The four men wearing a mixture of military and civilian clothing came for Outara Zoumana at his home in the Williamsville section of Abidjan at midnight on November 19. The terrified truck driver – realizing they were the police and security forces and knowing why they were there – barricaded his doors.

He tried to escape. But the police, stronger and faster than the elderly man, climbed over the fence of his compound. As Outara’s frightened family scattered, one policeman shot him in the foot so that he could not flee. Then they took him outside the house and shot him repeatedly until he was dead. They left his bloody and battered body near his house so that others could see. His family were later hunted down by the police, but managed to escape.

Outara’s death was intended as a demonstration, mainly to the Dioula community – traders and workers who come from the north of Ivory Coast – of the power of the police and military, who have been operating with impunity since a violent coup d’etat exploded here on September 19, 2002. The coup failed, but the rebels continue to hold the northern part of the country. In response, the government has pursued a campaign of violence and terror against groups suspected of sympathy with the rebels’ cause.

A Violent Crackdown

Hundreds of people have been killed and hundreds more – possibly thousands – are being detained by police and military. As journalists, aid workers and human rights organisations are denied access to prisons and lists of detainees, the numbers of those held cannot be established. Nor can their names, or their state of health.

"We do not know how many people are held, where they are, or if they are being tortured or if they are dead," said a local human rights worker. "No one is allowed access to the detained."

The coup and the government’s response have displaced more than 220,000 people, and triggered a round of ethnic cleansing, largely targeted at northerners and foreigners – West Africans from neighbouring countries – who make up a quarter of the population. Shantytowns are razed. Every day, buses and planes are full of terrified residents who have lived here for generations, but who cannot prove their "ivoirite", or ethnic purity.

Local shops and craftsmen’s workshops throughout Abidjan are burnt out. Domestic workers walking to work in the morning are routinely stopped and robbed of cash, threatened and sometimes hauled off in the back of police cars.

Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s political capital, operates now in a climate of fear, with the local population beginning to feel that the police and security forces are akin to the death squads of Guatemala or El Salvador. The tragedy is that the Ivory Coast – which had the third largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa and is the world’s largest producer of cocoa –was once a beacon of stability in a region dominated by bloodshed. It is now threatening to explode into a full-scale civil war that could prove to have wider consequences than the wars of neighbouring Sierra Leone or Liberia.

An Explosion of Ethnic Tension

The rebels – the MCPI or Patriotic Movement of the Ivory Coast – who launched the coup intend to dismantle the embattled government of President Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo was brought to power during violent elections in 2000, following a coup the previous year. The MCPI evolved from a group of disgruntled army officers – many involved in the original 1999 coup – who resent the continued dominance of Ivory Coast’s mainly Christian south and are pressing for a new constitution. Since their uprising, the rebels have won substantial support from the mainly Muslim northern population.

Tension between northern and southern tribes has rapidly escalated. Attacks on civilians and on newspapers that support the opposition leader, Allasane Outtara, who has fled the country, are common. (Outtara was not involved in the coup, but it is thought that he is now in contact with the rebels.) More worrying are the "disappeared". As the weeks pass and the Ivory Coast hovers between peace and all-out war, more bodies are turning up in the swamps, in fields and in houses.

Some of the dead were high profile, such as the former Minister of the Interior, Emile Bouga Doudou who was killed on the first day of the coup; General Robert Guei, the former military leader; or others believed to be connected to Allasane Ouatarra. But others are just simple people: workers, traders or unfortunate relatives of opposition politicians.

The murder of the truck driver is directly linked to an article that appeared in the inflammatory newspaper L’Oeil du Peuple, which is a mouthpiece for President Lauren Gbagbo and his party FPI -- Front Populaire Ivorien. The newspaper published a list of names of 30 people working for a trucking firm said to be "transporting guns" and claimed that they were supporters of General Guei, who launched the coup in 1999.

"All the drivers know where the guns are hidden in this town," the paper wrote. "Robert Guei and Allasane Outtarra, foreign mercenaries, terrorists...multi-national enterprises like Russian mafia...are involved in this plot with the complicity of the al-Qaeda group."

For the twenty-six per cent of the population who are deemed to be foreigners – mainly from Burkina Faso, Togo, Mali – the crackdown on non-Ivorians has been brutal. It doesn’t matter that many of these people have lived in the Ivory Coast for generations. The concept of ivoirite smacks of the nationalism and ethnic cleansing seen in the brutal conflicts in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The foreigners’ villages, their homes, their places of work have been targeted and destroyed. The Belgian-based NGO, Genocide Watch, described the situation here as having all the preconditions for a genocide.

Yet apart from France, the former colonial power, Western governments have all but ignored the cloud of doom hovering over the Ivory Coast. Their only action has been to order their citizens to leave the country.

Meanwhile the situation continues to deteriorate. In the last few days a new uprising has broken out in the country’s western region, the heart of the cocoa belt, led by supporters of the murdered General Guei and backed by fighters from neighbouring Liberia.

