World - Côte d'Ivoire: Power Gridlock

Côte d'Ivoire: Power Gridlock
Alex Vines

Coverage of events in Côte d'Ivoire seems to have gone quiet, but a dangerous power struggle continues over the recent November 2010 presidential election results.

The disputed outcome is already having a regional impact as over 300 Ivorians have been killed and another twenty thousand have fled into neighbouring countries to escape the violence, while the number of internally displaced persons has mushroomed. There has been a political stand-off since the Independent Electoral Commission gave opposition leader Alassane Ouattara victory with 54.1 percent against 44.9 percent for the incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo supporters encouraged the Constitutional Council, whose president is a close ally of Gbagbo, to annul all votes from seven northern departments and declare him the winner. Ouattara has also announced he is president and set up rival governments. The incumbent has set up shop in the presidential palace and his challenger is in Abidjan's Golf Hôtel, protected by Forces Nouvelles and United Nations (UN) peacekeepers.

Following the death of Félix Houphouët-Boigny in 1993, the country succumbed to coups, chaos and ethnic division. This political crisis is the latest chapter since civil war erupted in 2002 and split the country. In March 2007, a deal mediated by neighbouring Burkina Faso and approved by the African Union (AU) stipulated fresh elections, although these were several times delayed. Finally, two election rounds took place in 2010, with a run-off on November 28. Plans to hold legislative elections in early 2011 have been put on hold indefinitely due to the crisis.

The only initially promising aspect of this situation has been that of leadership from emerging African institutions. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the AU suspended Côte d'Ivoire and threatened sanctions. ECOWAS also threatened to use 'legitimate force' to depose Gbagbo. This assertion of African leadership reflected a growing role for regional bodies and compares favourably to the weakening and fractious UN Security Council. On December 8, Russia blocked a UN Security Council statement that backed Ouattara as the winner of the presidential election. Following the AU and ECOWAS statements recognising Ouattara, Russia compromised and permitted a UN presidential statement welcoming the AU and ECOWAS declarations. Russia had questioned whether the UN was overstepping its mandate by declaring an election winner.

On December 13, the EU imposed sanctions on Gbagbo, his wife Simone and seventeen others by slapping them with an EU visa ban and a freeze on their assets. By February 2011 these EU sanctions listed 91 individuals and thirteen economic entities. UN sanctions were already imposed in late 2004 on Côte d'Ivoire. From 2005-2007, I led a team of UN sanctions inspectors, ensuring that northern rebels, the Forces Nouvelles and Gbagbo's forces did not easily rearm and were accountable to the UN arms and diamond embargoes and targeted measures on three individuals. The Jeunes Patriotes militia leader, Charles Blé Goudé, a prominent agitator for Gbagbo who has been mobilising young people to fight, was one of those individuals already under UN sanctions. As a result, in 2006, the temporary calming effects on Goudé's actions were evident, and International Criminal Court attention seems to also have had an impact on his behaviour recently.

From January 24, Ouattara called for and imposed a month-long cocoa export ban, noting that Gbagbo's supporters control cocoa flows out of the country, though the former has sent mixed messages over whether it might be extended. Côte d'Ivoire is the world's top cocoa producer, and prices jumped to near their highest in thirty years in response. Cocoa futures have hit a fourteen month peak. Avaaz, a global campaigning organisation, ran a front-page advert in the Financial Times calling on Nestlé and other leading chocolate companies operating in the country to help prevent civil war, by refusing to purchase cocoa from what it called 'Laurent Gbagbo's illegal regime'. An spokesperson for the organisation said the EU, along with the US, was unlikely to slap a blanket embargo on the purchase of Ivorian cocoa due to the potential impact on the country's population. Although it is not an official embargo, the EU has barred all EU companies from doing business with Ivorian institutions seen backing Gbagbo. But the content of the sanctions, particularly their wording and the scope form is interpretation, has caused concern and confusion among economic operators outside Africa.

On February 18, Mr. Gbagbo announced that he is nationalising banks that have suspended their operations, the latest sign of the deteriorating economy with shortages of cash, cooking gas and a suspension of all flights of the Ivorian national airline. International markets have reacted quickly to the crisis, with the African Development Bank and the World Bank reviewing their lending programmes. The World Bank has suspended funding worth 842 million dollars to Côte d'Ivoire, along with a planned three billion dollars debt write off under the heavily indebted poor (HIPC) initiative. The Banque Centrale des Etats de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (BCEAO) cut off the government's access to state accounts in late December, putting them at the disposal of Ouattara's government-in-waiting. However, there has been a power struggle over control of these funds and reports that local banks have been used to deposit funds, bypassing the Treasury and the BCEAO. Côte d'Ivoire's deteriorating banking environment in mid-February resulted in four western banks (Citigroup Inc, Standard Chartered, Société Générale and BNP Paribas), in addition to West Africa's regional stock exchange in Abidjan, suspending their Ivorian operations.

