2004 hard on Ivory Coast
2004-12-21 09:14
Abidjan - Having started the year with a faint glimmer of peace, Ivory Coast winds up 2004 mired deeper in tensions, under a UN arms embargo and facing the devastation of its once-envied, cocoa-based economy.
Divided since September 2002 by a failed coup that sparked a low-level civil war, the former west African powerhouse has come no closer to reconciliation, with its political and military foes holding tighter to their entrenched positions in the face of mounting international pleas for compromise.
And relations with former colonial power France have soured to the point that there are only a handful of lingering French nationals from a once proud community that ranged in the tens of thousands.
A minor achievement in the face of such obstacles came last week with the passage of three key bills envisioned under a peace pact signed in January 2003 to end the civil war, addressing root causes of the war that has pitted the poorer, mostly Muslim north against the affluent government-held south.
Citizenship and naturalisation guidelines were laid out in bills overwhelmingly passed by the fractious legislature dominated by the ruling Ivorian Popular Front, which will grant citizenship on demand to an estimated 700 000 people born in Ivory Coast to immigrant parents.
A third bill, setting eligibility conditions for presidential candidates, also passed on Friday but looks to be the bedrock upon which next year's political infighting will be based in the run-up to elections set for October.
Meanwhile the United Nations, which in April sent 6 000 troops to patrol a confidence zone splitting rebel north from government south, is weighing whether to reinforce the deployment, which was overwhelmed in November by a week of deadly riots in the commercial capital Abidjan.
Government planes bombed rebel-held towns in what President Laurent Gbagbo called an action "to liberate and reunify" the country that was also a violation of an 18-month-old ceasefire.
Whether deliberately, as France believes, or by accident, as Gbagbo insists, a French military base in the central rebel stronghold Bouake was hit, leaving nine French peacekeepers and a US civilian dead, in addition to more than 80 Ivorian civilians, according to the rebels.
A furious France riposte that wiped out the modest Ivorian airforce unleashed the riots in Abidjan, encouraged by 24-hour broadcasts of messages on state radio and television that sent every Ivorian after "his or her own foreigner".
The arms embargo was imposed just days after the unrest, along with the threat of targeted sanctions including travel bans and the freezing of assets that has been held at bay by Herculean mediation efforts for the African Union by South African President Thabo Mbeki.
More serious are the financial concerns evoked by the riots, as state coffers dwindle and salaries for civil servants become increasingly difficult to pay.