Report From Daloa

Shortly after the town of Daloa fell to government forces on October 14, bodies were scattered along the road and in the bush north of the town. It was the usual brutal scenario of bush war. One appeared to be a teenager, stripped of his clothes and brutally beaten before being shot. Another was a man whose torso was detached from his limbs. Another was already decomposing in the equatorial heat.

The government soldiers we were travelling with covered their faces at the smell of rotting flesh. "This is war and sometimes innocent people get caught in it," said Maurice, who is part of the FANCI (Forces Armees Nationales de Cote d'Ivoire).

Some of the bodies appeared to be people killed during the hunt for rebel soldiers after the government troops re-took Daloa, which had been overrun by rebels the day before. Daloa stands on the dividing line between the north and south of the Ivory Coast. It is an ethnic tinderbox: split between people from President Gbagbo's Christian Bete tribe and Dioulas from the Muslim north. Many of the rebels are Dioulas, and the animosity of the two groups is fierce.

A few days after the government took over, Daloa -- which produces one-fourth of the country's cocoa -- was deserted: the shops and markets closed. The few people on the streets were mostly Bete. The Dioulas remain closeted in their quarter near the town's mosque.

One Dioula man bravely ventured onto the street to find some food. He said that even though the government troops said they were in Daloa to protect all people, two of his brothers had been killed the day before.

"We have problems with the Bete," he said. "My wife is across Bete lines. I can't reach her because if I cross the street, I am dead."

Other people feared being caught in the government hunt for rebels. Many of the Dioula youth rallied behind the rebels when they captured the town October 13. But one day later, the government moved in. Since then, the dead bodies are a potent reminder of what could happen if one backs the wrong side.

It is unclear how many people have died in Daloa. "I think it could be more than 100 if you count those who died in the bush outside," one official said.

The economy has also suffered, leaving the local population desperate. A despairing Lebanese cocoa producer said that his business had all but closed down. In the past, his drivers were mainly Dioulas: they are too terrified to move across Bete lines to bring cocoa to the ports.

"I will give it one month and if things don't improve here, I will leave the country," he said. It is a statement echoed by many expatriates, who are packing up their lives and fleeing, after generations of living in the Ivory Coast.

Captives on the Front Line

Further on, about 15km north of the town, on the road to Vavoa, is the last government position. The soldiers there took over the wooden shack belonging to some cocoa workers. The children of the workers sat staring at the anti-aircraft guns mounted on the back of pick up trucks.

One of the Ivoirian officers was soft-spoken, Sandhurst-educated and wore a British-made signet ring on his pinky. The ring was emblazoned with an elephant, his family totem. The soldier, who asked not to be identified, said that the government forces were only doing their duty, defending the country against rebels. He denied any human rights abuse and said prisoners were being treated in a friendly way.

"We are defending an ideal," he says. "We are defending a way of life. We don't want to have our kids living in an Ivory Coast where people kill each other and the country is divided."

Outside the town, some government forces had captured three rebels. They sat shivering in the back of the truck, despite the muggy heat. One was beaten around the head and was bleeding. All of them looked terrified, but defiant.

One, named Kone Nagnougo, 50 years old said he was one of the "zinzins" – the core of the rebel soldiers who all left military academy the same year. He said they were fighting out of frustration at being excluded from the benefits enjoyed by the Christian minority who dominate the country. They want an end to the reign of President Gbagbo.

A government soldier delivered a blow to his head, told him to shut up and then told the driver to take them to the gendarmerie, the paramilitary branch of the army.

One soldier, when questioned about the rights of prisoners, replied defensively. "You have no right to talk, look what America is doing to prisoners," he said, referring to Guatanamo. He specifically used the term "armed combatants" to describe the prisoners.

"The Genie is Out of the Bottle"

Peace talks in Lome, Togo have all but broken down and the country remains in limbo between war and peace. As MI-24 helicopters -- flown by foreign mercenaries working for the government -- circle Abidjan, a mood of terror has descended on the civilian population who take to their houses by 5.00pm, fearing that they will also be plucked off the streets by police.

Many shops and businesses are closed down. The economy is in tatters. The front line runs just south of the rebel stronghold of Bouake, Ivory Coast's second-largest city, and is held in place by French troops who are monitoring a fragile cease-fire agreed on October 17.

More worrying is that as the conflict progresses, the country is developing an increasingly nationalistic mood, reminiscent of Yugoslavia in 1991. Like Tito, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Ivory Coast's father of independence, kept the lid on simmering ethnic tensions. Since his death nine years ago, the divisions between the more than 60 ethnic groups among the countries 14.7 million people have sharpened.

Diplomats have become increasingly pessimistic, fearing ethnic meltdown. "The genie is out of the bottle," says one.

Alarmingly, more and more orange, green and white Ivoirian flags hang from apartment windows and cars, and are festooned on jackets and shirts: symbols of ivoirite. It is a way of rooting out and intimidating the foreigners – nearly a quarter of the population.

Janine di Giovanni is a Special Correspondent for The Times of London.

Related chapters from Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know:

Civil War
Death Squads
Disappearances
Ethnic Cleansing

Related Links

Cote d’Ivoire: Government Targeting Civilians
Human Rights Watch Press Release
November 28, 2002

Cote d’Ivoire Latest News
allAfrica.com

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