The rebel leader who has controlled the northern half of war-divided Côte d’Ivoire for four years took office as the country’s prime minister on Wednesday — the first step in a peace accord Ivorians hope will be their last.
”The first part of this challenge is the consolidation of trust among all Ivorians and the return of a durable peace,” Guillaume Soro told an audience of dignitaries and journalists as he took over the second-highest office in the country nearly five years after leading a coup attempt against Côte d’Ivoire’s president.
The failed 2002 coup sparked a civil war that was settled with an uneasy compromise in 2003 that divided Côte d’Ivoire into a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south. United Nations and French peacekeeping forces patrol a buffer zone that separates the two sides by dozens of kilometres.
A series of deals have followed, but all have failed to bring elections to the world’s largest cocoa producer as the two sides argued over logistics of disarmament and issuing of identity cards to legions who have been branded foreigners because their families migrated from neighbouring countries.
The latest accord, signed last month in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, by Soro and President Laurent Gbagbo, eschewed involvement from the UN or Western powers and called for the buffer zone, or ”zone of confidence”, to be reduced to a few checkpoints.
”The Ouagadougou agreement that we have made it our mission to put in place is founded on joining together our differences and our diversity to bring peace, democracy and happiness to our country, Côte d’Ivoire,” Soro said.
To-do list
Charles Konan Banny, the outgoing prime minister, handed Soro a folder of documents symbolising the tasks left to be completed.
Banny tasked Soro with organising elections and securing peace, but also reminded him of the many other tasks he will have as the leader of the government — from pulling together two separate economies to dealing with the fallout from a toxic-waste dumping scandal that sickened scores this summer.
The March 4 agreement called for elections to be held within 10 months — a task that will first require the resurrection of a repeatedly derailed disarmament programme and the issuing of identification cards necessary for Ivorians to register to vote.
The identity documents are an especially sensitive issue, because disputes over who was entitled to citizenship helped fuel the war.
Since the agreement was signed, Gbagbo has declared the end of the crisis, and guards at roadside checkpoints that dot the country have started waving some cars through with a smile and a nod.
Pro-government militias accused of violent attacks on northerners have criss-crossed Côte d’Ivoire, holding peace rallies in support of the deal. Yet plenty of Ivorians are still sceptical, particularly those without papers.
”Gbagbo doesn’t speak the truth. He has signed all these accords. He didn’t respect any of those,” said Abdoulaye Coulibaly, a 22-year-old cassette vendor in the rebel capital of Bouake.
Coulibaly said he had tried to get papers twice since 2002, only to be refused because he couldn’t prove his parents were born in Côte d’Ivoire. When he travelled to the southern port of Abidjan last year for the second try, he hid in a large truck full of people to make it past the checkpoints with military checking papers.
Banny
And Soro’s appointment many have as much to do with ousting Banny — a UN appointee whose powers threatened Gbagbo’s control of the country — as embracing the leader of the rebellion. Soon after Banny received increased powers and began publicly criticising Gbagbo, the president said he would no longer accept a peace brokered by the UN or Western powers. He called the Burkina Faso agreement an African solution to the crisis.
About 9 000 UN troops and 3 500 French soldiers are deployed in Côte d’Ivoire, many patrolling the giant buffer zone that runs east to west, dividing the country in half. France recently said it would start reducing its forces because of the Ouagadougou agreement, starting with 500 troops currently deployed in the West.
Government officials have said they hope to patrol the dividing line with mixed brigades made up of army soldiers and members of Soro’s New Forces rebels, though they have not said that this will replace the international troops. Military spokesperson Colonel Babri Gohourou said on Wednesday that the make-up and deployment of such brigades was still being planned. — Sapa-AP