No Way Out
It is an afternoon so hot and humid that even the ubiquitous flies seem reluctant to take to the air. A French patrol clad in jungle fatigues advances warily up a dusty, rubbish-strewn lane. Nearby, their comrades try to stay cool as they guard the local branch of the West African Central Bank. They watch as motley bands of heavily armed teenagers cruise past. This is Bouake, a ramshackle city in central C�te d'Ivoire that was once home to more than half a million people. Today, it is the headquarters of the rebel movement that, over the past year, has torn this nation in two.
French troops have been in Bouake for a little over a month. The rebels invited them in to help restore order after shooting broke out during an attempted robbery at the bank French troops now guard. Twenty-three people were killed in the melee, but the city has been quiet since the French arrived. "Things have been getting better," says Colonel Daniel Puente, commander of the French forces. "The security is improving." It is yet another small victory for Licorne, "unicorn" in French, the name by which the French army's 4,000-strong deployment to its former colony is known. In September 2002, a group of Ivorian military officers, fed up with what they saw as an escalating government campaign of discrimination against northerners and immigrants, attempted to oust President Laurent Gbagbo, who draws his support primarily from the Christian south. The abortive coup in Abidjan, the commercial capital, turned into outright civil war, and, within days, French troops arrived to help evacuate Westerners. They stayed to set up blocking positions between the government and rebel armies, using deadly force when necessary. Throughout the ensuing months, France launched a diplomatic effort to secure a peace agreement that called for the creation of a power-sharing government while its soldiers worked to help establish a demilitarized "zone of confidence" between the combatants.
France's robust military and diplomatic intervention here is credited with preventing C�te d'Ivoire's civil war--which has displaced close to one million--from devolving into the kind of bloodletting witnessed in nearby Liberia. "If the French wouldn't have stepped in, we would have seen a destruction of that country," says Princeton Lyman, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. In fact, France's supposed success in C�te d'Ivoire is frequently cited by those who argue for more substantial U.S. peacekeeping efforts in Liberia. Some have gone so far as to suggest that France's willingness to risk its soldiers to rescue an imploding African state represents a new model for how the West should respond to future civil wars. "African solutions to African problems boils down to the guns talk," says Chester Crocker, an Africa expert at Georgetown University. "The French have said it won't be done that way in Ivory Coast."
There is little doubt that French intervention has saved lives, at least in the short term. But, if France has succeeded in stopping the C�te d'Ivoire's war, it has hardly established a lasting peace. Instead, a political stalemate between the rebels and the government has left French troops in the undesirable position of enforcing a de facto partition with no clear exit strategy. "Today, we are really in a situation where we don't know the rescue gate," admits Francis Guenon, France's political attache in C�te d'Ivoire. Viewed in this light, France's experience here reads more as a cautionary tale for Western states considering intervention in future civil wars than a model for how to do it right.
To a large degree, France's diplomatic efforts have become a victim of its own battlefield success. Because Licorne so effectively ended the fighting, neither the rebels nor the government believe they have fully exhausted their military options, making political compromise more difficult. Instead, both sides accuse the country's former colonial master of colluding with the enemy and robbing them of victory.
Belief in a French "stab in the back" is particularly strong in the south, where Gbagbo has fomented anti-French sentiments. Politicians accuse France of failing to live up to its commitments under a 1961 defense treaty, which obligated France to aid C�te d'Ivoire against external aggression. Loyalists argue that, because the rebels were sheltered by Burkina Faso prior to their initial attacks, they represent an external force. (France says the rebellion was an internal affair.) Mamadou Koulibaly, a member of Gbagbo's party, published a book this summer accusing France of backing the rebellion to protect its privileged economic position in C�te d'Ivoire, a position Gbagbo allegedly threatened by promising to allow bidding for several large contracts held by French companies (France denies this). Last month, amid this anti-French fervor, a French radio reporter named Jean Helene was shot to death by an Ivorian police officer. Worst of all, Gbagbo hard-liners view the Marcoussis peace plan--named for the Parisian suburb where negotiations took place in January--as imposed by France rather than as an Ivorian solution to the current crisis. This belief may sow the seeds of future political unrest.
Resentment of France is more tempered in the rebel-held north, but there is still a conviction that Licorne saved Gbagbo's government. "If France had not interposed its forces and asked us to negotiate, I am sure we would be in Abidjan today," says Colonel Soumaila Bakayoko, the rebels' military commander. Bakayoko's assessment is probably correct. Because C�te d'Ivoire has relied on France for its external defense since independence, it never invested heavily in its military. The national army remained relatively weak and, in the early days of the rebellion, was in disarray. Without Licorne, the rebels might have achieved a relatively quick and decisive victory--at a terrible cost in civilian lives. But the French intervention has prolonged the conflict, risking further violence and deaths in the future. "Even some members of the French community here say it would have been better if we hadn't come," says French diplomat Guenon. "They say in two to three days the situation could have been stabilized by the rebellion."
The problem for France now is that it can't extricate itself from its expensive entanglement--Licorne costs roughly $30 million per month--until at least 2005, when the Marcoussis peace plan calls for national elections. But that timetable is looking increasingly unrealistic. The Frenchpoliced "zone of confidence" separating the combatants was meant to smooth the peace process. But, by removing the threat of renewed fighting, it has given both sides the confidence to throw up political roadblocks. Gbagbo has been slow to turn over more power to a prime minister. Angered by Gbagbo's foot-dragging, the rebels withdrew from the power-sharing government in late September.
Even if the current impasse is overcome, however, more hurdles remain. The process established by Marcoussis calls for controversial changes to citizenship laws prior to elections--changes that make it easier to obtain Ivorian citizenship, even if only one parent was born in C�te d'Ivoire. It also outlines a plan to disarm the rebels and reintegrate them into a new national army. Each of these steps is fraught with difficulty. And, given the country's recent history, which includes a 1999 coup and the disenfranchisement of massive numbers of voters during the 2000 election, there is no guarantee that all parties would abide by the results of eventual elections. "Marcoussis is a way to a peace, but it may not be a sustainable peace," says Richard Yao, an Ivorian sociologist.
In recent weeks, the French have begun considering surrendering peacekeeping operations to a U.N. force. And, while the U.S. foreign policy establishment has seen France's intervention here as the example for Liberia, the view from Abidjan is exactly the opposite. Here, some say, it would have been better if France had followed America's lead, labeling Gbagbo an impediment to peace, just as the United States singled out Charles Taylor and pressured him to step down. Then it could have helped a West African peacekeeping force deploy here. Alternatively, France could have intervened to help one side win a decisive victory. As one Licorne officer told me, "In hindsight, it might have been better if we had a clear mandate to tip the scales." Barring that, perhaps France should have considered staying out of its former colony altogether.
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