Gbagbo Arrested!

Laurent Gbagbo has been arrested and taken to the Golf Hotel. He is being protected by United Nations peacekeepers. (Yes, it's ironic.)

Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to be ex-president of Ivory Coast, is called The Baker because somehow he always manages to roll his enemies in flour. To roll someone in flour means to dupe them. A smooth-talking swindler looks you in the eye and tells you exactly what you want to hear. If you are gullible, you get taken in, made a fool of......Rolled.

Laurent Gbagbo tells you sincerely that you must respect the Ivorian constitution, turns those big round eyes on you and explains that Ivorians need to resolve this among themselves. He finds it absolutely astounding that they are gambling on his country's future in foreign capitals, and he needs a ceasefire in order to negotiate the terms of his departure. But be careful, because while you listen, The Baker is popping you into the hot oven and slamming the oven door closed. Rolled.

Is he crazy? Like a fox. His strategy is always to play for time. He knows politics is a high-stakes poker game and he bluffs with the best. When he tells you he’s about to fold, he’s stalling. His troops, moved into position during the ceasefire you foolishly gave him, gained ground in Abidjan and even attacked his enemy’s headquarters. Rolled. The Baker’s response to the outcry over the attack? Wasn’t us. You must have imagined it.

Tell that to the residents of the upper-class neighborhood around the hotel who are fleeing. Many of them supported Gbagbo. Unlike his opponents, he isn’t bothered by the fact that his best cards—massacres, food shortages, urban civil war -- require terrible suffering from his fellow Ivorians.

For three days in the Koumassi section of Abidjan, there was no water. Women were going from house to house with their basins, asking their neighbors to share what they had. Salifou, a student there, said his household was lucky because they have a well in the courtyard. But the well water is dirty, and usually they use it for washing, so drinking it meant they risked getting sick.

Last Wednesday, when a French television station said that Gbagbo had surrendered, Salifou and his neighbors went out into the streets, thinking the four-month ordeal was finally over. But the news turned out to be false. “At that moment,” he said, “we were so disheartened.” Rolled again.

Their greatest fear isn’t hunger or thirst, but the armed young men who prowl the streets. “The pro-Gbagbos have killed one young man near us and badly wounded another. He will die, too. There is no medical care.”

His voice droops. “If only he could have gone to the hospital…”

But he isn’t speaking of the wounded neighbor. He is talking about his older brother who died last Saturday in another part of Abidjan because he became seriously ill and it was impossible to take him to a hospital. Salifou couldn’t cross Abidjan to attend his burial. It was simply too dangerous.

Some of the armed men in pick-up trucks are looking for stores to loot, some for revenge. Some are pro-Gbagbo, others are pro-Ouattara. Some are Invisible Commandos, who owe allegiance to their commander, a former rebel leader. And some are just taking advantage of the chaos. The armed groups take over neighborhoods and defend their turf.

President Ouattara, trying to take office for the past four months while Gbagbo did everything possible to keep him out, has been forced to turn to former rebels and rebel-allied militias. If they do manage to help him take control of Abidjan, he will owe them big time. Ouattara and his Prime Minister/Minister of Defense have said the right things. They have asked their troops to refrain from acts of vengeance and they have promised to return the cars and money their troops looted as they entered the city. But words only go so far when people are desperate.

Gbagbo has used his faux African-liberation anti-imperialist rhetoric to adroitly maneuver Ouattara into a corner. If Ouattara turns to France and the United Nations, the most reliable sources of help and the ones that will demand the least destructive things in return, he proves Gbagbo right: he’s a foreigner, a puppet of the West, an “imposter.” This makes it difficult for Ouattara to win over Gbagbo’s supporters, who believe Gbagbo's fear-mongering conspiracies.

An old friend who has left the city says they have stopped discussing Gbagbo. “We don’t even know what to say any more. But we can’t hold on much longer. Even here, in this town an hour from Abidjan, food is scarce and prices are rising. When people finish the little food they have stored, what will they do? There will be a famine here.”

In Abidjan, a flat of eggs, which used to cost about three dollars costs twelve. Small plastic bags of atieké, ground processed manioc ready to eat, that women prepare and sell on the street, used to cost about a dollar. Friday they were up to six dollars.

