By Boubacar Boris Diop
Le Monde diplomatiqueApril 2005
There is a widespread belief, never clearly formulated, that the culture of violence is deeply rooted in Africa. The underlying assumption is racist: that power struggles in the continent are the expression of secular ethnic hatreds.
Unsurprisingly, western media have persisted in imposing their clichés and preconceptions upon the conflict in Ivory Coast, presenting the head of state, Laurent Gbagbo, as a wily but brutal visionary, the rebels as good communicators and the shouting masses as young patriots.
Two weeks after the rebellion broke out in September 2002, France's then foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, explained to the Senate in Paris: "The present crisis is the result of traditional tensions. Ivory Coast, with its north-south split, is an ethnic and religious patchwork that has been in crisis since the death of Houphouí«t-Boigny" (1). What he meant was: "Here's another fine mess Africa's got itself into."
It is a convenient way of looking at things: one side is as bad as the other, armed rebellion becomes legitimate and the rest of the world can sit back and watch a country split into two. The devastation caused by ethnic attitudes in Ivory Coast is appalling; we cannot condone it but we have to look beyond it. The present mess has not arisen simply because the Dioula and Bete tribes (2) have realised that they cannot live together any more. France is a central, and increasingly open, player in the crisis, and any understanding of the conflict depends upon an awareness of France's role.
French interests represent 33% of foreign investments in Ivory Coast and 30% of its gross domestic product. Since Ivory Coast's independence in 1960, French companies have used one-sided contracts to repatriate 75% of the wealth generated there. President Henri Konan Bédié, Houphouí«t-Boigny's constitutionally designated successor, tried to correct these anomalies in 1994 by granting coffee and cocoa export contracts to major United States companies and by licensing another US company, Vanco, to prospect for oil. At the end of 1999 he was overthrown in a military coup.
After a period of military government, a popular uprising put Gbagbo in power. Like Bédié, he attempted to loosen the foreign grip on a country where four French companies - Saur, Electricité de France, Orange and Bouygues - control transport, water, electricity and communications; and three others - Société Générale, BNP Paribas and Crédit Lyonnais - dominate banking. He began to open markets to international competition. When bids were invited for a third bridge in Abidjan, the commercial capital, and for an airport for the coastal city of San Pédro, the tender of Bouygues was significantly less competitive than those from South Africa and China. The discovery of a major oilfield at Jacqueville, near Abidjan, raised the stakes. There were suspicions that Gbagbo was trying to cosy up to the US. By the end of 2004 the pressure was overwhelming and Gbagbo confirmed some of the French contracts (3).
African intellectuals have tended to follow the anti-Gbagbo line. But Ivory Coast has become dangerous for opponents, foreigners and journalists. Early in 2004 the United Nations accused the regime of serious human rights violations after 120 people were killed during a peaceful demonstration. In November 2004, as a prelude to an attack on the headquarters of the rebel New Forces in the central city of Bouaké, the offices of the Ivory Coast Democratic party (PDCI) and the Rally of Republicans (RDR) were burned down, along with those of three opposition newspapers. Death squads are at work.
International reactions are selective. It is easy to suspect that Gbagbo, like Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, is really being shown the red card for a foul on the interests of a western power.
The present crisis began on 6 November when the government attack on Bouaké also killed nine French peacekeepers. The French president, Jacques Chirac, ordered the destruction of the Ivorian air force. In Abidjan Gbagbo's supporters promptly turned on the expatriate French community.
None of this settled anything, but it did clarify the nature of the conflict. This was the first time in 40 years of postcolonial apprenticeship that the lives of French citizens in Africa had been so threatened. Everyone had been happy to watch Africans kill each other, but television images of tearful French evacuees stepping off planes outside Paris were another matter - almost enough to make viewers forget that French forces had killed Ivorian civilians and destroyed a sovereign state's air force to reassure 15,000 compatriots and to avenge the deaths of nine soldiers.
Even the most sceptical were forced to recognise that France was closely implicated in the power struggles in its former colonies. Paris usually worked behind the scenes, but events in Abidjan forced it to show its face. The tragedy is that innocent French civilians had to pay such a high price for bringing everything into the open. Africans noticed that the emperor had no clothes: despite a strong military presence, France had been unable to guarantee the safety of its nationals. It was cornered, on the defensive, and could only stammer barely convincing denials.
De Villepin had acknowledged, in coded terms, that the rebels were not acting alone to the French Senate in October 2002, shortly after the beginning of the anti-Gbagbo rising: "The situation has developed in such a way that questions have arisen about possible foreign complicity or support." Any French foreign minister knows what he is talking about where French Africa is concerned. Every word counts. So does every omission: De Villepin neglected to mention that his government was strongly suspected of having financed the revolt. France, previously sovereign in "its" Africa, was in the dock.
