The First Ivorian Civil War was a civil conflict in the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) that began with a military rebellion on 19 September 2002 and ended with a peace agreement on 4 March 2007. The conflict pitted the government of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo against a domestic insurgency led by the New Forces of Ivory Coast (). A second civil war (2010–2011) would break out over the results of the 2010 Ivorian presidential election.

The war was preceded by a tumultuous decade in the Ivory Coast, marked by an economic downturn and, following the death of long-time Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny in 1993, a leadership succession crisis. The succession crisis manifested in a 1999 military coup d'état and a violent dispute over the result of the 2000 presidential election. Three successive Ivorian leaders – Henri Konan Bédié from 1993, Robert Guéï from 1999, and Gbagbo from 2000 – exploited the ideology of Ivoirité to repress and marginalise political opposition, notably by disqualifying Alassane Ouattara from contesting elections on the basis of his Burkinabé nationality; in the process, these leaders stoked ethnic tensions and xenophobic sentiment in the country. The rebellion which ignited the war was driven by forces which sought a re-run of the 2000 election and reform of exclusionary citizenship policies.

War broke out on 19 September 2002 when troops opposed to President Gbagbo – and under the political leadership of the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast (MPCI, ) – attacked three Ivorian cities, including Abidjan. Though they failed to take Abidjan, the rebels quickly established control over much of the north of the country. Two new rebel groups along the Liberian border, the Movement for Justice and Peace () and the Ivorian Popular Movement of the Great West (), battled government forces for western territory, before uniting with MPCI as the New Forces in December 2002. Across the country, opposition supporters clashed with the Young Patriots () and other pro-government militias.

The conflict attracted international attention. Ivory Coast's former colonial power, France, launched a military intervention soon after the initial rebellion. Though Opération Licorne had a protection mandate and pleaded its neutrality in the conflict, the French intervention was attacked by Ivorian nationalists as an example of neocolonialism, leading to sustained public demonstrations and in 2004, fatal clashes between Ivorian and French forces. The United Nations (UN) was involved in the conflict first through a political mission, the UN Mission in Côte d'Ivoire, and then through an ambitious peacekeeping mission, the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire, which deployed in April 2004 and absorbed the smaller contingent of peacekeepers that had been deployed earlier by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

The violence largely subsided by the end of 2004, but the country remained under de facto partition – with a rebel-held north and a government-held south – while the political crisis continued. Though the multi-party Linas-Marcoussis Accord established a power-sharing Government of National Reconciliation in early 2003, its provisions regarding disarmament and political reform were not implemented. A comprehensive political settlement was finally reached in 2007, when Gbagbo and the New Forces signed the Ouagadougou Peace Agreement in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. However, when the Ivory Coast held its presidential elections in 2010, the first since 2000, Gbagbo refused to accept the result, sparking a renewed political crisis and the beginning of the Second Ivorian Civil War.

Origins and context

left|thumb|197x197px|[[Félix Houphouët-Boigny died in 1993, after 30 years in power.]]

Leadership succession

When Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny died in 1993, the end of his thirty-three-year presidency inaugurated a prolonged "crisis of succession", which destabilised Ivorian politics for the remainder of the 1990s. Since the Ivory Coast's independence from France in 1960, Houphouët-Boigny had maintained Ivorian political and economic stability using mechanisms largely dependent on his own personal charisma, networks, and so-called Françafrique connections; the country lacked established mechanisms to regulate democratic competition. As required by the constitution following his death, Houphouët-Boigny was succeeded by Henri Konan Bédié, the President of the National Assembly, who also replaced Houphouët-Boigny at the head of the ruling Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI, ). However, ahead of the 1995 presidential election, opposition politicians began to organise for democratic regime change in open and competitive elections. and who in 1994 split from PDCI to establish his own party, Rally of the Republicans (RDR, ). Both opposition groups boycotted the 1995 election in protest of changes to the electoral code : Bédié's PDCI retained power, but at the cost of harming its popular legitimacy.

Ivoirité

Ivory Coast has historically received large numbers of immigrants from neighbouring West African countries, especially Burkina Faso, and the flow of immigration was sustained after independence, both due to Ivory Coast's relative prosperity and due to the favourable policies of Houphouët-Boigny's government: for example, between 1960 and 1972, any person born in Ivory Coast could receive Ivorian citizenship, regardless of their parents' nationality. A majority of immigrants were Muslim: the share of Muslims in the Ivorian population increased from approximately six per cent in 1922 to 38.6 per cent in 1998.

thumb|President [[Henri Konan Bédié used Ivoirité to undermine his political rivals.]]

