ABIDJAN – Ivory Coast marked a fearful Christmas on Saturday after West African leaders threatened military action to force defiant strongman Laurent Gbagbo to cede power to his rival Alassane Ouattara.
The pair have been locked in a political stand-off for almost a month after both claimed to have won the November 28 presidential election, but mounting international pressure may have brought the crisis to a turning point.
Christmas was a sad milestone for Ivory Coast, where many had hoped the vote would mark the end of eight years of often bloody political crisis, but instead found themselves in a country once more at the brink of civil war. Ouattara has been recognised as Ivory Coast’s leader by world powers, but Gbagbo has clung grimly onto power, deploying his feared security forces to crush protest and blockade his rival’s hotel campaign headquarters.
Gbagbo has shrugged off criticism and sanctions from the United Nations, United States, France and the European Union, but now his fellow West African presidents have take two more serious and concrete steps against him. The Central Bank of West African States has cut him off from Ivory Coast’s accounts, giving Ouattara signature rights, and the 15 nations of the Economic Community of West African States have threatened military intervention.
Meeting Friday in the Nigerian capital Abuja, the neighbouring states said they would send one last-ditch diplomatic mission to try to secure Gbagbo’s resignation, and threatened to prosecute those behind post-election violence. According to their statement, if Gbagbo remains defiant, “the community will be left with no alternative but to take other measures, including the use of legitimate force, to achieve the goals of the Ivorian people.”
The bloc said it would hold a meeting of regional military chiefs of staff from the organisation to draw up plans for future action. Leaders expressed “deep concern” over the deaths in Ivory Coast in recent weeks and warned “all those responsible that they will face international trials for human rights violations at the earliest opportunity.”
The United Nations’ UNOCI peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast has said at least 173 people have been killed in the past week, and accused pro-Gbagbo security forces of taking part in “massive human rights abuses.” The 9,000-strong force is investigating reports of two mass graves and evidence that Gbagbo’s forces are being supported in nightly raids on poor Abidjan suburbs by masked militia fighters and Liberian mercenaries.
But the mission’s work is being disrupted by harassment from the Defence and Security Forces, which have set up roadblocks to prevent peacekeepers moving in the city and have besieged Ouattara in his waterfront hotel base. The Golf Hotel, a former luxury resort now turned into a shadow governmengt headquarters and armed camp, is defended by 800 UN peacekeepers, but UNOCI says it wants to be pursue its peacekeeping mandate, not pick a fight.
Any new West African force might have a more robust posture, and it would be harder for Gbagbo — who has demanded that UN and French troops quit Ivory Coast — to portray it as an instrument of western colonialism. Ouattara, meanwhile, has urged the armed forces to desert Gbagbo and place themseves under his command, without success for now.
The United Nations has confirmed Gbagbo’s diplomatic isolation, recognising an envoy chosen by Ouattara as Ivory Coast’s ambassador to the world body.
