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III. BACKGROUND

Côte d’Ivoire was largely stable for thirty years following its independence from France in 1960. Under the leadership of President Felix Houphouët-Boigny, an ethnic Baoulé and Catholic, over sixty ethnic groups coexisted with over three million immigrants from the West African sub-region, if not in harmony, at least without overtly exposing the fragility of the Ivorian state. Ethnic tensions were certainly present and were occasionally violently checked during Houphouët-Boigny’s rule,¹ but an open-door policy on immigration helped to build a thriving agricultural economy. Côte d’Ivoire’s special relationship with France, which backed Houphouët-Boigny throughout his rule and assured his regime’s security, also contributed to the country’s relative stability. Houphouët-Boigny’s Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire, PDCI) monopolized political activity in the single-party state, but his PDCI governments nominally reflected the ethnic and religious make-up of the country. Côte d’Ivoire was the economic motor of a region that, while rich in resources, remained poor in governance and accountability.

The recent, apparently rapid unraveling of a country once known as the “Ivorian miracle” can be traced to factors stretching back several decades: political ambitions long checked under Houphouët-Boigny’s autocratic single-party rule, an economic recession tied to dependence on coffee and cocoa exports, increasing competition for natural resources, an agricultural system heavily dependant on migrant labor, and weak state institutions. The conflict also has more immediate causes, specifically, a divisive political discourse based on ethnicity and the increasing impunity of state security forces in the face of clear-cut responsibility for violations of human rights. Regional factors including the proximity of the neighboring Liberian conflict, the easy circulation of arms and mercenaries, and the willingness of Burkina Faso to provide support to the nascent MPCI, have also served to draw Côte d’Ivoire into a complex regional quagmire.

Economic recession and immigration

By the 1990s, Côte d’Ivoire had become the world’s leading producer of cocoa and was among the top five producers of coffee, mainly built on the large-scale immigration of agricultural workers from neighboring countries—in particular, Burkina Faso.² These statistics masked a troubled economic picture as Côte d’Ivoire struggled to emerge from serious economic recession in the 1980s. The impact of the economic recession and structural adjustment measures imposed by international financial institutions and donors affected not only the cocoa and coffee sector, where commodity prices dropped and subsidies to farmers were cut, but also general employment opportunities. Many educated urban youth returned to the villages seeking a future, but became unemployed villagers—“chômeurs villageois”—instead.³

The economic recession coincided with increasing competition for natural resources in several areas of the country: in the west and southwest—traditionally forest land—only 17 percent of the forest remained by 2000.⁴ In the north, tension over land in the cotton belt had became a source of pressure, while in the west, the heart of the cocoa and coffee plantations, the collapse of agricultural commodity prices and subsidies to cocoa farmers resulted in increasing friction between the immigrant plantation workers and the Ivorian villagers who had sold or rented them land.

In the midst of the economic crisis and facing diminished popular support in the lead-up to the 1990 elections, particularly from his traditional constituency in the agricultural sector, Houphouët-Boigny’s government introduced residence cards for non-nationals in 1990 in a bid to gain more state revenue and increase PDCI votes. While the measure did shore up PDCI support in the short-term, assisting Houphouët-Boigny to win the election, the perception that immigrants had been granted illegitimate status through fraud was to contribute to considerable future problems. Many northern Ivorians and Burkinabé immigrants dated the start of institutionalized harassment and extortion by state security forces to the issuance of these residence cards in 1990.⁵ For many northern Ivorians the card checks were particularly galling because the southerner-dominated state security forces did not distinguish between northern Ivorians and immigrant residents. In addition, many members of the security forces used the opportunity of card checks to regularly extort money from both groups.⁶