Academic analyses agree that a key root cause of the Ivorian civil war was the spread of nativist and xenophobic discourse, its mobilisation by opportunistic politicians, and the resulting ethnic tensions. Central in this regard was the rise of Ivoirité as an ideology and state policy under President Bédié, and its use to marginalise and exclude immigrants, their descendants, and certain groups of Ivorian citizens. Ethnic tensions, xenophobic sentiment, and related communal disputes in Ivory Coast predated Bédié's rule, but Houphouët-Boigny had been able to accommodate, manage, and suppress them. Under Bédié, however, the rise of Ivoirité politicised such disputes, making origin and religious affiliation "the prime markers of identity" in Ivory Coast. In November 1994, ahead of the 1995 presidential election, Bédié had the National Assembly amend the electoral code to require that presidential candidates should be Ivorian-born with two Ivorian-born parents (where previously only one such parent had been required). This was viewed as a strategic move to avert a leadership challenge from Ouattara, who at that point remained Bédié's rival inside PDCI. Guéï had been fired by Bédié in 1995, reportedly because he declined to deploy the military during pre-election public demonstrations, and, once in office, he said that the new military government would seek to reverse Bédié's changes to the electoral code. In the violence, FPI supporters reportedly targeted not only Guéï's forces but also supporters of Ouattara's RDR, as well as northerners and immigrants who they assumed supported RDR. An attempted coup in January 2001, which Gbagbo blamed on the interference of Burkina Faso, led to renewed attacks on Burkinabé residents by FPI supporters. The International Crisis Group, however, regarded the allegation as plausible: sources in the Burkinabé government reported that arms had been delivered to the rebels by air, and Western intelligence proved that some of the arms used in the rebels' initial attacks had come from the Burkinabé Presidential Guard stocks. However, both International Crisis Group and Western intelligence reports gave less credence to Gbagbo's further accusation that Burkinabé troops had participated directly in the initial attacks. reflecting a partial spillover of the Liberian Civil War, and, according to a March 2003 report by Global Witness, 90% of MJP and MPIGO forces were Liberian or Sierra Leonean mercenaries, many of them ex-members of Charles Taylor's Revolutionary United Front.

Government forces

President Laurent Gbagbo was supported by loyalists in the state security services and National Armed Forces (FANCI, Forces armées nationales de Côte d'Ivoire). In addition, he reportedly recruited foreign mercenaries, some of whom had previously been affiliated with the South Africa-based Executive Outcomes, Various civilian militias supported Gbagbo and his political party, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI, Front populaire ivoirien) – the most important among them was the Young Patriots' Pan-African Congress (COJEP, Congrès panafricain des jeunes et des patriotes). In 2005, Human Rights Watch reported that the Ivorian government had also recruited foreign combatants, primarily from Liberia, and including child soldiers. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, between 2002 and 2004, the Ivorian government purchased arms from Angola, Belarus, Bulgaria, Israel, Romania, and Ukraine.

International forces

The French military launched its intervention in Ivory Coast, Opération Licorne, on 22 September 2002, three days after the start of the war, with an initial focus on protecting French and other foreign nationals. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) deployed its own peace force on 18 January 2003. ECOWAS re-hatted its troops and handed over to UNOCI in April 2004, According to the International Crisis Group, the rebellion involved about 750 troops, but it reportedly originated in a smaller protest of about 200 soldiers, primarily from the north of the country, who objected to their demobilisation by the government, viewing it as ethnically motivated. Guéï was shot dead on the day of the rebellion – according to his family, while having lunch – "in circumstances that lead many to believe the government wanted him eliminated".

