More than a year ago, Côte d’Ivoire’s President Laurent Gbagbo signed a peace deal and formed a joint government with rebels who had held the north of the country for five years. But the former rebels continue to levy taxes on trade and transport in the north and the government has not succeeded in bringing large parts of the country under its control.
“The parallel and illegitimate system of taxes, laissez-passer [for vehicles to circulate in different rebel fiefdoms] and roadblocks instituted by [main rebel group] the Forces Nouvelles does nothing except encourage corruption,” said Patrick Alley, director of Global Witness, a London and Washington-based conflict and natural resources watchdog.
A report by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in January identified the former rebels as one of the main possible spoilers to the country’s peace process.
“While [former rebel] commanders have expressed a willingness to transfer their administrative and financial authority to the administrators redeployed in the areas under their control, as long as their command structures remain intact, the existence of such parallel authority structures might create unnecessary tensions,” Ban’s report stated.
In December last year, Irin reported that attacks on civilians by armed men had become increasingly common in many areas of the country, especially the north-west and west. Attacks on civilians at roadblocks occur in both the rebel and government-controlled areas.
Former rebels are profiting, especially from their control of the country’s major cocoa and diamond industries, “despite the process of reunification that is happening” in Côte d’Ivoire, Alley said.
Human rights are “frequently” being abused in rebel-controlled areas, he said, linking the profit-making activities of the rebels and the lack of concrete progress towards full reunification, despite a peace deal signed in March last year and the dismantling of the “line of control” that divided the north of the country from the south.
Drissa Bamba, a Forces Nouvelles commander in Pôgô, a town on the Côte d’Ivoire border with Mali, told Irin: “After five years living well on these informal taxes, most rebels are unwilling to relinquish this steady income stream.
“For more than five years we have been able to live because of these taxes,” he said. “We do not have any other way of surviving.” Bamba, speaking by telephone from the border town, said the redeployment of the state administration had not taken place all over the country.
Many say the behaviour of those manning roadblocks mirrors the social division and abuse that were integral to the causes of Côte d’Ivoire’s rebellion.
One factor that gave rise to the rebellion was northerners’ exasperation over what they called blatant discrimination and abuse on the part of government security forces. At roadblocks controlled by such forces people with names from northern ethnic groups would be singled out and made to pay bribes. — Irin