WORM'S EYE

This weekend, Ivory Coast erupted. First, nine French peacekeepers (and one American aid worker) were killed during a bombing raid against rebel forces--the latest move in an on-again, off-again civil war that has split the West African nation since 2002. Then, French troops retaliated by destroying most of Ivory Coast's small air force. In response, thousands of Ivorians grabbed their machetes and took to the streets, protesting France's actions in its former colony.

Until recently, Ivory Coast was a West African success story, a relatively peaceful and prosperous plot in an otherwise deeply troubled place. The papers say that changed two years ago, when mainly Muslim rebels seized control in the north. True enough. But we're here to tell you the Ivorians' issues--with each other, and now with the French--have deeper roots.

Today's KnowledgeIvory Coasting

Portuguese slavers and ivory traders first explored what is now Côte d'Ivoire (French for "Ivory Coast") in the 15th century, but rugged coastline and a shortage of sheltered harbors mostly kept Europeans out to sea until the mid-19th century. Knowledge about life in Ivory Coast before then is sketchy, but we know that Islam likely arrived long before Europeans. As far back as the 11th century, a series of powerful Muslim empires dominated major trade routes in West Africa, and by the 17th and 18th centuries, a handful of Muslim states were flourishing in Ivory Coast's north. Dense rain forest in the south kept villages there more isolated and likely limited the spread of Islam.

We also know that in the 17th century there were plenty of elephants around, since Côte d'Ivoire got its name from a booming 17th-century ivory trade. Sadly, pachyderm profiteering ran amok, and most of the trade was gone--along with most of the elephants--by 1700.

French Coasting

By the mid-19th century, the French were making inroads in West Africa. They moved slowly at first, cutting deals with local rulers who allowed them to build fortified trading centers in exchange for a few francs a year. Disputes over such deals were frequent, but the French wanted to keep at least a toehold in the region--in part to check the expanding influence of their old adversaries, the British. In the 1880s, French colonization efforts picked up steam, as they joined in the "Scramble for Africa," a sort of mad European dash to establish spheres of influence on the continent. In 1889, Britain recognized France's sovereignty over the coastal areas of Ivory Coast. Four years later, Côte d'Ivoire officially became a French colony.

Agreements with neighboring Liberia in 1892 and Britain in 1893 set the colony's eastern and western boundaries. But the northern boundary remained undetermined for more than 50 years as the French tried out different schemes for administering all of "French West Africa," which also included colonies in Benin, Guinea, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania.

French Roasting

From the start, a sizeable portion of the Ivorian population resisted French colonization, especially as the French military pushed inland to establish new posts. Then, in 1906, Paris appointed a new governor who decided that the colony needed "pacification." On the positive side, the repression that followed stopped illicit slave trading. On the negative, it led directly to the conscription of Ivorians to work on plantations, in mines, and on public projects for the French. In what amounted to taxation-by-manual-labor, French colonial policy actually required every adult male in Ivory Coast to work for the state for ten days a year without compensation. The law was widely abused--and not surprisingly, thoroughly despised.

Colonial policies briefly became even more oppressive (and racist) after 1940, when Hitler's wehrmacht blitzkrieged across France. But before World War II was over, Charles de Gaulle's Free French government had recognized the need to alter the relationship between France and the colonies.

Ivory Coasting

One of the African groups lobbying for such an alteration was the African Agricultural Union, a group co-founded by Ivorian planter/physician Félix Houphouët-Boigny. After a period of mutual animosity with the French, Houphouët-Boigny began to cooperate with the colonizers in the 1950s.

In 1958, Côte d'Ivoire became a republic within the French Community. The following year, Houphouët-Boigny became the republic's premier. Finally, in 1960, Ivory Coast achieved full independence. That year, Houphouët-Boigny was elected president, an office he would keep until his death in 1993.

Generally conservative, pro-business, and pro-French, Houphouët-Boigny ruled Ivory Coast autocratically but efficiently. During his reign, democracy suffered, but Ivorians enjoyed political stability and strong economic growth. While much of West Africa went to war, they went to work, building the fourth largest economy south of the Sahara around cocoa and coffee. Immigrants poured into the country looking for work, especially in the north, where they now account for up to 40 percent of the population.

Ivory Roasting

In 1993, Houphouët-Boigny died in office. His successor, Henri Konan Bédié, quickly moved to change the nation's election laws to exclude a Muslim northerner, Alassane Ouattara, from the upcoming presidential ballot. He also began exploiting anti-Muslim feelings in the south for political advantage. In protest, opposition groups boycotted the 1995 election, and President Bédié easily won reelection.

Then, in 1999, amid cries of corruption, General Robert Guei overthrew President Bédié in a bloodless coup and assumed the role of president. Like his predecessor, President Guei ensured that Ouattara (and other Islamic candidates) were excluded from elections in 2000. But despite doing his best to rig the election before the fact, Guei realized halfway in that he was losing it to another candidate, Laurent Gbagbo.

Not to be held back by anything as airy as an actual vote count, Guei dissolved the election commission and declared himself the winner. But a popular uprising soon swept him out of office, and Gbagbo in. Two years later, Muslim-dominated groups in the north rebelled. Despite French efforts to broker a peace, and a UN-sponsored peacekeeping mission, it's been civil war on and off ever since.

Steve Sampson

November 9, 2004

Want to learn more?Brush up on African geographyhttp://www.africaguide.com/afmap.htm

Download the full Ivory Coast report http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/citoc.html

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