Rebellion against Ouattara

Ivory Coast government opens talks with disgruntled soldiers

(Reuters) - Ivory Coast's government opened negotiations with disgruntled soldiers on Wednesday, promising to pay back wages and overdue benefits to thousands of ex-rebels now serving in the army in a bid to quell unrest.

The soldiers, who on Tuesday erected barricades in the commercial capital Abidjan and the second city Bouake as well as in Korhogo, Odienne, and Daloa returned to barracks as they awaited the outcome of the meeting.

The world's top cocoa-producing state is still emerging from a decade of political upheaval and a 2011 civil war that saw French- and U.N.-backed rebels topple President Laurent Gbagbo. 

The protesting troops were part of the New Forces rebellion that fought with U.N. and French backing to bring Gbagbo's rival, current President Alassane Ouattara, to power three years ago.

Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko, speaking on national television late on Tuesday, said the government had agreed to the soldiers' demands.

But following Wednesday's talks, which included Bakayoko and other government ministers, and the heads of the army and the national security council, the soldiers said that the process by which the payments would be made were still being finalized.

The negotiations did not involve another group of protesting soldiers who claimed they had been promised 5 million CFA francs($9,564) to help drive Gbagbo from power.

While Tuesday's demonstrations remained largely calm and most of the soldiers were unarmed, they sharpened towards nightfall, with sporadic gunfire in Bouake, Daloa and Korhogo.

In Bouake, the rebels' former stronghold, they looted the central police station overnight and unsuccessfully tried to break into the armoury.

Interior Minister Bakayoko promised that the protesters would not be punished.

Having spent years burnishing his credentials as Africa's peacemaker, Burkina Faso's longtime ruler Blaise Compaoré did not get a chance to broker a peace deal in his own country.

The troublemaker and The peace broker

A former coup leader, Compaoré has steered an unlikely course from regional troublemaker to peace broker.

“Handsome Blaise”, as he is known to Burkinabes, was aged just 36 when he seized power in a putsch, replacing his erstwhile companion Captain Thomas Sankara, who was killed in mysterious circumstances.

Both had allegedly been trained at Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's "World Revolutionary Centre" in Libya, whose other pupils included Liberian warlord Charles Taylor and his proxy in Sierra Leone, Foday Sankoh.

Years later, Compaoré was accused of sending arms and mercenaries to fight UN peacekeepers in Sierra Leone – in exchange for diamonds.

The Burkinabe leader has also been linked to a 2002 rebellion in neighbouring Ivory Coast, which left thousands dead and split the country in two.Ultimately, the Ivorian crisis gave Burkina Faso’s strongman a chance to reinvent himself as a mediator.

Diplomatic efforts to end the bloodshed in Ivory Coast, home to three million Burkinabes, resulted in a 2007 peace deal signed in Ouagadougou.Compaoré has also been described as a point man for negotiators seeking the release of Western hostages held by Islamist groups and other rebel militia in the restive Sahel region.

In 2009, talks led by Compaoré helped secure the release of two Canadian envoys for the United Nations, Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, who were held captive in Niger for 150 days.

Incidentally, a decade earlier Fowler had penned a scathing UN report that publicly accused the Burkinabe ruler of funding Angola’s bloody 1990s civil war.

Having spent years burnishing his credentials as Africa's peacemaker, Burkina Faso's longtime ruler Blaise Compaoré did not get a chance to broker a peace deal in his own country.

France24

Schools in IvoryCoast

Côte d’Ivoire ( Ivory Coast ): Lack of facilities, children struggle to access basic education.

The place of children is in a school where they can learn and feel secure. Unfortunately, since April 2011, the education crisis in Côte d’Ivoire ( Ivory Coast ) has worsened. Education of children has in many instances become a secondary concern for Ouattara's government, as witnessed by these children in a deprived town in the Western part of Ivory Coast who are pleading with Ouattara's government for a school facility. Ouattara's unwillingness to inject resources and infrastructural development into the educational system,  undermines the fundamental right of children to education.

War Crimes

Civitas Maxima, a non-profit organisation of international lawyers and investigators, is working on cases relating to war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ivory Coast. . Most of the cases relate to the period after May 2011, the official end of the civil conflict, but Alain Werner, a Swiss Lawyer who established the group, believes they should still be characterised as war crimes because they occurred "under the guise of the war".

One such case occured in another district of Bouaké, one of Ouattara's militias stronghold. A teenage girl recalls the night she visited a maquis, an open-air restaurant, with her school friends after the official end of the conflict. Two "military men" wearing "green camouflage clothes and carrying guns" approached the group and told her she had to go with them. They put her in a car, took her to a house and raped her. She was 16 at the time. A very clear example of attacks against civilians when there could be no military advantage because, basically, they had won the war.

 A document Werner's team is compiling to take to the international criminal court, which contains evidence from almost 200 witnesses, outlines grave acts of postwar violence committed by supporters of Ouattara. They include cases of gang rape, often stretching over days or even weeks, in which armed soldiers took dozens of women to their barracks. One involves an 11-year-old girl abducted by a soldier and forced to live with him as his wife; three years on, she is still living with him.

