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AC Vol 43 No 19 www.africa-confidential.com 27 September 2002 Vol 43 No 19 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL ZAMBIA 2 CÔTE D’IVOIRE Corruption club President Mwanawasa may be the The nightmare scenario victim of his own anti-corruption An army rebellion may send the once-prosperous country down the drive if the Supreme Court finds same road as its unstable neighbours his election victory was rigged. He Côte d’Ivoire is in danger of fragmenting on ethnic lines as efforts to put down an army mutiny turn into is struggling to control a party split between politicians loyal to his an all-out assault on immigrants and on opponents of President Laurent Gbagbo. There had been predecessor, Frederick Chiluba, rumblings for months among dissident soldiers recruited into the army by former military leader General and backers of his ‘New Deal’. Robert Gueï (AC Vol 43 No 10). He was killed during the mutiny by troops loyal to Gbagbo. The mutiny broke out in the early hours of 19 September while Gbagbo was in Rome. The mutineers RWANDA 3killed Interior Minister Emile Boga Doudou and attacked the home of Defence Minister Moïse Lida Kouassi. Gueï’s body was found dumped in a ditch. The government claimed he was shot dead as he Leaving the quagmire was heading for the television station to proclaim a coup, though he was dressed in a rather unpresidential tee-shirt and died from a single shot to the head. His wife Rose was also shot dead and the body of his Rwanda is pulling its troops out of aide-de-camp, Captain Fabien Coulibaly, was found riddled with bullets. Congo-Kinshasa, but this may only make matters worse. Back home, The villa of opposition leader Alassane Dramane Ouattara (‘ADO’) was torched. He took refuge first President Kagame’s opponents with his neighbour the German Ambassador, then in the large and well secured French Embassy, from want democracy and his South where he accused the government of trying to kill him, too. Former President Henri Konan Bédié holed African allies want business up with the Canadian envoy. contracts but Western donors are The rebellion involved two groups of soldiers, the Zinzin and Bahéfoué, some recruited under normal running out of sympathy. conscription by the Defence Ministry, others after the July 2000 rebellion, to boost the numbers of Gueï- loyalists. The government had been threatening to sack them since Gbagbo came to power in October CENTRAL AFRICAN 2000 (AC Vol 43 No 3). Numbering 789, Africa Confidential understands, they were hired and trained REPUBLIC 5 by Lieutenant Boka Yapi, once head of Gueï’s presidential guard. The judiciary is seeking him to answer charges stemming from his Brigades Rouges firing on demonstrators who were protesting at Gueï’s Our friends in the heavy-handed attempts to steal the 2000 presidential election. north The Ouagadougou connection Prime Minister Martin Ziguélé’s depiction of a slowly recovering There had been signs of trouble for some time. The dissident soldiers staged a strike in the northern town post-conflict economy promising of Korhogo last year and earlier this year the government announced a plan to keep them in the army for radical reform and a crackdown on ten months, then organise a test to see who was qualified to stay and demobilise the rest. A project to send graft is at odds with the land of them to Bouaké for training backfired. When the troops assumed they were being removed from Abidjan plot, counterplot and rumour to be discreetly demobbed, they threatened rebellion. revealed in a bizarre trial of coup plotters in Bangui. The government accused Burkina Faso, which harbours army deserters led by Staff Sergeant Ibrahim Coulibaly, aka ‘IB’, of arming the rebels. IB was a leader of the 1999 coup but fell out with Gueï and was accused of being too close to Ouattara. His colleague Corporal Oumar Diarrassouba, known as SWAZILAND 6 ‘Zaga-Zaga’, has been sighted in Bouaké. There were reports of English-speaking Liberian or Sierra Leonean mercenaries fighting with the rebels. The tone of the government accusations left President King and pawns Blaise Compaoré, a consummate political survivor, looking like the injured party. A new constitution may herald the On 1 August, the Secretary General of Gueï’s Union pour la Paix et la Démocratie en Côte d’Ivoire, first hints of change for one of Balla Keïta, was found murdered in Ouagadougou, where he was exiled. Burkina’s Chief Justice, Africa’s most traditional states, Abdoulaye Barry, said investigators thought it an Ivorian political killing, despite the killer’s efforts to where parliament is already up in arms about King Mswati’s new make it seem that a mistress had stabbed him. Keïta was a prominent northerner