In one part of Koumassi, the pro-Ouattara soldiers that control the neighborhood open up the large stores, owned by Lebanese merchants, so the residents can take rice. “I don’t think it’s stealing,” said one resident. “This rice is labeled PAM (World Food Program). It was supposed to be given to the poor, but Monsieur Gbagbo’s government made deals with the merchants and sold it to them instead. The merchants re-packaged it and sold it. It was sent here for us but it wasn’t given to us. Well, now we need it to survive.”

Residents of this neighborhood, which is mixed politically--roughly 60% for Ouattara and 40% for Gbagbo—have heard that sometimes, underneath the sacks of rice, large piles of machine guns turn up. The soldiers take them.

“People keep saying the international community supports Ouattara,” said Salifou. “But what about the nationalcommunity? We support Ouattara. A majority of us voted for him. But we have been taken hostage by Gbagbo and his minority. We need help. We are worn out. People are dying. We just want peace.”

Down in his comfortable bunker, Gbagbo is protected from these realities by the president he refuses to recognize, who wants him taken alive. The United Nations says it will not be a party to any plan to starve him out. People of good intentions are always at a disadvantage with someone like Gbagbo, who talks out of one side of his mouth. He does not care how many Ivorians die, and the more chaos the better. It strengthens his hand. He still thinks there is a deal to be made, some way to roll his enemies in flour one more time and pop them into the oven. He seems to enjoy turning up the heat.

Zoumana Koné nicknamed Chékoroba (Old Man)

1985-2011

Old Man was the one we all worried about. He was stuck in Abobo, the neighborhood Gbagbo’s militias targeted and terrorized. The running water and electricity were often cut off and he couldn’t charge his cellphone. When I did get through, Old Man told me softly that life was difficult in Abobo. So difficult. He had not gone outside for two weeks. There was shooting every night and even during the day. You never knew when it would start. During the shooting, he stayed in his room. But sometimes, when the shooting stopped, there were bodies in the street.

He was sensitive by nature and far from his family, and I could hear the strain in his voice. “I can’t go to school,” he said. He sounded sad, wistful, but also apologetic, probably because we were helping to finance his education. I told him he should stay home; there would be time for school later. “You are witnessing the history of your country as it happens,” I told him. It was the sort of serious idea he liked and he promised to tell me everything in detail the next time I visited.

Chékoroba, which means Old Man in Dyula, was a family nickname because he was named after his grandfather. Old Man was in fact a young man, but a serious, thoughtful one, and he chose his words carefully, which made him sound older than he was. He was exactly the same age as my son, twenty-six. Same cohort, his father liked to say. His father and mother have been our friends for thirty years. But our son had graduated from college by the time Old Man was able to start last year.

Last Thursday when I called, Old Man answered. The fighting had moved to other areas of Abidjan, and Abobo was finally calm. The electricity was back on. He told me that he had been sick but was better. He had talked to his younger brother across town and heard that I had managed to get some money to his father for the two of them. When his father was able to send the money, he said, he was going to buy a bus ticket and go home to Korhogo. He was worn out with living in a war zone and being sick. He just wanted to be home with his family.

In just one more week, I replied, there should be peace. Then we can get the money to you and it will be safe for you to travel. I thought that once he was home where it was calm, and eating well again, he would be fine.

But on Saturday, Old Man suddenly got much worse. He was having trouble breathing. The family he lives with took him to the Red Cross clinic in Abobo. The Red Cross said he needed to go to the hospital across town. But with the battle for Abidjan raging, it was too dangerous. His father called to tell me the worst of all possible news. Saturday night Old Man died.

Everyone is crying here, his father said, as we cried across the scratchy phone line, not only the family, but also all the neighborhood children that he tutored over the years.

His father was not able to go south for his son’s funeral. Even his younger brother could not cross Abidjan to attend. Although the fighting was concentrated in a few places, the rest of the city was in chaos.

The family he had been living with notified the pro-Ouattara soldiers that control Abobo, and four soldiers came with a dump truck, the kind used to transport sand. Since the cemetery of Abobo was closed, they took them to a cemetery in Anyama. Another family also made the journey, to bury a member of their family. Escorted by the armed soldiers, they had no problems going through the barricades.

As they buried Old Man Sunday, they could hear the shooting downtown in Plateau, where soldiers were battling for control of the Presidential Palace. In the north, his family gathered in their beaten earth courtyard in Korhogo to say the Muslim prayers.