Adou Gnapi, the police captain in the town of Bouake, when asked why women frequently suffer sexual violence. "It's complicated," he said. "Nowadays women look too good."

Political Jockeying Puts Cote d’Ivoire’s Reconciliation in Jeopardy

Earlier this month, Cote d’Ivoire’s opposition parties rejected Youssouf Bakayoko’s re-election as the head of the country’s election commission. Bakayoko, a member of President Alassane Ouattara’s ruling coalition, has served as head of the commission since it was set up in 2010. The rejection was a reminder of both the fractious nature of Ivorian politics and the deep ambivalence within the opposition Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI) about reaching agreement with the Ouattara administration.
Reform of the electoral commission, which parliament approved in May 2014, was meant to be a further step in political reconciliation and normalization, but the new makeup provides a majority of seats on the commission for the ruling party. The dispute over Bakayoko’s re-election also reflects an ongoing power struggle within the FPI between the party’s president, Pascal Affi Nguessan, who favors re-engagement in mainstream Ivoirian politics, and hardline supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo, who still want to boycott the upcoming 2015 elections. The FPI has signaled that it is seeking new concessions from the government. A party congress at the end of the year will need to agree on the FPI’s new leadership and whether it will compete in the 2015 elections. If not resolved, those issues could result in a splitting of the party.
Many of the divisions that fueled Cote d’Ivoire’s earlier civil war persist. An official reconciliation effort through a commission, Verite et Reconciliation (Truth and Reconciliation), completed its mandate in September 2013. It was, however, a complete failure, in part because, despite Ouattara’s promise to hold his supporters to account for human rights abuses in 2010-2011, not one of his supporters was tried.
In this respect, Ouattara has staked out a position that is confusing to many Ivorians. He has refused to transfer Simone Gbagbo, the wife of the former president, to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, saying that the Ivoirian judicial system is competent to judge her. It seems Ouattara fears that by transferring her, he would come under additional pressure to deliver some of his own supporters to the ICC. This would be deeply destabilizing for him and his coalition in the short term, as prominent Ouattara supporters—such as Guillaume Soro, a former prime minister and rebel leader now serving as the president of the National Assembly—are known to be of interest to the court. 
Nevertheless, in March 2014, the government allowed Charles Ble Goude, a close ally of Gbagbo, to be transferred to The Hague and tried. Ble Goude was already in Ivoirian custody; handing him over to the ICC was politically timed to warn the opposition FPI of the power of incumbency.
Meanwhile, Cote d’Ivoire has maintained good relations with France under Ouattara. Although the U.N.-sponsored French peacekeeping mission is winding down, the bilaterally agreed French military presence will expand to an 800-soldier unit based in Abidjan. That could become an issue in the 2015 election, as the opposition FPI is ambivalent about deepening ties with France. The force is also a statement of support for Ouattara by France in the event of pre- or post-election violence.
Yet there is one other serious potential contender to the presidency: Guillaume Soro. As the former head of the rebel FN, he enjoys support in the north. And although Ouattara, as president, is technically also the minister of defense, in reality Soro enjoys the loyalty of the military because so many of the armed forces’ soldiers are former FN rebels. Soro’s support of Ouattara would further guarantee his re-election and might come as part of a deal by which Ouattara would stand aside and back Soro in 2020. The battle for power, therefore, is less over who will win the 2015 election than over who will succeed Ouattara in 2020.


Source: WPR ( World Politics Review )

Jerry Rawlings

 No Western president should position himself as to summon African leaders. International rules of diplomatic and political engagement are unambiguous about sovereign nations being one amongst equals, irrespective of how powerful or weak they may be. While Western countries have preserved the essence of moral values within their countries, their interests and not morality, counts more when dealing with other countries.....Africa sat and watched France misuse UN troops to oust a patriot out of Ivory Coast.

All Africa is asking for, is the boldness to defy that, which is wrong and is an affront to our sovereign African right and authority. Unfortunately, a few too many of us on this continent have allowed the West, with their double standards to intimidate us. If they were intimidating us from a position of right, that would be easier to tolerate. There is a loss of international morality and values. There is a monetization of morality.

Ebola

Ebola: Le sous-préfet de Tiobli, Kouassi Koffi, accuse les Pro-Gbagbo de l'Ouest de la Côte d'Ivoire, d'etre parfois réfractaires aux messages du gouvernement Ouattara:

« On va dans un village où il y a un passage pour aller au Liberia, un passage clandestin. Les gens sont de la même ethnie de part et d'autre de la frontière et, il y a quelques jours, sept Libériens ont été accueillis non loin de là. Les populations sont tellement difficiles qu'il faut vraiment être au contact avec elles. Politiquement parlant c'était une population acquise à la cause de l'ancien régime, donc tout ce que nous faisons très souvent a des connotations» explique-t-il.