and leader of an executive jet. organisation of Dozos, influential traditional hunters. The Ivorian Military Attaché in Ouagadougou, Colonel Barnabé Kanon Depeux, returned home soon after the killing and an Ivorian newspaper published a letter from him to the Defence Minister about Ivorian security agents in Burkina. The armed POINTERS 8 forces chief, Col. Mathias Doué, shown on television swearing an oath of loyalty on the eve of July’s local elections, has been very quiet throughout the rebellion. He is a Guéré from the west and not entirely Africa/Iraq, Kenya, trusted by Gbagbo, who prefers Col. Denis Bombet, head of the land forces – though much of the government’s counterattack this month was by gendarmes, seen as more reliably loyal. Libya & World Bank Pro-Ouattara and pro-Gueï soldiers appear to have formed an alliance, at least for now, and the rebels Uranium trail;KANU at war; seized control of Bouaké and Korhogo, whose town halls are both controlled by ADO’s Rassemblement retirement tent; and joined-up aid. des Républicains (RDR). France, which already has 600 troops in Côte d’Ivoire, sent 200 more on 22 September to protect its 27 September 2002 Africa Confidential Vol 43 No 19 dominant ethnic group in the west, the Bété. The Yacouba are related MALI BURKINA to the Liberian Gio across the border. Liberian leader Charles FASO Taylor, highly skilled at profiting from instability, can hope to see some pressure on his regime lifted as international attention focuses on Odienné Ferkessédougou Iraq and the regional focus moves next door. Korhogo Another beneficiary may be Ghana: demand for its cocoa will rise D i B GUINEA o u la l c a k significantly. Indonesia overtook Ghana last season as the world’s V o lt a second cocoa exporter, though Ghana’s production fell partly because of smuggling into Côte d’Ivoire, where the price is better. Côte Katiola Séguéla Bondoukou d’Ivoire exported 1.225 million tonnes in 2001/2002, while Indonesia u b a c o CÔTE D’IVOIRE exported 460,000 tn. and Ghana, 340,000. Ya Man Bouaké The rebellion came as Côte d’Ivoire was looking a little more stable. é o m Bouaflé o Four RDR ministers joined the government on 5 August, though the Daloa K GHANA B party boycotted parliamentary elections and has no seats. The economy é t é YAMOUSSOUKRO B was recovering, helped by high world cocoa prices. After three years a n d Adzopé a Gagnoa m of recession, the government was aiming for economic growth of 3 per a S a s cent in 2002 and 4.5 per cent in 2003. The country was about to qualify LIBERIA sa a o u l é n B d r for important debt relief under the International Monetary Fund and a Abidjan Grand- World Bank’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative, just as it Sassandra Bassam was in 1999, when Gueï seized power. An IMF mission had just left, and the value of Ivorian debt on the secondary market had been rising GULF OF GUINEA with hopes of a HIPC deal, as an agreement on restructuring the Brady 200 kilometres Bond commercial debt was expected to follow. 100 miles All this is now in doubt, with the prospect of the country fracturing citizens and established a base inland at Yamoussoukro airport ready along ethnic lines, pitting the Baoulé of the centre and south against the to evacuate Western nationals from Bouaké; on 24 September, the Bété of the west and the Dioula of the north. The alliance between pro- United States ordered in 200 Special Forces. France has said it will Gueï and pro-Ouattara troops is unlikely to last and there are long- not intervene militarily, but with an end to cohabitation between a standing tensions over land rights in the western cocoa-growing areas Gaullist president and a Socialist parliament, some observers are between local Bété and Baoulé, Dioula and Burkinabè incomers. wondering if the former colonial power might be tempted to return to Unless the government can reassert its authority quickly, it could find its old ways should the situation deteriorate further. itself controlling little more than Abidjan and the surrounding area, Relative calm returned quickly to Abidjan, though the city is full of like past governments in Liberia and Sierra Leone. roadblocks, with a night-time curfew. Gendarmes burned immigrants’ homes in Abidjan’s Agban shanty-town, claiming they were seeking ZAMBIA rebels. Foreign radio broadcasts have been jammed. Gabon’s President Omar Bongo and Morocco’s King Mohammed VI tried to organise a regional summit in Marrakesh for 26 September but with little hope that Gbagbo would risk leaving the country again, Corruption club this was replaced by plans for a summit of the Economic Community Mwanawasa’s anti-corruption claims are in doubt of West African States.
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