The Red Cross is appealing to the population of Abidjan and the fighters on both sides to let it continue its work so that it can save the lives of hundreds of people—those who are seriously wounded, gravely ill, pregnant women, and people who can’t get access to food or water. The official number of people killed in the violence is terribly high, but the actual number is much higher. One of those uncounted is a young man I have known his entire life, a young man who was bright, hard-working, and full of sweetness and promise.

The last time I saw Chékoroba was on a Sunday in late October. He was wearing his school uniform—black pants a little too short, white shirt, bright red tie. He and his brother met me for Sunday lunch, and while we worked our way through a platter of roasted chicken at an outdoor restaurant, he told me proudly how much he was learning in his computer science classes. He had to leave the house every morning at five-thirty to cross the sprawling city by bus and he rarely returned before six or seven in the evening. There were only a few computers at the school, but now that he was starting his second year, he would get a chance to work on them. I worried that he was working so hard to learn what children in wealthier countries learn in elementary school, but he was delighted with his program and hopeful that when he graduated, he would find work and be able to help his family.

Ala den balo, his mother and I say to each other each time we part. May God keep your children alive. Amina, we both reply. Now across the mysterious cellphone network that connects our voices, I had to offer the blessing you never want to say about your friends’ child: Ala ka hinara. May he go to heaven. His father, the person who thirty years ago taught me to say this, replied in a broken voice, Amina.

As Gbagbo's World Crumbles, State Television Played On

Thursday, as pro-Ouattara Invisible Commandos emerged from their hiding places in the neighborhoods of Abidjan and the head of Gbagbo’s armed forces abandoned him, the state television station RTI broadcast a story about bread. Trays of crusty baguettes were pulled out of large ovens. What could be more appropriate? Laurent Gbagbo is nicknamed The Baker because he rolls his enemies in flour, always managing to come out on top. But the city was encircled by the newly constituted Republican Forces, loyal to Ouattara, and his own soldiers and policemen were disappearing. The Baker was going to need a very large sack of flour to get out of this one.

After baguettes, RTI moved on to an interview with a socio-economist who said that all of Ivory Coast’s problems were caused by The West, which wanted to control the Ivorian economy for its own profit. “We need two things,” he said. “An independent economy and leaders who work for Ivory Coast and not for themselves.” This last comment caused the economist to disappear in a not-so-subtle edit. He reappeared a moment later praising “the president,” who at that hour on RTI was still Laurent Gbagbo. The next story was about a statue of the Virgin Mary in a traffic circle. The statue was delicate, white, and wore a bright blue sash. A young Muslim girl had seen the statue move its folded hands. “A manifestation of the Virgin,” said a priest. “The Virgin chose this Muslim girl.”

I skyped a student in the pro-Ouattara section of Koumassi, a suburb of Abidjan. The sound of machine gun fire was so loud it was difficult to talk. He said four Invisible Commandos armed with machine guns walked down his street earlier, reassuring residents that they meant them no harm and urging them to stay inside. He and his neighbors had gone out to see the smoke, which seemed to be coming from the police headquarters nearby. The shooting sounded like it was coming from near the airport. Huddled inside, they weren't sure whether to be hopeful or terrified.

I checked back in with RTI. In a soap opera, a man had been offered a post as minister in the government. He asked his wife if he should accept. “I just don’t want any bad things to come into our life because of this,” she demurred.

Her concern was reasonable. Two of Gbagbo’s ministers trying to flee to Dubai had just been stopped at the airport.

After the soap opera, finally, the news. Gbagbo’s spokesman said that President Gbagbo was closely following the situation, but because it was evolving so quickly, he had postponed his planned address to the nation.

Then there was a music video called “Let’s Respect the Constitution.” Texts of constitutional articles appeared on the screen as singers rapped and dancers danced. Anyone can use the military for a coup d’état. Gbagbo’s genius was to do it constitutionnally, using the nation's highest court.

As the city around them was in chaos, a panel of pro-Gbagbo journalists and academics summarized Ivorian history. Westerners had sent Alassane Ouattara to carry out their programs for their benefit. Gbagbo was a hero for democracy in Africa. Old footage played over and over of his younger pro-democracy activist days.

RTI’s sound became scratchy. Witnesses said there was shooting near the television station, which is close to Gbagbo’s residence. It seemed he had chosen to go down fighting. Finally, Thursday night, the screen went dark.

