Profiting from war in the Wild West at the expense of immigrants

Souliman saw his own father slaughtered by a band of rampaging gunmen, who chased his Burkinabe family off their cocoa plantation in western Cote d’Ivoire in the early days of the war. The 11-year-old is too timid to speak and looks at the floor, letting his adoptive father Jean Pierre explain how the boy managed to escape, but was then caught stealing cassava and frogmarched to a camp, where other displaced immigrants had gathered. Issues of nationality and identity are at the heart of the conflict that has divided this West African country, once the regional beacon of prosperity, for the last three years. In the government-controlled southwest, immigrants from Burkina Faso and their children have become the main targets in a complex and potent mix of ill-defined land tenure systems, rising poverty and an abundance of guns. “It's jealousy," said Alidou El-Hadji Sawadogo, a spokesman at Nicla camp, home to thousands of displaced people including Souliman and his adoptive father. "We lived together for many years but they wanted to profit from the war," he explained. “It was a premeditated attack - they chose their opportunity to get us off the land.” Nicla camp, which lies just outside the cocoa-growing town of Guiglo in western Cote d'Ivoire, was set up originally for refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Liberia. But, since war broke out in September 2002, the semi-permanent wood and concrete structures have housed people who were forced from the Ivorian land they had farmed -- and often owned -- for generations. At the moment 90 percent of the 7,500 displaced people living in Nicla are of Burkinabe origin, according to the International Organisation for Migration which is running the site. A group of men gather around as Sawadogo produces a large cardboard box filled with land ownership documents, or lease agreements for farm land. But, he says, they have proved useless in terms of getting their plots back.

A man threshes his rice harvest grown on land near Nicla camp

It is a far cry from Cote d'Ivoire immediately after it became independent from France in 1960. At that time, millions of Burkinabe were encouraged to pour in to work the plantations that were the driving force behind the booming Ivorian economy and would eventually make the nation the world's top cocoa producer. “Many Burkinabes were born here and have lived here all their life, they don’t know Burkina Faso,” said Adama Pascal Ouedraogo, the Burkinabe consul based in the central city of Bouake. “Some have been here for two or three generations. They haven’t invested in Burkina Faso. There is no such thing as going home to Burkina Faso. This is their home,” he said. Aware of this, UN agencies have begun negotiations with local communities around Guiglo to find new plots of land for the Burkinabes to farm. But the process is in its early stages. Aid workers say that at the local level people want to get on and forget the rifts. They point out that many displaced Burkinabes have made mutually beneficial arrangements to work Ivorian-owned land in small plots around the Nicla camp in return for a cut of the harvest, or a small rent. Many Burkinabe, like Jacques Ki, a headmaster in Guiglo, blame the politicians in Abidjan for playing ethnic tensions to their own advantage. Ki sees no chance of his compatriots getting their land back, until elections -- scheduled for last month -- are finally held. “The politicians want to keep their votes rather than kick the new owners off the land before the elections….. even though there are plantations that become unruly overgrown forests, because the new owners do not know how to tend them properly,” he said. A UN resolution has said fresh polls have to take place within 12 months. One of the reasons that elections failed to take place as planned on 30 October this year was because rebels and pro-government militias had yet to disarm. And aid workers say that armed militias have flourished in the region over the last three years, using their guns to turn quick profits. Lorries overloaded with cocoa head out of the government-held west and south towards the main cocoa exporting port of San Pedro. But truck drivers say hijacking has made the route treacherous. “Lots of truckers have been killed on that road south,” said Mr Tourama, a truck driver in the rebel held town of Man, 100 km north of Guiglo and the other side of the UN-monitored confidence zone that keeps the warring forces apart.

Denis Glofiei Maho with one of the armed FRGO fighters

“I’ve stopped going south,” he said. “Four times I’ve been hijacked by armed and masked gunmen. I’m scared to do it anymore.” Denis Glofiei Maho is the leader of the Forces of Resistance in the Grand West (FRGO). He denies that the 10,000 or so men that he claims to lead are a militia. He says that they make up resistance force. They happen to have arms but they are not turning them on anyone for material gain. “All chiefs of the villages pay their share – economic operators pay us too. But it’s not a tax. We don’t take it from them forcibly. It’s a gift,” he explained from his throne-like chair, as uniformed Kalashnikov-carrying men stood guard.