Gbagbo has dug in his heels, claimed electoral fraud, and called on the nine thousand UN and roughly nine hundred French troops to leave because they are partisan, which they have refused to do - in effect indicating he no longer enjoys international recognition as head of state. Gbagbo continues to enjoy the support of the navy, the presidential guard, a paramilitary police unit and some militia groups, as he still receives funds from tax revenues, customs dues and income from cocoa, coffee and the oil sector, worth some 180 million dollars a month to redistribute. Despite the crisis, the delivery of cocoa beans to Ivorian ports from October-December was 21 percent higher than in 2009, although smuggling to Ghana has also significantly increased. In 2011, the crisis has caused a growing stockpile of some 1.5 billion dollars worth of cocoa exports that is deteriorating in quality because of poor storage facilities.

This indicates that for the time being, Gbagbo can pay the civil servants and military and enjoy some support - but over time, if sanctions bite and financing channels are tightened, this loyalty might shift. Ouatarra has also failed so far to seriously reach out to woo Gbagbo supporters and show that he can unite the country. That Côte d'Ivoire technically defaulted in early February on its 2.3 billion dollars Eurobond issued in April 2010 and due in 2032, after missing an end-of-January grace period deadline for a 29 million dollar coupon payment, suggests the budget is tight, and the longer the crisis continues the more difficult it will be to raise funds. With the reneged payment, Côte d'Ivoire became the first developing nation to default on an international bond since Jamaica did so in January 2010, leaving that country effectively sequestered from the international debt markets. The price of the Ivorian 2032 bond retreated to record lows following the default.

Despite the ramping-up of external pressure on Gbagbo, mediation efforts have so far failed. The AU dispatched former South African president Thabo Mbeki in December for talks with both camps, but he was unable to find agreement and his report to the AU Commission was widely ignored. A three-man mission from ECOWAS, consisting of the presidents of Benin, Cape Verde and Sierra Leone, also failed, as did a visit by former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo. The AU appointment of Kenyan prime minister Raila Odinga as official mediator was also unsuccessful.

Cracks have also appeared in the initially united ECOWAS and AU positions. Gbagbo has received support from Zimbabwe, Uganda, South Africa and Angola that suggested that the elections were irregular. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa in January questioned why two leaders were declared winners in the first place, stating that there had been discrepancies in the system and in the manner in which the issue was handled. The Ghanaian president, John Atta Mills, has also opposed a military intervention and has refused to take sides. This has been helped by Gbagbo, who has warned that an intervention could reignite the civil war, and by Ouatarra aides naively suggesting any military intervention would be over in 24 hours.

Some twenty heads of state and government attended anAU summit in Addis Ababa in late January, with AU Commission head Jean Ping reporting that there was a reaffirmation of the decision to recognise Ouattara as the president-elect. The result was the creation of a panel of five heads of state - from Burkina Faso, Chad, South Africa, Mauritania and Tanzania - designated by the AU to mediate the stand-off. The AU has tasked the panel with securing a binding solution by the end of February to the Ivorian crisis. A team of AU experts visited Côte d'Ivoire in February and met both Ouattara and Gbagbo. They are now writing a report for the panel of five African heads of state ahead of their own visit to Abidjan.

There are evident divisions, regional rivalries and disagreements about approach, particularly intervention. The controversy about the deployment to West Africa in February of South African navy 'supply vessel' SAS Drakensberg, armed with four 20mm guns, six 12.7mm guns and two Oryx helicopters is telling. ECOWAS president, Ambassador James Gbeho, complained about this deployment in public, suggesting it was aimed at undermining ECOWAS and its mediation efforts. South Africa says the ship is on a routine training mission for junior officers in the region but is ready to be called upon.

It is difficult to see how, without a united AU or ECOWAS front, the AU mediation will break the current gridlock or how the option of force can become a viable policy option. Although Gbagbo has sent mixed messages about his willingness to negotiate with Ouattara, and Ouattara has hinted on a soft landing for Gbagbo, it looks like Côte d'Ivoire will continue to be a protracted power struggle until some type of accommodation can be reached. Continued instability in Côte d'Ivoire will further destroy one of Africa's leading economies, negatively impact the region and possibly divide the country forever. It is not just the Ivorian leadership power struggle but the regional and continental ones that reduce Côte d'Ivoire's prospects for a lasting settlement.

Alex Vines is head of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, and from 2005-2007 chaired the UN Group of Experts on Côte d'Ivoire