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General Background on the Military-Political Crisis in Côte d’Ivoire

For 30 years following independence in 1960, Côte d’Ivoire enjoyed relative stability and economic prosperity under the leadership of President Felix Houphouët-Boigny, an ethnic Baoulé and Roman Catholic from the geographic center of the country. The pillars of Houphouët-Boigny’s post-independence political and economic policy included a focus on export-driven agriculture as a development strategy, an open-door immigration policy, and extremely close ties with the former colonial ruler, France, which assured the government’s security. During these years, Côte d’Ivoire become a key economic power in West Africa, a global leader in cocoa and coffee production, and a magnet for migrant workers who would eventually come to make up an estimated 26 percent of its population.²

While Côte d’Ivoire may have been the economic motor of the sub-region, it was not a model for governance and accountability. Houphouët-Boigny’s Democratic Party of Côte d’Ivoire (Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire, PDCI) monopolized political activity in an autocratic, single-party state. While his PDCI governments nominally reflected the ethnic and religious make-up of the country, maintenance of power was based on an “ethnic coalition” strategy involving groups from Côte d’Ivoire’s north and center.³ Many southern and western groups felt excluded and politically frustrated under Houphouët-Boigny’s reign.⁴

In the late 1980s, the “Ivorian miracle” began to flounder on the rocks of plummeting cocoa prices and rising foreign debt, leading to a serious economic recession. The foundations of Houphouetism began to crumble. Combined with the impact of structural adjustment measures imposed by international financial institutions and donors, the recession affected not only the cocoa and coffee sector, but also general employment opportunities. As a result, an increasing number of educated urban youth could not find work.⁵ As joblessness and frustration rose, so too did pressure from opposition parties and civil society (including trade unions and student groups) to reform and democratize Côte d’Ivoire’s one-party state.

Battle for Succession

The death of Houphouët-Boigny in 1993 marked the formal beginning of an overt battle for political succession that would bring Côte d’Ivoire to the brink of disaster. As candidates representing the principal ethnic and geographic blocs began vying for the presidency in the run-up to the 1995 elections, questions of ethnicity and nationality came to the fore.⁶ In order to exclude rivals, politicians began to employ the rhetoric of “Ivoirité” (or “Ivorianness”)—an ultranationalist and exclusionary political discourse focusing on Ivorian identity and the role of immigrants in Ivorian society that marginalized perceived outsiders.⁷

The opposition party, Rally of Republicans (Rassemblement des Républicains, RDR), which since its formation has been dominated by Ivorians from the largely Muslim north, boycotted the 1995 election after the candidacy of former prime minister Alassane Dramane Ouattara was effectively barred.⁸ Voicing concerns about transparency, the Popular Ivorian Front opposition party (Front Populaire Ivoirien, FPI) led by current president Laurent Gbagbo also boycotted the election, and Henri Konan Bédié of the PDCI won with 96 percent of the vote.

During Bédié’s six-year rule, allegations of corruption and mismanagement multiplied, and he increasingly relied on ethnic favoritism to garner support in an unfavorable economic climate. Political opposition groups, including the RDR and FPI, formed an alliance to combat this “misrule” called the Republican Front. This coalition later disintegrated due to internal friction.

The 1999 Coup and 2000 Elections

In December 1999, General Robert Gueï, a Yacouba from the west and former army chief of staff, took power in a coup following a mutiny by non-commissioned officers.⁹ Nicknamed “Santa Claus in camouflage,” Gueï was initially applauded by most opposition groups as a welcome change from the longstanding PDCI rule and Bédié’s corrupt regime. However, Gueï’s pledges to eliminate corruption and introduce an inclusive Ivorian government were soon overshadowed by his personal political ambitions, the repressive measures he used against both real and suspected opposition, and near-total impunity for human rights abuses by military personnel.¹⁰

Throughout 2000, Ivorian politics became increasingly divided along ethnic and religious lines. Elections in this inauspicious climate would prove to be, in the words of President Gbagbo, the winner of those elections, “calamitous.”¹¹

Several weeks before the October presidential election, the government deemed the majority of candidates ineligible, including both Alassane Ouattara of the RDR and former president Bédié of the PDCI, resulting in an electoral contest between Laurent Gbagbo’s FPI party and General Gueï.When it became clear that Gbagbo had the upper hand on election day, Gueï attempted to disregard entirely the election results and seize power, leading to massive popular protests and the loss of military support. General Gueï fled the country on October 25, 2000 and Laurent Gbagbo was installed as president a day later.