French intervention: 22 September 2002

thumb|An [[ERC 90 Sagaie of the French 1st Parachute Hussar Regiment in Ivory Coast.|246x246px]]

Ivory Coast's former colonial power, France, was invested in the outcome of the conflict – given its significant business interests in Ivory Coast, and the presence of more than 20,000 French citizens there – but was extremely reluctant to intervene in support of Gbagbo. Nonetheless, on 22 September, France launched Operation Licorne, with an initial mandate focused on protecting and evacuating French nationals and other foreign nationals. Indeed, in the weeks after the rebellion, French and American forces evacuated 2,500 people – mostly foreign nationals – from the Ivory Coast. However, on September 29, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) launched peace negotiations in Accra, Ghana, under the mediation of a high-level contact group comprising representatives from Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Togo. Further bilateral talks were held in Lomé, Togo, in October and November, but failed to break a political deadlock: MPCI demanded Gbagbo's removal, fresh elections, and a review of the constitution. The agreement provided for power-sharing through a Government of National Reconciliation: Gbagbo would remain in office, but Seydou Diarra would be appointed as a non-partisan consensus prime minister, with the understanding that Diarra would not run in the next presidential election. The power-sharing government would include representation for all the agreement's signatories: the three major political parties (Bédié's PDCI, Ouattara's RDR, and Gbagbo's FDI), the three major rebel groups in the New Forces (MPCI, MJP, and MPIGO), and four smaller political parties – Movement of the Forces of the Future (Mouvement des forces de l'avenir), Ivorian Workers' Party (Parti ivoirien des travailleurs), Citizens' Democratic Union (Union démocratique et citoyenne), and Union for Democracy and Peace in Ivory Coast (Union pour la démocratie et la paix en Côte d'Ivoire).

thumb|191x191px|Ivorian President [[Laurent Gbagbo encouraged a populist uproar over the French presence in Ivory Coast.]]

"Patriotic" response

Inside Ivory Coast, however, FPI and government supporters regarded the Linas-Marcoussis Accord with hostility. Opposition came especially from the military, which rejected New Forces control of the interior and defence ministries and the integration of the rebels into the army. The same week, French intelligence services in Paris arrested 10 people, including Ibrahim Coulibaly, who they said had been plotting to assassinate Gbagbo and destabilise the peace. Moreover, the political conflict raged on. Gbagbo also had not fulfilled his promise to revise electoral eligibility requirements. By the end of 2003, disarmament had not been implemented – in contravention of a 1 October deadline – and military authority in the country remained bifurcated under a de facto north-south partition, while inter-ethnic violence continued in the west, particularly between local Guéré and Yacouba. On 4 March, opposition party PDCI suspended its participation in the reconciliation government, accusing FPI ministers of taking unilateral decisions. In May, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded an inquiry into the march and aftermath, finding that: <blockquote>at least 120 people were killed, 274 wounded and 20 disappeared. These figures are by no means final... It is equally clear that many of the killings on these two days did not take place in the street but in the dwellings of would-be demonstrators or even innocent civilians targeted by the security forces simply because of their name, origin or community group. It was a well-known fact that police officers or other security officials or parallel forces would harass, try to rob, or search and arrest without warrants people in Abidjan even in the days preceding 25 March. However, these activities had greatly intensified since 23 March and contributed to the explosive environment. Credible accounts received by the Commission indicate that these actions too had been planned and directed by the security forces and later executed in cooperation and collusion with the parallel forces.</blockquote>In protest against the violence, the New Forces and Ouattara's RDR announced their withdrawal from the reconciliation government. In May, Gbagbo publicly lambasted the opposition for suspending their participation; shortly afterwards, it was announced that he had sacked (permanently) three opposition ministers: PDCI's Patrick Achi, the New Forces' Youssouff Soumahoro, and Soro, the leader of the New Forces. Soro called the move "tantamount to a coup d'état against the peace accords", and said that it would be impossible to establish peace in Ivory Coast until Gbagbo was removed from office.

Accra III talks: July 2004

Peace talks resumed in July 2004 in Accra in an attempt to revitalise the peace process. An agreement signed upon the conclusion of the talks once again committed the parties to implement the Linas-Marcoussis Accord, this time "with specific deadlines and benchmarks for progress". A sustained assault on the press followed, with newspapers partial to the north being banned and two presses destroyed; dissenting radio stations were silenced.

Resurgence of violence

thumb|[[Philippe Mangou was head of the Ivorian Armed Forces for the duration of the war.]]

On 4 November, Gbagbo's forces violated the prevailing ceasefire, as the military launched air attacks against rebel positions in Bouaké and Korhogo. or two Ivorian Sukhoi Su-25 bombed an Operation Licorne base in Bouaké, killing nine French soldiers and an American aid worker and injuring 31 others, the heaviest casualties suffered by a French operation since the 1983 Beirut barrack bombings. France rejected the Ivorian claim that the bombing had been accidental, and French President Jacques Chirac ordered the retaliatory destruction of both Ivorian Sukhoi Su-25 and five MI-24 ground attack helicopters – the entirety of the Ivorian air force's fleet.

