Ivory Coast

The town in western Ivory Coast, the agricultural heartland of the world’s top cocoa producer, is also home to several mass graves, a reminder of the brutal violence that gripped the area during a 2010-11 war. The 2010 polls sparked killing on the streets of the country’s business capital, Abidjan, and massacres in towns like Duékoué.

Though Ivory Coast has since staged a successful economic comeback, the violence casts a long shadow. Some say the government’s focus on the economy at the expense of reconciliation could return to haunt the country in the years to come, even though elections set for October are expected to be peaceful.

“In Ivory Coast, people are killed and thrown in wells and no justice is served,” said Julien Kpahe, whose brother was killed in a 2012 massacre near Duékoué by forces loyal to President Ouattara. Mr Kpahe said he had no faith that the men he believed killed his brother — former northern rebels involved in a decade-long uprising and since integrated into the army — will be brought to justice. “The elections are not my business. I really don’t care about them,” he said, calling the government’s failure to investigate mass violence during and after the 2010-11 crisis “an abuse of power”.

That crisis split the continent, with Nigeria and South Africa taking opposing sides in the showdown between then-incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo, who controlled the army and had the support of southern Christians, and challenger Alassane Ouattara, backed by Muslims in the north and declared the winner according to UN-certified results.  In October, Ivory Coast will vote in the first polls since the ones that sparked war. Mr Ouattara is widely expected to be returned for a second and final term, given that his only viable challenger, Mr Gbagbo, is awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court, accused of crimes against humanity.

Still, observers say the perception among pro-Gbagbo supporters — who accounted for almost half of voters in 2010 — that justice has not been served, or has been carried out in a one-sided manner, could come back to haunt the country.

“Avoiding a future political crisis means constructing a justice system capable of prosecuting those responsible for the violence of the past and nurturing reconciliation with those whose trust in state institutions has been lost,” said Jim Wormington, Ivory Coast researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Though Mr Ouattara created a “Special Investigation and Examination Cell” in 2011 to investigate the worst abuses committed during the post-elections crisis, rights groups note that not a single case has been brought to trial in civilian courts.

Interest in the election has been low because many Ivorians associate elections with violence, a civil society coalition that monitored last month’s registration period said. Others lost their identification documents when they fled their homes during the conflict and cannot afford to purchase new ones, said Bamba Sindou, co-ordinator of the group. Anecdotal evidence suggests that voter registration figures are low.

“Ivory Coast is not motivated to vote, because in the end, elections bring fighting. They bring war. So people are not interested. I’m just here because it’s work,” said Jean-Claude Lahoury, working at a voter registration centre in Duékoué.

Though Ivorian officials and Abidjan-based diplomats expect the October elections to pass smoothly, the 2020 contest is far less certain. Guillaume Soro, a former rebel leader who is now the parliament speaker, is expected to seek the presidency as is the powerful interior minister Hamed Bakayoko.

Analysts note that the country’s likely future leaders do not share the technocrat background of Mr Ouattara, an economist, and Ivory Coast’s first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who ruled until his death in 1993.

“You have a new generation of politicians, all of whom learnt politics in street fighting or war, that started their career in war, in violent opposition,” said Rinaldo Depagne, west Africa project director at the International Crisis Group.

For his part, Mr Soro casts the 2015 vote as a chance to build on progress since the war’s end but warns that reconciliation in a society divided over a decade of conflict “cannot be done with a magic wand”.

“I think the next election will consolidate the process of reconciliation. But it cannot be sudden,” said Mr Soro. “In South Africa, we are still talking about reconciliation and we have been since 1994.”

UN investigators recently found a former rebel commander — since integrated into the official Ivorian army — to be in possession of a private arms cache that outmatched the firepower of the Ivorian armed forces, according to a confidential letter sent to the UN Security Council in March .and seen by the FT.

The fact that former rebel commanders, even if integrated into the army, still maintain loyalist fighters, significant weapons stocks, and in some cases profit from illegal activities such as artisanal mining, could pose a significant threat to peace in the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections, when the candidates likely to run may include those with strong ties to ex-rebels.