President Thabo Mbeki has his work cut out as mediator in Côte d’Ivoire. Mbeki was dragooned into this job by the African Union after the West African regional mechanism failed to bring about peace in the country.
France brokered the January 2003 peace deal in Linas Marcoussis that was supposed to end the fighting that erupted after the failed coup of September 2002. In terms of this, President Laurent Gbagbo was supposed to bring opposition groups into the government.
Relations between France and Gbagbo have spiralled into the violence that now necessitates the evacuation of France’s 14 000 nationals.
France put 4 000 peacekeepers into what was once its colonial jewel in the hope that the country would become a model of stability and the world’s largest producer of cocoa.
But Gbagbo felt that the French were trying to unseat him. Similar pressure from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) has troubled Gbagbo’s relations with his neighbours. Ecowas has 6 000 peacekeepers in Côte d’Ivoire.
At the AU summit in Addis Ababa this year, Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo sought to broaden the pressure on Gbagbo by bringing South Africa on board. Mbeki attended the summit in Accra, where Gbagbo’s foot was again held to the fire.
When the Ivorean leader failed to meet his commitments made there, the opposition took to the streets.
Gbagbo last week launched air raids on rebel strongholds in the north and nine French peacekeepers and a United States aid worker were killed.
France retaliated by destroying Gbagbo’s air force.
Last weekend Gbagbo rejected Obasanjo as a mediator and also refused to accept a special envoy from the current AU president.
Other members of the region have openly shown their colours in favour of the opposition. Mbeki quickly became the only logical choice.
Mbeki met Gbagbo in Abidjan this week as violence escalated and expatriates prepared to be evacuated. He was sheduled to meet rebel leaders later in the week in Pretoria.
Voices on the African scene differ on who is to blame and how to reach a settlement. ”It’s time that president Laurent Gbagbo is stopped from causing more harm”, says civil society activists at Raddho (African Rally for the Defence of Human Rights), a pan-African NGO based in Dakar.
But not everyone shares this view. Malick Ndiaye, a university professor and civil activist, puts the blame on France, the former colonial power that had sent 4 000 soldiers in the country, from the first hours of the 2002 rebellion. These soldiers have remained there since and the nine soldiers killed last week were among these troops.
”France should not have intervened in Côte d’Ivoire and the military accords between France and its former colonies should be questioned,” says Ndiaye, who heads a Comittee of Senegalese Intellectuals in Dakar.
The military accords he is questioning have been signed by France with almost all its former colonies, and some of these countries host permanent French military bases.
Although many Africans, particularly the younger generation, born after independences, would share Ndiaye’ view, they also argue that, without the French troops, Gbagbo’s regime would have been toppled long ago by rebels who controls 60% of the territory.