The clashes strengthened the pro-Gbagbo "patriotic" narrative that the conflict involved a "second war of independence" from France. In 2021, a Paris court issued life sentences to two Ivorian officers and one Belarusian mercenary, who in absentia had been found guilty of carrying out the air raid.

Revived peace talks

thumb|250x250px|A map of the [[buffer zone (zone de confiance) created in Ivory Coast, as of spring 2007.]]

The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1572 on 15 November, imposing an immediate arms embargo on Ivory Coast, though the effectiveness of the embargo is debatable. and the parties met in Pretoria again in June 2005 to review and reaffirm the agreement. In early October, the AU's Peace and Security Council conceded that Gbagbo could remain in office for up to 12 months further. the UN Security Council followed suit. On 21 October, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1633, which called for the establishment of an international ministerial working group and mediation group – mandated to draw up a road map for holding elections – and demanded the appointment, by consensus, of a new prime minister in Ivory Coast. Following a delay, both directives were implemented, with Charles Konan Banny appointed the new prime minister in December 2005. The New York Times reported that four people had died in the clashes. In early November 2006, the UN Security Council agreed to delay elections further, extending Gbagbo and Banny's terms for another "new and final" transition period of one year. Resolution 1721, lobbied for by France, similarly, in October 2005, the team's qualification for the 2006 FIFA World Cup sparked days of public celebration in Abidjan,

Ouagadougou talks: 2006–2007

Shortly after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1721, Gbagbo announced that he was preparing his own "new framework" to resolve the crisis, reflecting that, "Confronted by the failure of external solutions, it is time for Ivorians to assume total ownership of the peace process". and formed a cabinet that retained many of the ministers who had served under his predecessor. On 18 June, the central government began its administrative redeployment in northern areas formerly held by rebels, with the first new prefect installed in Bouaké. Despite a fatal rocket attack on Soro's airplane on 30 June, the reconciliation process continued with the large "Peace Flame" disarmament ceremony on 30 July, in which the two leaders set fire to a pile of weapons, symbolising the end of the conflict. The ceremony also involved Gbagbo's first visit, since 2002, to the former rebel stronghold of Bouaké.

thumb|237x237px|African heads of state with Gbagbo and Soro at the Peace Flame ceremony, 30 July 2007. |left

On 27 November, Gbagbo and Soro met with Compaoré in Ouagadougou to discuss the implementation of the Ouagadougou Peace Agreement and set a deadline for elections. In late December, they met again, this time in Tiébissou to preside over the beginning of a nation-wide disarmament process, scheduled to unfold over three months as troops from both sides left the front and returned to barracks. When the buffer zone was fully dismantled in July 2008, it was replaced by a "green line" of international peacekeepers, split across seventeen observation points, who would gradually be replaced by joint Ivorian patrols including both New Forces and government troops. UNOCI suffered 36 casualties during the war: fifteen in 2005, thirteen in 2006, and eight in 2007. According to the UN Refugee Agency, approximately 750,000 people were forcibly displaced between 2002 and 2007, including 50,000 refugees who fled primarily to Liberia, Guinea, and Mali.

Aftermath: Return to war

Ivory Coast held its first presidential elections since 2000 in October 2010, but a dispute over the result led to renewed political crisis and to the beginning of the Second Ivorian Civil War. Soro did not run in the election, nor did the New Forces endorse a candidate. both Gbagbo and Ouattara claimed victory and took the presidential oath of office. Hundreds of people were killed in the violence that followed, and hundreds of thousands were displaced. UN Security Council Resolution 1962 extended UNOCI's mandate and called on all parties to recognise Ouattara as Ivory Coast's rightful president. The second civil war ended with Gbagbo's defeat and arrest in April 2011, but, despite its brevity, had a higher death toll than the first: a 2012 national commission of inquiry recorded 3,248 fatalities.

See also

  • Simone Gbagbo
  • France–Ivory Coast relations
  • Belarusian mercenaries in Ivory Coast

References

  • Text of all peace accords for Ivory Coast, UN Peacemaker
  • Safer Access - A Synopsis of Armed Groups and Political Parties in Ivory Coast
  • Sow, Adama: Ethnozentrismus als Katalysator bestehender Konflikte in Afrika südlich der Sahara, am Beispiel der Unruhen in Côte d'Ivoire at: European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU), Stadtschleining 2005