Ivoirité: ethnic discrimination for political gain

Ethnically, Côte d’Ivoire can be described as a crossroads, with most of the major ethnic groups migrating from neighboring countries over the centuries.⁷ While there has been substantial mixing of these populations geographically, particularly in Abidjan, Daloa and other urban centers, the country remains roughly divided into regional blocs. The center and east are mainly occupied by the Baoulé and Agni, both part of the Akan migration from Ghana. The north is largely home to two main ethnic groups: the Malinké and Dioula (part of the northern Mande group) who migrated from Guinea and Mali, and the Senaphou and Lobi people (part of the Gur group) who migrated from Burkina Faso and Mali. The west is populated by the southern Mande group—largely the Dan or Yacouba and Gouro ethnic groups, who migrated from southern Guinea and Sierra Leone. Finally, the southwest is home to the Krou peoples, including the Bété and Wê (a sub-group of whom are known as the Gueré) who are believed to be among the earliest migrants from the southwestern coast.

The death of Houphouët-Boigny in 1993 marked the onset of overt political tension in Côte d’Ivoire and the end of the fragile ethnic balance he had maintained.⁸ Candidates representing the key major ethnic groups, including Houphouët-Boigny’s Baoulé successor, Henri Konan Bédié of the PDCI, Laurent Gbagbo the Bété leader of the Popular Ivorian Front (Front Populaire Ivoirien, FPI), and Alassane Dramane Ouattara of the Rally of Republicans (Rassemblement des Républicains, RDR) began vying for the presidency in the run-up to the 1995 elections. Bédié’s 1995 campaign was based on an ethnic platform aimed at undermining support for Bédié’s main rival: Ouattara, a former prime minister under Houphouët-Boigny and the candidate of the largest opposition party, the heavily northern-supported RDR. The RDR boycotted the election after Ouattara’s candidacy was barred on the grounds that he held Burkinabé nationality and was not a native Ivorian, and Bédié won the election.⁹

Following Bédié’s accession to the presidency, the relationship between the immigrant—mainly Burkinabé—community and the Ivorian government changed for two main reasons. First, it rapidly became clear that the new president, Henri Konan Bédié’s vision of the role and position of immigrants in Côte d’Ivoire differed radically from his predecessor, who had embraced an “ethnic coalition” strategy involving the Baoulé and the northerners.¹⁰ Under Bédié, the introduction of the rural land reform law was one signal of a clear change of policy.¹¹ A second element was the way in which Bédié reacted to the creation of the opposition party led by former Prime Minister, northerner, Muslim and presidential rival Alassane Ouattara. The ensuing debate over Ouattara’s nationality and eligibility for the presidency became a symbol of the deep-seated divisions over the issue of “ivoirité,” the question of Ivorian identity and the role of immigrants in Ivorian society.

During Bédié’s six-year rule allegations of corruption and mismanagement multiplied, and he increasingly relied on ethnicity as a political tactic to garner support in an unfavorable economic climate.¹² In 1999, Gen. Robert Guei, a Yacouba from the west and Bédié’s chief of staff, took power in a coup following a mutiny by soldiers. Initially applauded by most opposition groups as a welcome change from the longstanding PDCI rule and Bédié’s corrupt regime, Guei’s pledges to eliminate corruption and introduce an inclusive Ivorian government were soon overshadowed by his personal political ambitions and the repressive measures he used against both real and suspected opposition.¹³ Throughout 2000—another election year—Ivorian politics became increasingly divided on ethnic and religious lines. Ouattara’s candidacy remained in contention, and increasing friction between Guei and the RDR led to the RDR’s withdrawal from the single ministerial post it was accorded by Guei’s transitional government in May 2000.¹⁴

The presidential and parliamentary elections of 2000

The cumulative political, economic, religious and ethnic tensions of the 1990s erupted into violence during the presidential elections in October 2000.¹⁵ The legitimacy of the elections was seriously compromised by the exclusion of fourteen of the nineteen presidential candidates, including Alassane Ouattara and the PDCI candidate, former president Bédié. General Guei fled the country on October 25, 2000 after massive popular protests and the loss of military support followed his attempt to entirely disregard the election results and seize power. Laurent Gbagbo was installed as president a day later, but the death toll continued to mount as RDR supporters -- calling for new elections -- clashed with FPI supporters and government security forces.