Soon after Gueï’s flight, RDR supporters—calling for new elections “with no exclusion”—clashed with FPI supporters and were targeted by government security forces, resulting in many deaths. The killings, the most violent episode of political violence in Côte d’Ivoire’s post-independence history, shocked Ivorians and members of the international community alike, grimly highlighting the danger of manipulating ethnic loyalties and latent prejudice for political gain.¹²

Efforts by President Gbagbo to include members of opposition parties in his government were seen as largely symbolic, and throughout 2001-2002 political tensions remained high.

The 2002 War

On September 19, 2002, rebels from the Patriotic Movement of Côte d’Ivoire (Mouvement Patriotique de Côte d’Ivoire, MPCI), whose members are drawn largely from the predominantly Muslim north of the country, attacked Abidjan, the commercial and de facto capital of Côte d’Ivoire, and the northern towns of Bouaké and Korhogo.¹³ The rebels’ stated aims were the redress of recent military reforms, new elections, an end to political exclusion and discrimination against northern Ivorians, and the removal of President Gbagbo, whose presidency they perceived as illegitimate due to flaws in the 2000 elections. Although they did not succeed in taking Abidjan, the rebels encountered minimal resistance and quickly managed to occupy and control half of the country. Rapidly joined by two other western rebel factions, they formed a political-military alliance called the New Forces (Forces Nouvelles, FN).¹⁴ 

The armed conflict between the government and the New Forces ended in May 2003 with the signature of a total ceasefire agreement. ¹⁵ Since 2003, the country has effectively been split in two with the New Forces based in Bouaké, controlling the land-locked north, and the government holding the south, where the majority of the country’s estimated 20 million inhabitants live.

Peace Agreements

Since the end of hostilities in 2003, France, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the African Union, and the United Nations have all spearheaded initiatives to end the political-military stalemate in Côte d’Ivoire. These efforts resulted in a string of unfulfilled peace agreements, a peak of over 11,000 foreign peacekeeping troops on the ground to prevent all-out war and to protect civilians, and the imposition of a UN arms embargo in addition to travel and economic sanctions.¹⁶

In March 2007 President Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro signed a peace accord negotiated with the help of Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré (“The Ouagadougou Agreement”), and later endorsed by the African Union and the United Nations Security Council.¹⁷ The Ouagadougou Agreement is the first to have been directly negotiated by the country’s main belligerents on their own initiative and resulted in the appointment of Guillaume Soro as prime minister in a unity government. Implementation efforts following signature have resulted in important milestones in the peace process, even if accomplishment of major prerequisites to elections, including voter registration and disarmament, has thus far been lacking.¹⁸ Presidential elections are currently scheduled in late November, some three years beyond the expiry of President Gbagbo’s constitutional mandate.¹⁹

The Human Rights Fallout from the Crisis

The human rights fallout from the crisis for civilians living on both sides of the political-military divide has been and continues to be devastating.²⁰ Political unrest and the impasse following the 2002-2003 armed conflict between the government and northern-based rebels have been punctuated by atrocities and serious human rights abuses attributable to both sides including extrajudicial killings, massacres, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and numerous incidents of torture. These abuses have been continued in large measure due to a prevailing culture of impunity.

Rebels in Côte d’Ivoire carried out widespread abuses against civilians in some areas under their control. These included extrajudicial executions, massacres, torture, cannibalism, mutilation, the recruitment and use of child soldiers and sexual violence including rape, gang rape, egregious sexual assault, forced incest, and sexual slavery. Liberian combatants fighting alongside Ivorian rebel groups were responsible for some of the worst crimes. However, even after their departure, various forms of violence have continued.

