05 Mar 2007: ISS Today: Will the Ivorian Peace Deal Work?

5 March 2007: Will the Ivorian Peace Deal Work?
James Copnall, BBC News

 

Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo and the leader of the New Forces rebels, Guillaume Soro, have signed an accord in Ouagadougou. The deal, which was brokered and co-signed by the President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, is the latest attempt to end the Ivorian civil war. The belligerent parties have agreed to a detailed timetable which should see them form a joint army, reunify the country and go to elections in 10 months` time. But many accords have failed in the last few years, and the country remains divided, with the New Forces controlling the northern half of the country they seized four years ago.

 

Commentary

 

There is guarded optimism that there can now be significant progress towards some conclusion to Côte d’Ivoire’s protracted political crisis, which has seen the country move through mutiny to civil war and the effective division of the country into two separate states. The current breakthrough is a direct consequence of President Laurent Gbagbo’s unwillingness to abide by the terms laid down by UN Security Resolution 1721, passed on 1 November 2006. This called on effective power to be devolved to interim Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, and tried to circumvent Gbagbo’s continual use of the Ivorian constitution to block any assault upon his own position or the extension of nationality to large numbers of his opponents’ supporters.

 

In December 2006 Gbagbo announced that he was launching his own plan to end the crisis, and that he would by-pass the usual international mediators to engage directly in dialogue with the rebel Forces Nouvelles and their leader Guillaume Soro. In this he enlisted the assistance of Burkinabe President Blaise Compaore, whose country has been grievously affected by the Ivorian problem and who could be expected to wield considerable influence over Soro, whose cause he had tacitly supported.

 

The agreement, initialled on 4 March and signed the next day by the principals, provides for the establishment of a new unity government within five weeks and the creation of a new military command including officers from both sides. A detailed timetable has been drafted to provide for military integration and the issuing of nationality certificates and voters’ cards. It is planned that elections will take place by the end of 2007, a few months after the deadline stipulated by the UN in November 2006.

 

Provision is made for the replacement of the “zone of confidence”, which currently divides the country and is monitored by 7, 000 UN and 3,500 French peacekeepers, with a series of observation posts, which will halve in number every two months. This is intended to facilitate the rapid withdrawal of foreign forces, and to allow for ease of movement between the North and South.

 

The international community has responded positively to these developments, sensing an escape from what had appeared an endless engagement in problems that admitted of no solution unless the obduracy of the two camps could be overcome.

 

The French government has been quick to voice its relief at being able to remove its forces from their expensive and thankless task. This will also go done well in Paris in an election year.

 

Apart from the willingness of the signatories to live up to their undertakings in Ougadougou, a number of other questions remain. Will Prime Minister Banny have any role in this new administration, or has Soro been promised the position, as some rumours have it? To what extent has the accord received the blessing of the unarmed political opposition to Gbagbo? Has Soro’s position been advanced at the expense of Alassane Ouattara and Henri Konan Bédié?  Or is this all a ruse on the part of Gbagbo to secure international withdrawal from the scene, knowing that a return of the peacekeepers would be unlikely so long as some kind of local solution can sold to an international community assailed on all sides by demands for diplomatic and military action?

 

Richard Cornwell, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)