The InterDependent

The Valentine’s Day chocolates you munched last month probably originated in Côte d’Ivoire, where violence is escalating after a disputed election, threatening to plunge the country into another civil war. The nation is the largest exporter of the cocoa bean, and its price reached a 32-year high in New York last week as an export ban remains in effect.

At issue is a United Nations-certified election in November that declared Alassane Ouattara the winner. But the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to accept the results and used his military and police to challenge UN peacekeepers. They are now forced to guard Ouattara, holed up in a hotel in Abidjan, the nation’s commercial center and once considered the Paris of West Africa.

Ouattara has international legitimacy on his side, supported by the UN, the United States, the European Union and most – but not all—members of the African Union. (Notably South Africa has announced it was “neutral” in the dispute, and Angola has back off from its original supporting stance.) There has been no face-to-face meeting between the rivals.

Basile Zoma/UN Photo

Alain Le Roy, UN peacekeeping chief, speaking in Côte d’Ivoire in December. The country is said to be verging on civil war despite international and regional efforts to solve the political crisis.

The African Union has appointed a panel, composed of the heads of state from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, South Africa and Tanzania that is expected to come up with recommendations. The group, minus President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, blocked by Gbagbo from coming, recently visited Abidjan in an effort to mediate the crisis. The panel is expected to give its recommendations by March 28.

Meanwhile, the US and European Union members have imposed financial and travel sanctions and sought to prevent cocoa revenues from reaching Gbagbo, who needs to pay the army and civil servants. Regional banks are refusing to allow Gbagbo to withdraw money, and various commodity firms have refused to deal with Gbagbo, although cocoa smuggling is rife. Gbagbo said he would take over the banks but the results remain unclear.

The Security Council is waiting for the African Union recommendations, although it is doubtful members will impose biting sanctions or approve a military strike as some West African nations have proposed. Russia, diplomats reported, had been reluctant to back Ouattara and UN officials who were mandated to certify the country’s Nov. 28 elections.

Peacekeepers, numbering about 9,000 in the UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire, are trying to recruit 2,000 more troops and three helicopters, authorized by the Security Council. Up to 900 French troops are also present.

The head of the peacekeeping mission police component has warned that Gbagbo loyalist militias may be preparing for civil war.

“The Gbagbo clan has a long tradition of mobilizing militias and being very hostile and having armed mobs, which it is at present trying to rally,” Commissioner Jean-Marie Bourry told the UN News Center. “Everything leads us to believe that we are seeing preparations for a civil war.”

Violence has spiked recently. On Feb. 22, gunfire and explosions rocked through an area of Abidjan that supports Ouattara and where at least three soldiers died in clashes, Reuters reported. A day later, Gbagbo's forces attacked the a pro-Ouattara neighborhood using rocket launchers and tanks. In addition, the UN refugee agency reported that young militia men are attacking people in their homes, buses have been burned and shops looted in Abobo.

Regardless of who they support, civilians are suffering. As garbage fills the streets of Abidjan, power is often shut off and people are trying to get their money out of banks, many unsuccessfully. Health services are deteriorating, food is in short supply and more than 29,000 refugees recently poured into neighboring Liberia, joining 40,000 fellow Ivoirians.

An estimated 180 people have died in violence and scores of others have been tortured since the Nov. 28 elections, the UN reported. Simon Munzu, a UN human rights official, says the list of abuses is long: killings, abduction, massive illegal arrests, physical injury, firings at civilians -- and a suspected mass grave in a building that UN personnel are prohibited from entering.

The current crisis is dismally familiar.

Gbagbo, a Christian, came to power in 2000, ironically because the population rebelled against a manipulated election that sought to deprive him of office. Ouattara, a Muslim and an economist, who worked for the International Monetary Fund, had served as prime minister under Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the legendary strongman who ruled for 33 years since the country gained independence from France in 1960.

After a failed coup by a power-hungry general in September 2002, a civil war broke out, leaving the country divided into the rebel-held north and west and the government-controlled south. France, West African troops and then the UN sent peacekeepers into a buffer zone between the two sides.

The main issues -- ownership, criteria for nationality and who could run for office -- were never settled. Several peace agreements were negotiated, but genuine disarmament did not take place while ethnic and religious rivalries persisted, as evidenced by the current impasse in the country.