Côte d’Ivoire Crisis: Some Lessons to Be Learned

In my review last week of Africa's likely top flash points for 2011, I expressed my concern that

The year that was supposed to be Côte d'Ivoire's “année de la paix” may well see the restart of the country's civil war, with potentially devastating impacts on neighboring countries, global commodities markets, and the credibility of international organizations from the United Nations to the African Union to the subregional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

With bloody clashes this on the outskirts of the country's commercial capital, Abidjan, giving evidence of escalating tensions between supporters of incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo and the man whom most of the international community has recognized as the winner of the November presidential runoff, Alassane Dramane Ouattara, that dire prediction seems closer to become a reality. Certainly no resolution appears imminent to the standoff, with Ouattara and his many of his aides still holed up in Abidjan's Hotel du Golfe and Gbagbo showing no signs of relaxing his grip on power despite the entreaties of a parade of foreign dignitaries, the latest of which, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, left the country on Monday with nothing to show for his weekend of shuttle diplomacy.

That things have come to this impasse is the result of a number of factors, some quite unique to the Ivorian situation. Nevertheless, upon closer examination, a number of lessons might be learned from the current crisis, including:

Failure to fully implement peace accords will ultimately undermine the legitimacy and sustainability of any resolution. The 2007 Ouagadougou peace accords between the Ivorian government and the rebel Forces Nouvelles (FN) clearly stipulated a whole series of steps which, had they been followed, might have prevented the post-election contestations which precipitated the current crisis, including the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of armed forces; the restoration of state authority and the redeployment of the civil administration throughout national territory; and the adoption of a common “code of good conduct” for political actors. In fact, an annex to the agreement listed no fewer than ten steps that were supposed to be taken before elections were to be organized. Considering that, aside the first step (“signing of the agreement”), was carried out in anywhere near its entirety, how was it that anyone expected that the election results would not be challenged? In this respect, the international community in general and, in particular, the members of the United Nations Security Council who repeatedly passed resolutions piously endorsing the peace agreement and reaffirming their support of it certainly have their share of responsibility for the failure to pay any attention to whether its provisions were being honored.

There is no substitute for experienced, competent leadership in complex missions like the one the international community undertook in Côte d'Ivoire. When the final analysis of the current crisis is written, there is not doubt that a not insignificant part of the international community's failure will be laid at the feet of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Special Representative heading the United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI), Choi Young-jin. The choice of the latter gentleman for this sensitive mission in was certainly an odd one. Choi had no experience in Sub-Saharan Africa whatsoever when he landed in Abidjan in late 2007. In fact, about the only qualification the South Korean diplomat apparently had was that he was a crony of the South Korean diplomat who had just become UN secretary-general. Specifically, Choi had served as Ban's deputy when the latter was foreign minister in the North Korea-appeasing cabinet of President Roh Moo-hyun – a tortured figure who, aside from his death by suicide, is best remembered for notoriously corrupt family. Ban eventually appointed Choi to be South Korea's UN ambassador, from which position the latter successfully managed his patron's 2006 campaign for the top job at the world body. Once he was ensconced at the secretariat, Ban promptly rewarded his acolyte with a plum position that gave him diplomatic immunity and a tax-free six-figure salary. Historians will perhaps unravel one day how much of the Ivorian crisis was exacerbated by this cronyism.

Do not add to tensions, especially if not prepared for effective action. The Gbagbo government has demanded the withdrawal of UNOCI forces. In response, UN Secretary-General Ban asked the Security Council to authorize an additional 2,000 military personnel to augment to mission. In practical terms, if the increase in troops is approved, it will take some time to raise and deploy them. Even then, what difference such a token addition will actually make to otherwise largely ineffectual force is not readily apparent. In the meantime, the daft request has raised both tensions and expectations.

Conflicts cannot be resolved unless their root causes are addressed. The international community somehow convinced itself that the fissures brought into the open by the Ivorian civil war – and, indeed, the current crisis – will be resolved simply by holding an election and respecting its results. The parties to the conflict saw it much clearer when, in the Ouagadougou agreement, they acknowledged:

The parties signatory to this agreement, agree that the identification of Ivorian and foreign populations living in Côte d'Ivoire is a major issue. The lack of a clear and coherent identification program, as well as the lack of unique administrative documents attesting of the identity and the nationality of persons can be a source of conflicts.

However much the question of ivoirité may appear tainted by the crass political exploitation to which has been subjected, it is nonetheless a very relevant question to many Ivorians. It can only be swept under the rug for so long. Ivorians of all political persuasions will need to address it – and they may in due time. What they cannot do, however, is pretend that it is not a concern, notwithstanding the many outsiders who would like nothing more than that.

Admittedly, the laws in Côte d'Ivoire regarding nationality are relatively restrictive and, unlike the United States, for example, there is no jus soli, or birthright citizenship for those born within the country. Under the Code de la Nationalité Ivoirienne adopted in 1961 and amended in 1972, the only ways to acquire citizenship are to be born to citizens, to be minors adopted by them, or to be formally naturalized. It might not be good social policy that the descendants of immigrants who came to the country during the halcyon days of the cocoa boom and who were born and have lived there all their lives have no legal claim to citizenship, but such is the law. If it is to be changed, it has to be done through a legal process, not by simply ignoring and putting off the reckoning to another day.