In response to the rebellion, government forces and government-recruited Liberian mercenaries frequently attacked, detained, and executed perceived supporters of the rebel forces based on ethnic, national, religious, and political affiliation. Even after the end of active hostilities, state security forces assisted by pro-government groups such as the Jeunes Patriotes (“Young Patriots” or JP) regularly harassed and intimidated the populace, particularly those believed to be sympathetic to the New Forces rebels or the political opposition. Security forces in government-controlled areas regularly extorted and physically abused Muslims, northerners, and West African immigrants, often under the guise of routine security checks at roadblocks.

On both sides of the political and military divide, the most horrific human rights abuses peaked from roughly 2002 to 2004, and have declined in recent years. However, more chronic human rights abuses persist and go unaddressed; most notably, government security forces and New Forces rebels who continue to engage in widespread extortion at checkpoints and, on a more limited scale, sexual violence against girls and women.

A nation divided, Côte d’Ivoire is only beginning to emerge from the most serious political and military crisis in its post-independence history. Widespread criminality in the university context involving student groups has taken place and continues to occur against this backdrop of instability, violence, and impunity.

Student Activism in the 1990s; from Clandestinity to Political Schism

A Tumultuous Birth

By the end of the 1980s, Ivorian civil society and the political opposition were at a boiling point. Frustration with years of one-party rule, together with a declining economy and decreasing job prospects for youth, led to increasingly widespread protests to pressure the government for multiparty elections. In the vanguard of the early-1990s protest movement were Laurent Gbagbo’s socialist FPI party and the closely associated student group, FESCI.

FESCI was created in April 1990, and, together with trade unions and leftist political parties, was instrumental in mobilizing demonstrations throughout 1990 and 1991 against PDCI rule.²¹ FESCI was supported financially and otherwise by a number of nascent leftist opposition parties, including the FPI.²² From its inception, Houphouët-Boigny and his PDCI party viewed FESCI as an instrument of the political opposition and therefore subversive.

After months of intense pressure, Houphouët-Boigny agreed to the legalization of political parties in May 1990. Later that year, for the first time in Côte d’Ivoire’s history, Ivorians witnessed presidential elections with Houphouët-Boigny facing another candidate, FPI’s Gbagbo. Houphouët-Boigny won the elections with 82 percent of the vote and opposition parties criticized electoral irregularities. Dissatisfied with the reforms offered, the student demonstrations and pressure from opposition parties continued.²³

FESCI is Driven Underground

In the early 1990s, violent clashes between FESCI members and government security forces led to an official ban on FESCI as an organization, forcing its members underground.

In May 1991, three days of tension and violent student-police clashes on the university campus took place after students claimed that they were attacked by pro-government thugs while planning a news conference on cramped conditions in the university. Security forces violently dispersed angry students who hurled stones and burned cars.²⁴ Later that same week, the army, led by its chief of staff Robert Gueï, conducted a brutal night raid on a student dormitory in the Abidjan neighborhood of Yopougon. Gueï was promoted to general soon after.

In June 1991, students allegedly belonging to FESCI bludgeoned to death a suspected PDCI government informant on campus, Thierry Zebié. Eight students were arrested, and Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara, in a nationally broadcast speech, announced that FESCI was being dissolved immediately. FPI leader Gbagbo, a university professor, reportedly said that FESCI had committed no crime and that Ouattara's speech was “a great mistake.” ²⁵ Pursued by the authorities, most FESCI leaders went underground.

In January 1992, a government commission established to investigate General Gueï’s May 1991 raid on the Yopougon dormitory concluded that soldiers raped at least three girls and viciously beat students, and that “the sole initiative” for the savage raid lay with General Gueï. The commission recommended that Gueï be sanctioned.²⁶ When Houphouet-Boigny refused to follow the commission's recommendations, saying he did not wish to divide the army, students staged weeks of violent protests, clashing with police, burning tires, smashing windows and doors in campus buildings, and setting fire to vehicles, leading to hundreds of arrests.²⁷ Laurent Gbagbo, FESCI founder Martial Ahipeaud, and president of the Ivorian League for Human Rights (Ligue Ivoirienne des Droits de l’Homme, LIDHO) René Dégni Ségui, were arrested and sentenced to between one and three years of prison, but were freed months later.²⁸

