At the bar of the waterfront Golf Hotel, which could become ground zero if Côte d’Ivoire slides back into civil war, supporters of Alassane Ouattara make it a point of pride to show they can still relax over coffee and cigars.
Wearing white election campaign T-shirts, they are playing a waiting game, dependent on food supplies airlifted in by UN helicopters. Meanwhile Ouattara, the internationally recognised winner of November’s election, attempts to run an alternative government from an air-conditioned tent in the garden.
The calm belies wider anxieties that the hotel could become a battlefield if allies of the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, carry out their threat to “liberate” it from Ouattara. In readiness for such an attack, the UN has beefed up security around the hotel from 800 to 1 000 men, and the grounds have come to resemble a military campsite.
Tanks are deployed near the main entrance and rolls of razor wire line the roads. Nearby, government troops have set up shoddy roadblocks of rickety wooden tables, sandbags and bricks. Underlying it all is a gnawing uncertainty about what will happen if youth militias answer the call of Gbagbo loyalist Charles Blé Goudé to rise up and seize the hotel — and how UN peacekeepers will respond.
Outside, in this divided nation of 21-million, there is fear of what 2011 will bring. Ouattara’s supporters say the country is already embroiled in a new “civil war”, claiming that 200 people have been killed and 1 000 wounded by gunfire. The UN has expressed alarm at human rights abuses, including mass graves it is unable to investigate, while thousands of refugees are pouring into neighbouring countries.
Propaganda war
A propaganda war is also under way. For nearly a decade control of the national media has been key to a fierce power struggle between Gbagbo, a Christian from the south, and Ivorians from the mainly Muslim northern half of the country.
Recently the state television RTI showed footage of Ouattara-supporting “rebels” captured by security forces. A visibly frightened young man with a bloodied shirt was seen holding up a sickle. Another man wearing faded camouflage trousers lay in the grass, dead. The footage proved that Ouattara’s supporters were armed and violent, the state television said.
Idrissa (54) an immigrant from Burkina Faso who has lived in Ivory Côte d’Ivoire for more than 20 years, knew he was watching propaganda when he saw the sickle. It is not a weapon, but a tool used by Malians to cut grass for cattle. He surmised the frightened young man was a Malian immigrant arrested on his way to work. He also recognised the dead man in the grass. “He was a mentally deranged person living on the street,” Idrissa said with a wry smile. “A lot of people knew him. He was harmless.”
Heavy toll
Under Gbagbo, who has ruled with an odd mixture of nonchalance and defiance since 2000, the RTI has become instrumental in stoking anti-French, anti-UN and anti-foreigner sentiments among the population.
Even at Idrissa’s roadside cafe, a green wooden shack decorated with dusty plastic flowers, the state television is always on. “You have to play their game,” Idrissa said. “My livelihood could be destroyed if I listen to a foreign radio station.”
But even though the tension is palpable, visible signs of imminent civil strife remain rare. Electoral posters still line the crumbling, potholed roads in some neighbourhoods. In the upper class residential areas, supermarkets and clothing boutiques still bustle with shoppers.
Ivorians from all sides agree the crisis is exacting a heavy toll on the population, which has already seen a significant rise in poverty after the 2002-03 civil war. Since Ecowas, the West African regional bloc, threatened to remove Gbagbo by force last week, many of Côte d’Ivoire’s estimated four-million immigrants fear for their future.
Hamidou, a gardener from Burkina Faso, was stopped by four men as he rode his bicycle to work last week. Ivorians rarely cycle; they would rather walk than use what they contemptuously consider the Burkinabes’ preferred mode of transport.
Hamidou said he was lucky he escaped alive. “They blocked me and said: ‘You are too dark-skinned to be an Ivorian. You must be Senegalese.’ When I told them I am from Burkina Faso, they got angry, saying my president is planning to make war against their president. I told them I am not interested in politics, but they were trying to decide whether to kill me or hand me over to the security forces. Luckily, one of them turned out to be nice, and persuaded the others to let me go. I’m staying at home until this crisis is over.” – guardian.co.uk