Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
The issues revolving around migration and citizenship eligibility continue to roil the political waters in both Europe and the United States, as desperate people cross the Mediterranean and the Rio Grande River, seeking better opportunities.
But similar concerns have also been politically deadly in non-western states. In the case of the west African nation of Côte d’Ivoire, or Ivory Coast, it led to civil war and the near-breakup of the country.
A former French colony, Côte d’Ivoire achieved independence, along with the rest of French West and Equatorial Africa, in 1960. Its 20 million people belong to more than 60 ethnic groups, with the Baoulé, at 20 per cent, the largest.
The country’s first president was Félix Houphouet-Boigny, who ruled until his death in 1993. His political vehicle, the Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), went virtually unchallenged.
Côte d’Ivoire prospered economically. This success became known as the “Ivorian miracle” and was due to a combination of sound planning, the maintenance of strong ties with France – the president was a devout Roman Catholic who built the world’s largest church in his new capital of Yamoussoukro -- and development of the country’s significant coffee and cocoa industries.
Houphouet-Boigny’s ethnic group, the Baoulé, became widespread throughout the country, being the most numerous planters of cocoa, rubber, and coffee; they sometimes came to outnumber local native ethnic groups.
As well, given the need for labour to work in agriculture, northerners, mostly Muslims, began to migrate into Côte d’Ivoire from neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.
As long as prosperity was the norm, this wasn’t much of an issue. But in the 1990s the country began to unravel, racked by economic crisis as prices for cocoa and coffee declined, and ethno-regional tensions rooted in issues of identity and citizenship increased.
Also, the democratization process opened up a new way to attain power – but since only nationals could exercise political rights, citizenship became important.
The ideology of “Ivorité,” based on aboriginality, began to be used against people whose ancestors were not native to the country, despite being born there. In contrast to the increasingly Muslim and immigrant north, the predominantly Christian south increasingly came to define itself as the indigenous group.
Houphouet-Boigny’s successor, Henri Konan Bédié, also a Catholic Baoulé, prevented a northern Muslim, Alassane Ouattara, a member of the Dioula people and leader of the Rassemblement des Républicains (RDR), from contesting the presidency in 1995, claiming that his parents had been born in Burkina Faso.
Many northerners were blocked from voting and were increasingly subject to attacks, particularly in the south. Other politicians boycotted the election, which Bédié won with 96 per cent of the vote.
In advance of the 2000 election, Bédié’s supporters continued harassing people they considered non-indigenous, driving them from land in the south. Both Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo, a Catholic Bété politician and leader of the Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI), were determined to unseat him.
Before that could happen, however, a military coup, led by a northern Muslim of the Yakouba ethnic group, General Robert Guei, seized power in 1999. In the ensuing election, which Guei contested, and from which both Ouattara and Bédié were barred from running, Gbagbo became president.
Once in office, Gbagbo began supporting “Ivorité” as a political principle, creating an Office of National Identification to certify whether individuals could claim indigeneity. Ouattara saw this as an attempt to deny his supporters their citizenship rights.
An insurgency, led by a new movement, the Forces Nouvelles, began in 2002 and soon the country was virtually partitioned into two. Attempts to create a government of national reconciliation kept breaking down.
While French and UN peacekeepers patrolled a buffer zone, a 2007 agreement still made no determination as to who was a citizen and therefore had rights to land.
The autumn 2010 presidential election provided stark evidence that little had been resolved. The election, in which ethnicity and the country’s north-south divide played a crucial role, pitted President Gbagbo against Ouattara.
Both men claimed victory and took the presidential oath of office. A new crisis ensued, which in March 2011escalated into full-scale war. At least 3,000 people were killed during the five-month conflict, most of them by pro-Gbagbo forces.
The UN endorsed Ouattara’s election win and French forces finally arrested Gbagbo. In October 2011 the International Criminal Court charged him with four counts of crimes against humanity and he was transferred to The Hague, where he awaits trial.
Ouattara inherited an economy shattered by more than a decade of misrule. Conflicts over land continue to pit northerners against southerners and many other unresolved issues make the likelihood of renewed violence a possibility.
The October 2015 October presidential election, in which Ouattara will seek a second term, will be a critical moment for the country.
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