Under President Gbagbo’s regime, ethnic and religious splits deepened as security forces and vigilante groups again clashed with supporters of the RDR in the lead up to the December parliamentary elections. Ouattara was again disqualified by a Supreme Court decision questioning his citizenship and the RDR subsequently boycotted the elections. A state of emergency was imposed following violent clashes in Abidjan in December 2000, but the parliamentary elections went ahead in all but twelve northern districts.

Over 200 people were killed and hundreds were wounded in the violence surrounding the October and December elections. Demonstrators were gunned down in the Abidjan streets by the state security forces; hundreds of opposition members, many of them northerners and RDR supporters targeted on the basis of ethnicity and religion, were arbitrarily arrested, detained and tortured, and state security forces committed rape and other human rights violations in complicity with FPI supporters. In the worst single incident attributed to gendarmes from the Abobo base in Abidjan, the bodies of fifty-seven young men were discovered in Youpougon, on the outskirts of Abidjan, on October 27, 2003, a massacre that became known as the Charnier de Youpougon. A United Nations inquiry into the massacre concluded that the responsibility for the massacre rested squarely with members of the gendarmerie, yet those responsible for the killings and other election-related violence have yet to be properly investigated and brought to justice. The April 2001 trial of eight paramilitary gendarmes in connection to the Youpougon massacre led to their acquittal due to “lack of evidence”.¹⁶ Although the government of Côte d’Ivoire stated its intention to reopen the investigation in 2002, this initiative has been put on hold since the war began in September 2002.

In late-2001 and early-2002, President Gbagbo organized a reconciliation forum which included the representatives of all four key political parties: Gbagbo’s FPI, Ouattara’s RDR, Bédié of the PDCI and Guei’s Union for Democracy and Peace in Côte d’Ivoire party (Union pour la Démocratie et pour la Paix en Côte d’Ivoire, UDPCI). Despite this largely symbolic gesture, political tension remained high in several parts of the country as local municipal elections approached in July 2002. In the west, where the political campaign inflamed the pre-existing tensions over land, young supporters of the FPI, PDCI and RDR clashed in Daloa in late-June 2002, resulting in at least four deaths and the burning of two mosques and a church.¹⁷ The violence also spread to villages around Daloa, where groups of young Bété, Gueré, Burkinabé and northern Ivorian villagers burned each other’s villages and homes and thousands were displaced to Daloa and Duekoué.

September 2002: from army “mutiny” to civil war

In August 2002, President Gbagbo announced a government of national reconciliation, with representation of the four principal political parties in his cabinet. General Guei, however, refused to accept the cabinet post reserved for his UDPCI party. Shortly thereafter, early in the morning of September 19, 2002, heavy shooting broke out in Abidjan while simultaneous attacks took place in the northern towns of Korhogo and Bouaké.

Initial speculation on the backing for the attempted coup centered on Guei. However General Guei, his wife, and Boga Doudou, the Minister of the Interior, were all killed on September 19 in Abidjan. It soon emerged that the uprising was initiated by soldiers who had been recruited into the army by Guei and feared demobilization under President Gbagbo, and that the “mutiny” was in fact an organized rebel movement, the Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (Mouvement Patriotique de Côte d’Ivoire, MPCI) whose origin was rather less spontaneous than it first appeared.

The attempted coup was led by a number of junior military officers who had been at the forefront of the 1999 coup, but left President Guei’s regime after he became increasingly hardline. Several of the officers were detained and tortured under Guei and had fled to Burkina Faso, where they certainly received training and possibly other forms of support in the two years between their exile from Côte d’Ivoire and their return on September 19, 2002. The total number of MPCI troops in the first weeks of the mutiny is estimated to have been no more than about eight hundred and recruitment of additional forces took place, particularly in Mali and Burkina Faso. At least five hundred Maliens joined up in September 2002, lured by promises of 10,000 CFA (approximately $17) per day.¹⁸ However, many returned in early-2003 after the money supply dwindled. The MPCI also recruited hundreds of “dozos,” traditional hunters with family hunting rifles who are a common sight in rural Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and southern Burkina Faso. At least some of the dozos recruited by the MPCI were Burkinabé and Malien immigrants who were long-time residents of Côte d’Ivoire.