Continued Clashes in the mid-1990s

Student strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations in the years following the death of Houphouët-Boigny focused, at least at one level, on traditional student issues, including overcrowding on campus and scholarships. At the same time, for many students, such actions were nevertheless felt to be “political” or “anti-PDCI” acts taken against a corrupt and undemocratic government thought disinclined to better their lot.²⁹ Continuing the government’s “tough” stance, in 1995, then-Minister of Security Marcel Dibonan Koné stated at a press conference that anyone claiming to be a member of FESCI would be considered an “outlaw.”³⁰ 

FESCI’s planning meetings and press conferences during this era were often broken up brutally by police raids. Hundreds of FESCI members and leaders were arrested, held incommunicado, and most often released without charge. Many endured harsh conditions including deprivation of food, beatings, and torture while detained.³¹ Nearly all of FESCI’s leaders in the 1990s spent time in jail,³² and a number of its leaders, including its founder, Martial Ahipeaud, Guillaume Soro, and Charles Blé Goudé, were considered by Amnesty International to be “prisoners of conscience.”³³

By late 1997, continuing waves of student strikes, boycotts, and demonstrators resulted in the near-total paralysis of the Abidjan university campus, and made clear that FESCI could not be repressed out of existence. In September of that year, then President Henri Konan Bédié announced that, “The time has come to end a crisis that is seriously harming the whole nation,” and pledged that more money would be invested in the overcrowded and dilapidated university system.³⁴ One week later, the ban on FESCI was lifted.

Internal Schism in the Late 1990s

Once able to function openly, and in tandem with a larger opening of the political landscape in Côte d’Ivoire as a whole, fissures along political lines began to form within FESCI’s leadership. In 1998, FESCI held its first public elections, pitting outgoing Secretary General Guillaume Soro’s candidate and number two in the organization’s hierarchy, Karamoko Yayoro, now president of the youth wing of RDR opposition party, against Charles Blé Goudé, now head of the Young Patriots pro-government group. Some saw in these elections a fight for control of FESCI by two political parties, the RDR and the FPI.³⁵ Blé Goudé won those elections, and the organization has been widely viewed as being exclusively allied with the FPI party ever since.³⁶

The late-1997 truce with the government was short lived. Accusing Bédié of failure to fulfill his promises for increased student aid, FESCI in 1999 led violent protests in favor of increased scholarship aid to students. During these protests, students engaged in widespread vandalism, including smashing cars and looting shops and businesses, leading to hundreds of arrests; the closing of many state-run educational institutions across the nation; the closing of university dormitories; and a “white year” for students in most disciplines (a year without exams, forcing students to repeat the school year). President Bédié and his cabinet denounced a “movement of destabilization, of a quasi-insurrectional nature” stirred up by FESCI and “its local and external manipulators,” and threatened to arrest FESCI leaders, most of whom went into hiding.³⁷

In response, police in May 1999 stormed the university residences as part of a brutal crackdown, leaving a trail of blood and damage as they pursued students, beating and kicking many. Several students were rushed to a nearby hospital with fractured limbs and head injuries.³⁸ In August, Blé Goudé was arrested, charged with disturbing public order, and placed in Abidjan’s maximum-security prison, only to be rushed to the hospital in late-September with respiratory problems.³⁹ In October, tensions decreased when Bédié signed a decree granting amnesty to students convicted or detained for acts of violence during the year’s protests and freed Blé Goudé. By the time FESCI finally lifted its strike in late November 1999, it had been a violent and tumultuous year, but the year’s biggest event had yet to occur.

