France's Conflict Resolution Strategy in Côte d'Ivoire and its ...

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France's Conflict Resolution Strategy in Côte d'Ivoire and its ...

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African Studies Quarterly | Volume 11, Issue 1 | Fall 2009  

France's Conflict Resolution Strategy in Côte d'Ivoire and its Ethical Implications MAJA BOVCON

Abstract: This paper evaluates Frances conflict resolution strategy by taking into account Côte dIvoires internal dynamics and the wider international context over the last two decades. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, it will be argued that France, given the circumstances, has undertaken a successful conflict resolution strategy. The controversial implication of France in the 1994 Rwandan genocide made any further French military intervention on the African continent extremely problematic. In the case of the intervention in Côte dIvoire, however, France has succeeded in pursuing its interests with full national and international support. Much of the legitimacy of its conflict resolution strategy derives from both the lack of motivation of other international players to act and the inability of African multilateral organizations, such as ECOWAS, to cope with security issues. Since international organizations have been unable to act appropriately, accusations of French neo-colonialism made by the Gbagbo regime and the young patriots have never been fully addressed, and the true reconciliation and unification of Ivorian society has been hindered. Introduction    Côte dIvoire, once considered a model African country in terms of political stability and  economic success, has, for more than a decade, struggled with an internal crisis. Xenophobic policies revolving around the concept of Ivoirité  (Ivorianness or being Ivorian) escalated in  2002, causing the country to split into the rebel-held north and the government-controlled south. French troops of Operation Licorne , under the aegis of a peacekeeping mission called United Nations Operation in Côte dIvoire (UNOCI), were, until very recently, providing the  buffer or confidence zone that was keeping the warring parties apart.  This article evaluates Frances conflict resolution strategy towards the Ivorian crisis by  taking into account Côte dIvoires internal dynamics and a wider international context over the  last two decades. It addresses the following questions. Should we really view Côte dIvoire as Frances Iraq, as some contend? 1 Or could we, in fact, state that, given the circumstances, France responded appropriately to the conflict? What role did France play in this hybrid  peacekeeping operation, involving national, regional and international actors? And what are the ethical implications of Frances intervention in what was once perceived as a favored colony  and its strongest ally in sub-Saharan Africa? The article is divided into three parts; the first is a brief presentation of the main causes of the Ivorian crisis, which is then followed by an analysis of the conflict resolution strategy that   Maja Bovcon is finishing her Ph.D. at the Department of Politics and International Relations at University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the current Ivorian politics and the Franco-Ivorian relations. http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v11/v11i1a1.pdf   © University of Florida Board of Trustees, a public corporation of the State of Florida; permission is hereby granted for individuals to download articles for their own personal use. Published by the Center for African Studies, University of Florida. ISSN: 2152-2448  

2 | Bovcon     national, regional and international actors formulated. An attempt is made to determine the reasons behind Frances choice for the apparently neutral position of its interposition operation.  Through an analysis of the weaknesses and strengths of the other two actors, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Mission in Côte dIvoire (ECOMICI) and the UNOCI, and their interaction with the French military operation, Licorne , the role of France in shaping the overall conflict resolution strategy is made clearer. In the final part of the article, some of the ethical issues associated with the military implications of a former colonial powers  involvement in its African colony are addressed. Based on this discussion, an assessment is made of the success of Frances response to the Ivorian crisis. My conclusions are formulated  primarily with help of extensive secondary literature and primary sources such as peace accords, UN resolutions, newspaper articles and reports. These findings are complemented by qualitative data obtained through semi-structured interviews with French diplomats conducted during my fieldwork in France and Côte dIvoire in late 2007 and early 2008. Interviews serve  mainly to support or further clarify data obtained from other sources.

Background: Reasons for the Ivorian Crisis  

The Ivorian crisis is often interpreted in simplified terms, as a cultural clash between the Muslim north and the Christian south, between ethnic groups of the savannah and those of the forest zone. This reductionist approach, which is mostly propagated by politicians and the media, relies squarely on the primordialist assumption, which understands ethnicity as an  innate, objectively given and immutable substance of human identity, which, when confronted with a different cultural conceptions, can lead to confrontation. 2    A more flexible and broader inst rumentalist approach to ethnicity, which views it above all as an ambiguous ideological concept, susceptible to different meanings and instrumental usage in struggles for power, is far more promising. Namely, the Ivorian crisis is a truly multi- layered conflict where ethnicity appears to become a relevant distinguishing factor only after being tightly related to other issues such as economic crisis, economic and political discrimination, land, immigration policy, succession struggle and, above all, the concepts of autochthony and citizenship. All these factors and concepts contribute to one of the most evasive and instrumentally abused terms in recent Ivorian history, Ivoirité , which was coined but never fully explained by the former president Henri Konan Bédié, and which was open to the most xenophobic interpretations. While these factors are interwoven to such an extent that it is impossible to disentangle them and assess their individual contribution to the Ivorian crisis, I will, for the sake of intelligibility, examine them separately. First, there is the succession problem, which arose in 1993 with the death of the charismatic president Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who had led the country for almost four decades. Houphouët-Boignys opportunistic constitutional revision provided that, in the case of his  death, his post would be filled by the National Assemblys speaker, Henri Konan Bédié, until the end of the presidential term. Bédiés incompetence and his inability to understand that the  times had changed with the opening up of the political process through democratization and multi-partyism, encouraged his main competitors, especially the leader of the opposition FPI

African Studies Quarterly | Volume 11, Issue 1 | Fall 2009   http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v11/v11i1a1.pdf