The government’s initial response to the rebellion was to launch a security operation in the economic capital, Abidjan. This consisted of hundreds of security force members descending on low-income neighborhoods—the “quartiers précaires” or shantytowns—occupied by thousands of immigrants and Ivorians. During these operations they allegedly searched for weapons and rebels, but more often would simply order all out all the residents and burn or demolish their homes. Allegedly conducted in order to secure Abidjan from suspected rebel infiltration, the raids displaced over 12,000 people—mostly foreign immigrants. They were accompanied by numerous serious human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, “disappearances,” rape, and summary executions. In addition, extortion by the security forces was widespread and commonplace.¹⁹ Dozens of neighborhoods were affected through October 2002, when the government officially suspended the operation as a result of international protests. Unofficially however, the demolitions and abuses continued well into December 2002 and later.²⁰

By the end of September 2002, the MPCI rebels, composed mainly of “Dioula”²¹ or northerners of Malinké, Senaphou and other ethnicities, some Burkinabé and Malien recruits, and the “dozos,” were in control of most of northern Côte d’Ivoire (approximately 50 percent of the country), including Bouaké, Korhogo and Odienné towns. The ease with which the MPCI captured this area was largely due to the fact that they encountered minimal opposition. While many questions remain unanswered regarding the origins of the Ivorian rebel movements, the MPCI group is the most organized, disciplined and ideologically straightforward. Its main stated aims were the redress of recent military reforms, new elections and the removal of President Gbagbo, whose presidency was perceived as illegitimate given the flawed elections that took place in 2000. However, it also represented other grievances, including the widely held feeling of many northern Ivorians that they were consistently politically excluded and systematically discriminated against over the past decade.²² While the core of the MPCI was northern Ivorian—such as Senaphou and Malinké—its membership at both the troop and high political levels included most Ivorian ethnic groups, including Baoulé and Bété members.

A government offensive on Bouaké in early October saw heavy fighting in and around the city and the flight of thousands of civilians, but the MPCI retained control of the town. An MPCI advance in the west captured Vavoua on October 7, 2002, and Daloa on October 12, 2002. The MPCI advances in the north and west were accompanied by reports of summary executions of gendarmes and suspected government sympathizers. Daloa, a key town in the country’s cocoa belt, and the transit point for much of the cocoa heading to the coastal port of San Pedro, was re-captured on October 14, 2002 by the government forces who then proceeded to comb the town for rebel supporters. Several days later, the government signed a cease-fire with the MPCI. French military forces already present in the country as part of a long-standing security agreement agreed to monitor the cease-fire line.

Peace negotiations took place at the end of October 2002 in Lomé, Togo. Both sides agreed to refrain from “the recruitment and use of mercenaries, enrollment of children, and violations of the accord on cessation of hostilities.”²³ Member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) also pledged to deploy a peacekeeping force in Côte d’Ivoire. Despite the cease-fire, reports continued to rise of assassinations of immigrants, RDR leaders and supporters, and suspected rebel sympathizers by “death squads” composed of members of the security forces and civilian vigilante groups in Abidjan.

The war moves west: November 28, 2002

In the end of November 2002, the capture of Man and Danané and an attack on Toulepleu, all sizeable towns in the west near the Liberian border, marked the appearance of two new rebel groups and a new military front. The new groups, the Movement for Justice and Peace (Mouvement pour la justice et la paix, MJP) and the Ivorian Popular Movement for the Great West (Mouvement Populaire Ivoirien du Grand Ouest, MPIGO), claimed to be Ivorians pursuing vengeance for General Guei’s death.²⁴ However the MPIGO group was mainly composed of Liberian and Sierra Leonean fighters, including some former members of the Sierra Leonean rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and Liberian forces linked to Liberian President Charles Taylor. While the MPCI initially denied links with the two new groups,²⁵ there were signs that the western offensive on November 28 was coordinated among the three groups. Certainly the emergence of the two western groups and the opening of another military front came at an exceedingly opportune time for the MPCI, which had signed a cease-fire with the government and could not pursue further military gains without violating this agreement.²⁶