In the real world outside RTI, Ivorians are fearful, exhausted, and hungry. They huddle in their houses, hoping to survive. In the four months that Gbagbo has refused to step down, the suspicions and resentments between political parties, between northerners and southerners, and between ethnic groups have deepened and darkened. Ouattara’s young fighters want revenge for the killing of their friends and relatives. Gbagbo’s "young patriots" have nothing to lose and could wreak havoc.

In Abidjan, so much is at stake. Can hotheaded young men and hardliners on both sides be restrained? If so, perhaps Ivorians can break bread tomorrow in peace and security--without The Baker turning up the heat on the oven.

Civil War Comes Calling in Ivory Coast

A dictator holed up in the presidential palace who refuses to give up power, whose soldiers fire mortars into urban neighborhoods and shoot at peaceful protestors, who is out of touch and claims his people support him… An army advancing toward the capital to force him out…

But this is not Quaddafi in Tripoli. It’s Laurent Gbagbo, the Baker of Ivory Coast, holed up in the presidential palace in Abidjan. Four months have passed since he lost a remarkable election. The vote in Ivory Coast was the third election in the world to be certified by the United Nations (after East Timor and Nepal), the first in Africa. The results were independently tabulated by the United Nations. There’s no question who won. The election had only one major flaw: no concession speech.

A former history professor and pro-democracy activist (could I make these things up?), Gbagbo refused to admit he lost. Instead, he lodged a complaint that his voters were intimidated in the northern part of the country, where his opponent, Alassane Ouattara, won 93% of the vote. Gbagbo’s allies on the nation’s highest court ruled in his favor, toyed with the results, and subtracted the northern regions. When you subtract the votes from those areas, le voila! Gbagbo wins. It’s a constitutional coup d’état. There is no legal recourse to reverse a decision of the highest court.

No credible evidence supports Gbagbo’s claims of intimidation in the north. There were, in fact, more irregularities and more violence in the western part of the country, which Gbagbo carried. But he hasn’t suggested throwing out those votes. In fact, the Constitutional Council, the court that issued the ruling, has overstepped its authority. According to the Ivorian electoral code, the court must either validate an election or declare it void and call for a new one within 45 days. It doesn’t have the authority to throw out some votes and keep others. If Gbagbo gets away with this, it’s a huge setback for democracy in Africa. But four months in, his world seems to be falling apart.

While the Security Council discusses whether to ban heavy arms in Abidjan, Gbagbo continues to fire them at civilians. They call him the Baker because he rolls his enemies in flour. It doesn’t sound that bad. But that’s the whole point. Blinded by flour, you don’t realize what is happening until you’re popped into a hot oven.

The commune of Abobo, in northern Abidjan, has suffered the most from Gbagbo’s forces. It is now controlled by insurgents that everyone calls the Invisible Commandos. The newly-constituted Republican Forces of Ivory Coast, made up of former rebels and defectors from Gbagbo’s armed forces, is moving quickly toward Yamassoukro, the official political capital. From there, it’s only a couple of hours to Abidjan. It’s not on the world’s big screen, but it is civil war.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Abobo, including the friend I call Gnéré, who has found sanctuary with a relative outside the city. When I finally reach her, she sounds like her old self. “I got the children into school!” she tells me excitedly. After months of being cooped up in the apartment, her three boys are finally back in elementary school. Next she will try to find places in middle school and high school for her younger sister and brother. “I’d like to go home,” she says. “But we’ll stay here for now and see what happens.”

I reached her husband in Abobo last night. Gbagbo’s forces were firing mortars into the neighborhood. I could hear them popping in the background as we spoke. I asked him how he manages to get out of Abobo, to his job, and back again. “I used to pray to God every time I left the house,” he said. “As I drove, I would pray not to cross the tanks. But now, nowhere is safe. Sometimes the mortars explode in the air. But sometimes they land on houses. Now we have to pray all the time, wherever we are.”

The city is dead, he said. Businesses closed, the port nearly empty. I called and called the student I know who is trapped in another part of Abobo. His family nickname is Old Man because he is named for his grandfather. A mortar landed in his area yesterday, according to an article on the Internet. Old Man’s cellphone rang and rang, but there was no answer. Network error, said the message. I’ve been trying to help Old Man get out of Abobo. But Western Union and Moneygram are closed because they operate through banks. Just when people need it most, their relatives and friends abroad can’t send cash.

