March 25.
The UN human rights experts concluded that Gbagbo's security forces
had killed at least 120 people, many of them innocent civilians, in
two days of bloodletting.
It said most were killed by soldiers, policemen and shadowy
paramilitary gunmen linked to Gbagbo during a manhunt for suspected
rebel supporters after the street demonstrations had been
dispersed.
Given the preliminary findings of the UN probe into the events in
Korhogo, the rebels' own treatment of suspected opponents in their
ranks appears to have been no less brutal.
International Crisis Group
Côte d'Ivoire: No Peace in Sight
12 July 2004
[For the extensive full report, see
http://www.crisisweb.org/home/index.cfm?id=1235&l=1]
Executive Summary
The January 2003 Linas-Marcoussis Accords have been badly
compromised by a lack of good faith and political will. All the key
issues -- nationality, eligibility for elections, and disarmament
-- that they attempted to address in order to restore peace and
national unity to Côte d'Ivoire and lead it to presidential
elections in October 2005 are stalemated. No political actor has
shown the will to break the impasse. Opposition parties have left
the Government of National Reconciliation. The Forces Nouvelles,
remnants of the armed group that attempted a coup in September 2002
and subsequently took control of the north of the country, not only
refuse to disarm until after elections, but are flirting with
secession.
The international community, and especially the Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS), needs to take on the spoilers more
assertively and openly. Its diplomacy should be backed by a strong
attempt to end impunity. Otherwise there is real risk not only of
continued violence but that the war could spread across West
African borders.
Several elements of the Ivorian equation work against a political
solution. The situation is triangular, linking the political elite,
the security forces and militias, and business interests connected
to economic, often criminal, networks. The latter work in
conjunction with the political elite and are quick to take
advantage of the services of either security forces or militias.
None of these groups is homogenous, and internal rivalries are
aggravated by the fact that President Gbagbo and the Front
Populaire Ivoirien (FPI) are relative newcomers to the
political-business networks dominated for almost forty years by the
late President Houphouët-Boigny's Parti Démocratique de la Côte
d'Ivoire (PDCI) party.
The long-term context of the crisis includes twenty years of
economic downturn, an explosion of the number of unemployed (but
often well-educated) youth, and competition for the illicit spoils
of the state. The de facto partition between north and south has
made this competition even sharper. The FPI accuses the Forces
Nouvelles "rebels" of having risen to power by illegitimate means,
while the latter accuse President Gbagbo, winner of the dubious
2000 elections, of using militias and special forces to intimidate
and kill political enemies and economic challengers.
To get to the heart of Côte d'Ivoire's problems, it is necessary to
understand their economic dimension, and in particular, in terms of
the old dictum, to "follow the money". The political impasse is
exceptionally lucrative for almost everyone except ordinary
citizens. Major government figures have been accused of using state
monies, especially from the Enron-like maze of interlinked
institutions within the cocoa marketing system, for personal
enrichment, purchasing weapons, and hiring mercenaries. Members of
the Forces Nouvelles have been accused of monopolising lucrative
economic activity, including the trade in cotton and weapons. Some
observers have gone so far as to say that the killings of perhaps
120 citizens attempting a peaceful protest in Abidjan on 25-26
March 2004 originated in a power struggle between the ruling FPI
and the opposition PDCI over who would control the lucrative rents
emanating from corruption at the port.
It is not just leading politicians who may gain from the current
situation of neither peace nor war. Many others, from businessmen
close to the government to municipal political bosses, benefit
through business interests that are frequently protected (or
expanded) by militias of otherwise unemployed youth styling
themselves as "Young Patriots". These "patriots" themselves can
become quite rich. Militia leaders drive in expensive cars with
numerous bodyguards and are said to receive as much as $80,000 a
month from the presidential coffers. At the same time, members of
the security forces use roadblocks throughout the country to stop
civilians and shake them down.
The Linas-Marcoussis Accords are the product of compromise and thus
contain elements displeasing to every party. However, calls to
scrap or renegotiate them miss an important point. As some in Côte
d'Ivoire ask, what improvements would a new document make? The key
issues addressed in the Accords are as pressing as ever. The
problems lie in their application, and the sophisticated strategies
of the two sides that range from the legalistic (pitting the
constitution against the Accords) to the demagogic. Diplomacy built
upon the assumption that the political actors aim to address these
issues in good faith is doomed to failure. Low-level insecurity can
be good for business.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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