The MPIGO group quickly moved south from Danané along the Liberian border, capturing Toulepleu on December 2. It then moved east towards Guiglo and captured Blolékin on December 7, 2003. Meanwhile, the government forces recaptured Man on November 30. In December 2002, both sides reinforced their troops with fresh recruits, including additional Liberians on the rebel side and a new force of Liberian troops fighting alongside the government. The French military force monitoring the initial cease-fire line, known as Operation Unicorn, also received additional troops until it numbered almost 2,500 by the end of December 2002. Fighting continued in late-December and resulted in a rebel counter-offensive re-capturing Man and Bangolo and a series of clashes between French forces and the western rebels around Duékoué as the rebels sought to push their offensive further south.

January 2003 brought further fighting and increasing reports of abuses against civilians in the west. French diplomacy produced a second cease-fire agreement between the government and western rebel groups on January 13, 2002, but peace talks convened by the French government in Linas-Marcoussis were plagued by reports of on-going fighting along the Liberian-Ivorian border.

The Paris negotiations produced the framework for a new government of reconciliation in which President Gbagbo retained the presidency while delegating most substantive powers to a new prime minister selected through consensus. In an annexe, the Linas-Marcoussis accords also tasked the new government of reconciliation with legislative reform of the laws on nationality, electoral procedure, and land inheritance. Human rights concerns featured prominently in the agreement, which required the immediate creation of a national human rights commission, the establishment of an international inquiry into grave breaches of human rights and international humanitarian law, and demanded an end to the impunity of those responsible for summary executions, in particular the death squads.

The signing of the Linas-Marcoussis peace accords by all the warring parties on January 25, 2002 was followed by four consecutive days of street demonstrations in Abidjan, mainly by the “young patriots,” youth supporters of the FPI who protested the verbal allocation of two key ministries—Defense and Interior—to the rebel groups. President Gbagbo’s return to Abidjan did little to subdue the protests. Instead, his public statement that the accords were “propositions” cast doubt on his commitment to the agreement. In early February the United Nations Security Council issued a statement of support for the accords and gave Chapter VII authorization to the French and West African troops to protect civilians in their zones of operation.²⁷ Following the protests in Abidjan, an impasse ensued on the political front throughout February and most of March 2003, despite numerous efforts to further the peace process. A summit in Accra in early March resulted in the preliminary distribution of cabinet posts in the new government of reconciliation, as fighting continued in the west of the country.

As talks continued over the next steps in the peace process, reports of massacres emerged from the west, where it became increasingly clear that both the government and rebel forces were using Liberian fighters in a proxy war. Throughout March and early April, MPCI-appointed members of the government refused to take their seats in Abidjan citing security concerns. Security in the Toulepleu area declined as Liberian fighters on both sides fought each other and launched attacks into neighboring Liberia. Thousands of civilians fled the west for the increasingly uncertain refuge of Liberia and Guinea.

International and local concern over the situation in the west mounted through April, culminating in a meeting between Liberian President Charles Taylor and President Gbagbo in Togo in late-April, and an agreement to monitor the border through a quadripartite force composed of Ivorian government and rebels forces, Liberian forces and French/ECOWAS forces.²⁸ A cease-fire was signed in early May as members of the government of reconciliation took their seats in Abidjan for the first time. A United Nations mission—MINUCI—composed of military liaison personnel and civilian human rights monitors was also approved by the United Nations Security Council in early May. By late-May, the security situation in the west was improving as many of the Liberian fighters left the area, but the humanitarian situation remained dire, with large numbers of civilians lacking access to clean water, food and health care. In early June French and ECOWAS forces moved in to secure the major towns in the west and monitor the cease-fire, and the curfew was lifted.