Meanwhile, thousands of unemployed young men who support Gbagbo have volunteered to join his brutal loyalist security forces. Even Barack Obama, who never uses overheated language, called them “thugs.” They have given the army their phone numbers and are waiting for the call to arms. It’s civil war by cellphone. We can only hope their calls don’t go through.

While the World Watches Libya, Abidjan Flees

While the world watches Libya, the people of Abidjan are fleeing their homes. Their city is a war zone. Forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo shoot mortar rounds into their neighborhoods.

And it is about to get worse: thousands of young men who support Gbagbo have turned out to enlist in the army. These “Young Patriots” want to join the brutally repressive security forces that keep Gbagbo in power despite the fact that he lost a well-organized election.

For the past four months these young men have listened to nothing but pro-Gbagbo propaganda, an inflammatory plume of self-justifying, anti-northern, anti-French, anti-American, anti-UN, toxic xenophobic exhaust. Young, unemployed, mostly illiterate, and misled by Youth Minister Charles Blé Goudé, they are the raw human energy that can power a civil war.

The propaganda on state television tells them they need to “liberate” Ivory Coast from westerners, the United Nations, rebels and terrorists. How will they identify the rebels and terrorists? They will be northerners with northern last names on their identity cards or immigrants from Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Benin, or other countries. Hundreds of Ouattara’s political activists have already died. They received the fatal knock on the door, the deadly visit in the night.

The friend I call Gnéré for her protection, a young mother and schoolteacher from a village in the north, is trying to get out of Abobo. “The tanks come in day and night now…shooting! The children are frightened. We can’t stay here any longer.”

A bus ticket to Bouaké, on the other side of the line, controlled by the New Forces and peaceful, costs 15,000 FCFA, about $30, and Gnéré needs seven. The banks and Western Union are closed. She has heard that you wait two days at the station for a seat. And Bouaké is only halfway to her village and her family. She can’t make it.

The refugees at her church are leaving for the north today but she can’t afford seven seats in their convoy, so she is going to try to make it to a town near Agboville about fifty miles away, where she can stay with a relative of her husband.

Another friend (let me call him Yacouba) is leaving today, too. He plans to buy gas with every penny he has and try to make it north to Korhogo, where his extended family lives. Marcory, Yacouba’s neighborhood in Abidjan, is considered strongly pro-Gbagbo although the presidential vote was nearly split there: 36,000 for Gbagbo and 33,000 for Ouattara. And split equals volatile.

Several nights ago, someone knocked on Yacouba’s door at one in the morning. When he asked who was there, a man he knew answered. No problem, the man responded, he just wanted to see him. But when Yacouba stepped out, thirty men were waiting. They were Ebrié. The Ebrié live in villages along the lagoons and are considered the original inhabitants of Abidjan. They are fiercely pro-Gbagbo. In Abobo, the Ebrié were accused by Ouattara’s supporters of harboring Gbagbo’s death squads and three Ebrié men had been murdered.

If what happened in Abobo happens here, their spokesman told Yacouba, we will hold you responsible. Whatever happens to any of our community here, the same will happen to you.

“They know my last name,” Yacouba said, his voice trailing off. Both his first and last names mark him as a northern Muslim, although Yacouba has spent his entire life in Abidjan and is Catholic. Four northern neighbors he spoke to had also received the threatening night visits.

“Have you seen the videos on the internet of the young men burned alive?” he asked me. To my negative response, he replied, “They’re horrible.” When he saw the images of crowds of Young Patriots joining the army, he knew it was time to go.

“Why doesn’t the United Nations act?” asks a student in Koumassi, a northerner come south for an education. “The United Nations has every resource. And yet they show up the day after to ask questions.” His suburb Koumassi is relatively calm. “Even if we don’t have much to eat, at least we are not in danger here.” But he worries about his older brother in Abobo.

“Gbagbo…” says their father in the north ruefully. A farmer, his harvest has been good and life is peaceful. But two of his sons are trapped in Abidjan. When the electricity is cut off in Abobo, the older can’t charge his cellphone and they have no way to contact him. “Gbagbo…” Their father’s voice is filled with bewilderment. “If he kills all the people, he will be president of what? The animals?”