The Crisis Erupts, the University Shaken, 1999-2002

In December 1999, nearly 40 years of PDCI rule came to an abrupt end when the former head of Côte d’Ivoire’s army, General Gueï, assumed leadership of a successful coup to oust President Bédié. The “Republican Front,” an alliance of convenience created in April 1995 between opposition parties, dissolved. Mirroring national politics, the divisions that began within FESCI in 1998 soon intensified in the new political climate, and the organization began to fracture along political lines. At the same time, political parties battling for leverage in an electoral year sought to curry favor with FESCI, in part due to the coveted control of the street they could offer as well as the sheer number of youth votes they could mobilize.⁴⁰ 

In May 2000, what would become known as the “dissident wing” of FESCI, led by Doumbia Major, second in command in FESCI’s hierarchy and a supporter of the RDR party, accused Blé Goudé of mismanaging funds and attempted to challenge Blé Goudé’s leadership of the organization. In response, Blé Goudé accused Major and his followers of trying to take FESCI over on behalf of the RDR, claimed that Alassane Ouattara was financing the “dissidents,” and warned that the RDR would try to use FESCI to help win presidential elections later that year.⁴¹ Members of Gueï’s government similarly charged that the dissidents were being manipulated by the RDR.⁴²

This marked the beginning of an open and often bloody struggle for control of FESCI (often called the “war of machetes”) between a “loyalist” faction led by Charles Blé Goudé (who generally supported the military junta and the FPI) and a “dissident” faction led by Major (many of whom were pro-RDR). In a loose way, the divisions within FESCI during the “war” took on the regional and ethnic character that has come to characterize the Ivorian crisis up through the preset day, with the FPI drawing its supporters from the largely Christian south and the RDR from the largely Muslim north.⁴³

During the “war,” loyalist and dissident FESCI factions among the student population hunted each other down with machetes and clubs resulting in at least six deaths and dozens of serious injuries, including students thrown out of windows, hacked and nearly beaten to death with machetes.⁴⁴ For members of both factions, as well as for non-aligned students, this period is remembered as a “reign of terror” on campus.⁴⁵

Publicly, Gueï called on students to “leave politics at home” and even threatened those responsible for student violence with military conscription. The army and other security forces intervened several times in clashes between students, often arresting those involved in the fighting.However, according to former dissidents interviewed by Human Rights Watch, the arrests were often selective, targeting dissidents in particular, and the loyalists who were arrested were often released almost immediately afterwards.⁴⁶ A few dissident members who were arrested told Human Rights Watch that while in custody, they were beaten by soldiers and accused of taking money and weapons from Alassane Ouattara.⁴⁷

Violence erupted on a national scale during the October presidential and December parliamentary elections in 2000, leading to the deaths of over 200 people. State security forces gunned down mostly pro-RDR demonstrators in Abidjan’s streets; 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 pro-FPI youth groups, including FESCI.⁴⁸ Two victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch in the wake of the elections described being beaten by members of FESCI working in collaboration with gendarmes, who themselves participated in the beatings.⁴⁹

After the electoral violence of late 2000 subsided, the two student factions organized rival congresses to elect a new secretary general in early 2001. Foreshadowing the formal division of the country less than 18 months later,the loyalists elected Jean-Yves Dibopieu in Abidjan, while the dissidents elected Paul Gueï, in central city of Bouaké, which became the fief of the dissidence.⁵⁰The “war” resumed and the Abidjan and Bouaké campuses were plagued with violence similar to the previous year. ⁵¹

In May 2001, under pressure from government and civil society groups, the representatives from the two FESCI factions met in the Abidjan suburb of Bingerville for talks. Under the “Bingerville Accords” signed by the two factions, the year-long “war of machetes” came to an end, Jean-Yves Dibopieu became secretary general, and dissident leader Paul Gueï his deputy. ⁵²

By this time, however, many leading dissidents had already either fled Abidjan or been forced into exile in neighboring countries such as Mali in order to escape the violence. Some former dissidents had defected to the loyalist side, while others attempted to fade from political and union life and continue their studies in relative peace and anonymity.

Unable to function in or accept an FPI-led Côte d’Ivoire, a large number of former FESCI dissidents went on to join the New Forces rebellion, which led an attempted coup d’état in September 2002, and currently controls the northern half of Côte d’Ivoire.⁵³ The rebellion is headed by former FESCI president Guillaume Soro. Today, many members of the New Forces administration are former FESCI dissidents. In the eyes of many FESCI loyalists, the rebellion was but a continuation of the dissident insurgency they thought they had vanquished on the university campus some 18 months prior.⁵⁴