Do not make threats when neither the actual capacity nor even the political will exists to follow through on them. That ECOWAS, long heralded as the most effective of Africa's subregional organizations, now finds its hard-earned reputation in tatters is the fault of its current chair, President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, and the new president of the ECOWAS Commission, Victor Gbeho, both of whom proved overeager to preen themselves in front of cameras by issuing an ultimatum to Gbagbo threatening the “legitimate use of force” without ever bothering to see if there were forces to use and, if so, whether they were available to them. As it turns out, the force capabilities did not add up and, after Ghana's President John Atta Mills emphatically ruled out last week his country's participation in any military adventure next door, the prospect of an ECOWAS intervention grew more remote. At the end of the day, all the posturing accomplished nothing except to enhance the stature of Gbagbo who, after all, called his neighbors' bluff, and undermine that of ECOWAS, a point emphasized by former Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings, currently the AU's special envoy to Somalia, who has emphatically warned against any use of force, arguing that “attempts to marshal support for a military intervention lack any justification and rather will expose the UN, the AU, and ECOWAS as being hypocritical.”

As for Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade's bellicose calls this week for an invasion of Abidjan in the name of democratic order, the whole performance would be risible if it were not so pathetic. What would an octogenarian who the year before hired North Koreans to erect a monstrous 49-meter bronze statue to his vainglory, who last year gave his son Karim the energy ministry to add to his existing portfolio as Senegal's minister of state for international cooperation, regional development, air transport, and infrastructure, and who is currently trying to reinterpret his country's constitution in order to squeeze in another term of office possibly know about good governance?

Keep channels of communication open. It is undoubtedly rather satisfying for some in the international community that, since they have not managed to do anything else, they could at least throw out diplomats accredited originally by the Gbagbo government. The United Nations, Canada, Great Britain, and other countries have evicted previously appointed Ivorian ambassadors, handing their chanceries over to new envoys sent by Ouattara. This might be well and fine from the perspective that these governments have switched recognition, but it certainly leaves them even less able to contribute to a peaceful resolution of the standoff in Abidjan. How is one to negotiate Gbagbo's departure if one has shut down the principal channel of communication with his regime?

The rush to “delegitimize” the Gbagbo government has also had its unintended effect on financial markets. Côte d'Ivoire missed the December 31 deadline for a coupon payment on a $2.3 billion bond. With his government no longer recognized by most international institutions and foreign governments, Gbagbo had very little incentive to pay the interest due. As his spokesman Ahoua Don Mello told Bloomberg last Friday, “The bill should be paid only when the international community recognizes Laurent Gbagbo…I think it would be curious to ask our government to pay while the international community doesn't recognize it.” Rather, he noted, foreign investors should “ask Alassane Ouattara to pay” since their governments recognize him as the Ivorian head of state.

Mediators need to be credible. What was the African Union thinking when it appointed Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga to be its special envoy to Côte d'Ivoire? The most basic requirement of a mediator is that he or she should enjoy the confidence of the parties to the dispute. Having beaten even the trigger-happy Nigerian head of state by at least a week in demanding military action to remove Gbagbo, how was Odinga ever going to convince the Ivorian leader that he was anything close to a neutral arbitrator? And the fact that Odinga's failed mission was followed by one led by former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo was too ironic. Obasanjo, whose own “reelection” in 2003 was marred by all sorts of shenanigans and who masterminded the “election” in 2007 of a literally moribund successor in a poll described by the European Union as “one of the worst elections the it has ever observed” and by the United States State Department as “seriously flawed” (see my report at the time), was supposed to convince Gbagbo to respect the presumptive decision of the Ivorian people?

Alas, Côte d'Ivoire still has some way to go before it even begins to emerge from the current crisis. While one hopes for a quick and peace resolution, one must also be realistic about the complex dynamics of the situation, including the possibility of a prolonged standoff since, international sanctions against the notwithstanding, the Gbagbo regime still controls taxes and customs as well as the country's lucrative cocoa and hydrocarbon sectors. As Dr. John Campbell of the Council on Foreign Relations, former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, wrote earlier this week in a New York Times op-ed, while “over time Mr. Gbagbo's domestic support is likely to erode,” in the meantime, he “is unlikely to go away soon.”

Whatever happens in Abidjan, however, it is likely that, sooner or later, there will be similar disputed elections elsewhere in Africa. This year alone there will be at least seventeen presidential polls across the continent, including votes in Benin, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, The Gambia, Liberia, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Uganda, and Zambia, and, possibly, and eighteenth, Zimbabwe. Perhaps some good can be derived out of the less than stellar management of the Ivorian crisis if both Africans and their international partners would take a moment and ponder the lessons to be gleaned from the difficulties of today before their repetition produces the tragedies of tomorrow.

— J. Peter Pham is Senior Vice President of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in New York City. He also holds academic appointments as Associate Professor of Justice Studies, Political Science, and African Studies at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.