Hundreds of people have already been killed and half a million have fled their homes. More are fleeing as you read this. The people of Ivory Coast, especially those in the city of Abidjan, need help fast. The International Crisis Group is urging ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, to intervene. ECOWAS needs international support and they need to act quickly to prevent mass killings. The Young Patriots are lining up for Kalashnikovs. Once they have them, it will be too late.

The High Price of Onions in Abobo

Thursday morning, I called my friend Gnéré in Ivory Coast. She is trapped in Abobo, caught between the soldiers of the former president determined to stay in power at all costs, Laurent Gbagbo, and the so-called invisible commandos that are fighting back. Abobo is a city within a city, a densely-populated suburb of Abidjan, with its own city hall, mayor, and deputy in the National Assembly. Over four hundred people have been killed since Laurent Gbagbo lost the election. Because it is known as a Ouattara stronghold, more of those people have been killed in Abobo than anywhere else. Some two hundred thousand people have fled the area.

But Thursday morning? Just the way Gnéré answered was reassuring. She sounded more like her old self than she had in weeks. The strain and exhaustion was gone from her voice. After days and nights of fear, Abobo was calm. No gun shots. No mortar fire. They had slept all night. And after two weeks when she was afraid to go down into the street, she had gone to the market early that morning and had returned with onions and salt and cayenne pepper for her sauces. “The onions that are normally 100 francs were 200 and the pile that is normally 200 francs cost 400!” But even her outrage about the prices sounded cheerful. What a relief to be outraged about something as ordinary as the price of onions for a change.

I asked her about the bottles of gas she uses for cooking. None to be had in Abobo, she answered. “The trucks can’t get through the barricades. Gbagbo’s soldiers have cut off Abobo completely. You can’t even take the road to Adjamé to go to the market there.” She had a little charcoal left and was using that to cook with, and she still had rice, and for the sauce, peanuts. The peanuts were grown by her family who are farmers in the north; the last time she returned home for a funeral, she brought a burlap bag back with her. The peanuts were turning into a lifesaver now that Abobo was in a state of siege. We laughed about how much better her sauce would taste that night with the onions and salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Her husband would be pleased.

Eleven people share her small apartment and all of them had spent the last two weeks cooped up inside. That includes three active little boys who usually play soccer in the dirt streets whenever they aren’t doing homework.

Abobo’s deputy in the assembly ought to speak up about the commune’s problems—how it is cut off and surrounded by soldiers, how a densely-populated neighborhood is no place to wage an urban battle between government troops and “invisible” insurgent commandos whose identities and loyalties are not entirely clear. But the government is not functioning and even if it were, Abobo is represented by Simone Gbagbo, wife of the president-who-refuses-to-leave. Simone has never lived in Abobo. For the past ten years, she has presided over the presidential palace, and she flatly refuses to move out. So the palace’s rightful residents, the newly-elected President of the Ivory Coast, Alassane Ouattara, and his wife live in the Golf Hotel, a multi-story hotel whose landscaped grounds are bordered on one side by a lagoon, and on another, by the American Embassy. They cannot leave. Gbagbo’s soldiers blockade the road.

Obviously, a good night’s sleep and the ordinariness of the trip to the market had done Gnéré good and I hung up relieved. But neither Gnéré nor I were yet aware that the calm interlude was already over. At the market where she bought her onions, the most terrible tragedy yet had just taken place. Gbagbo’s soldiers fired mortar rounds into the marketplace. About thirty-five innocent people were killed. Witnesses say they were mostly women and children and that at least another forty were wounded. The United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have all condemned this “blind violence” against civilians. So has the United States government.

When I called back on Saturday, we revisited that conversation. How brief it had been, our interlude of shared outrage at the high price of onions, how pleasantly mundane.

“I was so lucky!” Gnéré said. “Right where I was that morning!”

We appreciated and savored the luck of her good timing and lingered over our thankfulness. But once that was done, our outrage darkened and turned bitter again. How else can you feel about a man, a former democracy activist turned tyrant, who terrorizes innocent civilians to hold onto power?

Cross-posted on Open Salon March 20, 2011. Editors' Pick.

Dark Nights in Abobo

On a Sunday afternoon in late October, a week before the first round of the presidential election in Ivory Coast, I strolled the streets of Abobo with a young woman I will call Gnéré. She is a schoolteacher and the mother of four young children. I have known her since she was a schoolgirl herself in a village in the north. Abobo, where she lives now, is a densely populated neighborhood of Abidjan.