On 7 November 2004 there were minor skirmishes between Fanci, Ivory Coast's national armed forces, and French Operation Unicorn soldiers. Although these were of no military significance, it would be unwise to underestimate their symbolic importance. Even before these confrontations, and despite the fact that it was operating under a UN security council mandate, Operation Unicorn was perceived as an occupation force. The disproportionate nature of its response confirmed this, sending a signal not just to Ivory Coast but to other client states in France's sphere of influence. It is easy for the weight of history to give young soldiers the impression of being stuck in an isolated garrison on the remote tribal fringes of the empire. Although African heads of state - all fervent democrats, of course - sided with France, there was fierce condemnation in French-speaking countries of what had become a bloody colonial adventure.
As early as January 2003 the African Social Forum in Addis Ababa had issued a warning: "If France continues to act in this imperialist fashion, it risks increased military involvement across the continent over the next few years . . . In the light of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the Congo-Brazzaville civil war of 1997 and current conflicts in the Central African Republic and Ivory Coast, French-speaking African states must urgently re-evaluate their relations with the former colonial power."
French voters should ask their political leaders what their army is doing in Ivory Coast. The government line is almost funny, but no one questions it: that 3,800 French soldiers are in west Africa with the ethical purpose of preventing a bunch of machete-waving lunatics from dismembering their own country. Some in France recall events in Rwanda, but selectively overlook French responsibility for the 1994 genocide (4).
To the French government, and some multinationals, Ivory Coast is of enormous importance. It is not for love of peace that there are three times more French troops there than there are from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). Unicorn is over-manned and over-equipped to protect a few thousand people whose repatriation was ruled out at the beginning of the crisis. France wants to stay in the game, even at the cost of French lives.
French governments, of left and right, have always enjoyed a free hand in their former colonial empire. They have carried out political assassinations, pillaged resources and supported bloody dictatorships. So far, it has all happened in the dark. The violence of November 2004 took place in daylight.
It is no coincidence that in one year France has been angrily called to account not only by Gbagbo but also by the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. The many signs of impending disaster in Ivory Coast should have been correctly read long ago. Anti-French feeling didn't appear out of nowhere last November. A French school and cultural institute were sacked in May 2004. Jean Hélí¨ne from the radio station RFI was murdered in October 2003 and a freelance, Guy-André Kieffer, disappeared in April 2004. The French embassy and a military base were attacked several times.
The current resentment can be traced back to the Linas-Marcoussis agreement signed by the warring factions outside Paris in January 2003. The French government may have brokered the deal, but the manner in which it summoned the political elite of a sovereign nation to a suburban sports facility to be put to work by a Parisian civil servant was arrogant. It is incredible that it should have expected any self-respecting head of state to accept the nomination of a new prime minister, however well-respected and neutral, on foreign soil, let alone the imposition of rebel leaders as his defence and interior ministers.
Since then, things have gone from bad to worse. France's contempt for Ivorian national pride has caused more blunders. After a meeting with Gbagbo, De Villepin was heard to say: "I told the president that I wanted him to expel the mercenaries and ground his air force." A French journalist remarked: "De Villepin gave Gbagbo a real dressing-down."
The result of these provocations is disastrous. Ivory Coast's French community must be wondering what hit them. Since the initial rush of sympathy, France has forgotten about them and may be getting ready to sacrifice the community to realism. Under "normal" circumstances, Gbagbo would have been eliminated or ousted in a carefully contrived putsch. Now, this option is risky. It would be naive to imagine that the Abidjan debacle represents the beginning of the end for French involvement in Africa. But it would also be a mistake to see it as an isolated event. Similar violence could break out in any of France's former colonies.
There is anger in Africa, and the Ivorian president is just the man to exploit it. Gbagbo does little to inspire optimism: it would be rash to take him for a Sankara or a Lumumba (5). His position is weakened by the questionable circumstances in which he came to power. But his real vulnerability is the climate of xenophobia that he has encouraged, which makes any political understanding of the conflict problematic. If he really wants to break with the colonial past, he has to forge some valid, generally acceptable concept of national identity - the pan-Africanism of Kwame Nkrumah and Cheikh Anta Diop (6) was a form of humanism.
It will be impossible for Gbagbo to convince everyone that he is a hero come to free his country. Many Ivorians see only a sly, self-serving politician. But his unrivalled pugnacity has helped him turn the situation to his advantage. Ivory Coast is no longer a colony, but an independent nation threatened by armed rebels whom the president, like any political leader in his position, seeks to disarm.
Gbagbo has the law on his side; so any attempt to demonise him has its limits. The moral legitimacy of his French critics is compromised by France's involvement in the Rwandan genocide. Eleven years on, Abidjan and Bouaké have turned into bloody battlegrounds for the French army. French media choose to present this shameful affair in anecdotal rather than political terms. Their refusal to recognise the reality of the situation is exemplified by their failure to publish images of the cleansing of the Ivorian capital by troops from Operation Unicorn. But even if these appalling scenes have not been seen in Paris, Ivorians will never forget them. Even in French Africa it may no longer be possible to get away with murder.
(1) Félix Houphouí«t-Boigny, first president (1960-90) of Ivory Coast, died in 1993.
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