There was only one topic of conversation that day—the election. In a school classroom, voters crowded onto wooden benches and listened intently as campaign workers demonstrated how to mark the ballot by touching your finger to an inkpad. Nearby, a large crowd attended a rally for opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara. “We have nothing!” cried the young speaker. “It’s time for change!”

I felt the current of hope and determination running through Abobo that Sunday. And naïvely American, I had every confidence that Ivorians would succeed in putting their divided country back together peacefully at the ballot box. Gnéré, who lived through the violent 2000 election, was more realistic. She said she would prefer to vote early and spend Election Day at home with the children, just in case of trouble. But the country needed 60,000 literate poll workers, so she had agreed to work.

“The United Nations is here,” I reassured her.

“I hope they come to Abobo,” she answered with a determined smile.

I tried to picture peacekeepers in the maze of unpaved roads where we were. No street names, no house numbers. When I visit Gnéré, she meets me at the paved road so I don’t get lost.

By the time the run-off between incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and challenger Alassane Ouattara was held on November 28, I had returned home. When I called election night, Gnéré said that in Abobo, people voted and then went straight home. But there were no problems at the polling place where she worked. The voting and the vote count had gone smoothly.

Over eighty percent of Ivorian voters turned out. No one was surprised when Ouattara won Abobo with 59% of the vote to Gbagbo’s 41%. Nationwide, Ouattara received 54% of the vote to win the election. For one day, Ouattara’s activists in Abobo danced in the streets.

But Gbagbo refused to concede. His allies on the nation’s highest court overturned the results and proclaimed Gbagbo the winner. On the phone, Gnéré said that as soon as they heard the news, they ran straight home. They feared violence from Gbagbo’s street militias, the so-called Young Patriots.

“But the world is with you,” I replied. “The international community recognizes Ouattara. The president of South Africa is coming.”

“No president can convince Gbagbo to step down,” said Gnéré’s husband. “We who live here understand this.”

A few days later, the terrifying night visits began. Under cover of the curfew, hooded armed men in unmarked SUVs drove into Abobo and knocked on doors. Not just any doors--those of opposition activists.

“It’s very dangerous here,” whispered Gnéré into the phone. “We don’t sleep. We think people are getting killed.”

Some nights the hooded armed men robbed their neighbors of all their possessions. Another dark night, with the electricity out, a soldier knocked on a door disguised in a long boubou. When the family opened up to what they thought was a neighbor, the soldiers entered. The sound of shots rang out. The night terror continued. The United Nations estimates close to four hundred people have been killed. Many more have been beaten or have disappeared. Most are young activists for Ouattara.

Saturday night February 26, heavy arms fire kept Gnéré and her neighbors awake most of the night. Their neighborhood was under attack by Gbagbo’s security forces. “This time they sent tanks. Tanks! It sounds like they are right outside the door,” she said on the phone, “although they are on the paved road. The noise alone could give you a heart attack.” The children were terrified, but leaving was dangerous. Pro-Gbagbo militias were said to be on the lookout for strangers arriving in their neighborhoods and a northern last name like hers put you at risk.

About forty people took refuge in the courtyard of Gnéré’s church. When the streets are calm, she takes them food. But she is on her last bottle of cooking gas. She has a little charcoal and will cook with that as long as it lasts. Food prices have doubled and everyone makes do by eating less.

As we talked, I could hear someone crying. It was Gnéré’s younger sister, who left their village and came south to get an education. A week ago, going to middle school, she was caught in the firing and had to run for her life. She hasn’t been to school since.

“On est la-dé,” Gnéré said bleakly. “We are here-dé.” The dé adds emphasis. “No one will come to help us. We are in God’s hands.”

On Thursday, March 3, about nine in the morning, hundreds of women were desperate enough to go into the streets of Abobo to demand Gbagbo’s departure. Gnéré dressed to join the demonstration, but her husband asked her not to go, so she stayed inside. When the women reached the paved road singing and waving leafy branches, Gbagbo’s security forces shot directly into the crowd. Seven women were killed and many more were wounded.

Gnéré says the wail of shock and grief that went up in the neighborhood was awful to hear. “Why,” she asks, “didn’t the United Nations protect them?”

The country is on the verge of civil war. The United Nations says 200,000 people have fled Abobo. But on Gnéré’s street only one family has left. The rest have no place to go.

Posted at Open Salon. Editor's Pick March 14, 2011.