Heart of the Matter

Lasers in the Jungle

I was happy to find that the shower worked this morning. The water was even sort of warm. I had been worried about this, in part because there is a mysterious bucket filled with water in the bathroom. Next to the bucket is what looks like a plastic cereal bowl. Oddly, this too is filled with water. My first thought was that these items might constitute the bathing facility. (My second thought was: man, you've got to be kidding me.) But, much to my relief, the tap and the shower seem to work -- except when they don't (a few times I've tried the tap and nothing has happened. But it seems to be a sporadic and temporary condition.) So maybe the bucket is a back-up system. You know, in case the shower cuts out when you're all lathered up. If that's the case, it's nice of them to have these redundancies. The bucket, however, also looks like a wonderful breeding ground for mosquitoes and I'm tempted to dump it out. The problem is that I'm afraid to do so without knowing its real purpose. I meant to ask Fanny today, but I forgot. And so the bucket remains.

I know I have made some disparaging remarks in my previous post about the appearance of many of the rebels. But I imagine I look pretty ridiculous myself sometimes. Today, I was in my best "Ted Koppel, foreign correspondent" get up: Gore-tex hiking boots, light khaki linen slacks, a loose-fitting dark khaki shirt from Columbia Sportswear (the shirt is vented in the back and is made of some high tech fabric that is supposed to wick moisture away from your skin), and my light khaki field vest (one of those things with tons of pockets that photojournalist and fly fishermen wear.) I was a walking clich?. I always think dressing like this silly - this outfit in particular is bad because the shirt is a little big on me and I appear young to begin with, so I always feel as though I must look like a kid playing dress up. But there is a reason so many foreign correspondents dress this way - it's very practical. Especially that vest. Those pockets really come in handy. And, with the exception of the boots (which were originally purchased for a trip to ICELAND), this outfit is one of my cooler ones (I'm talking temperature not style here), which is important. Because it's hot here in Bouake. Really hot. It's not as bad as it was in Iraq but there were times today when I felt nearly as uncomfortable as I did there. The only benefit to the heat is that my laundry dries really quickly when I put it out on my hotel room balcony. I washed some things in the sink this morning and by 12:30 they were dry.

I am finding that I waste a lot of time here sitting around waiting to meet with people. It doesn't help that Ivorians seem to think nothing of keeping someone waiting for them and frequently don't show up at all. I find this outrageous. Today I showed up for a 9 am meeting with the spokesman for MPCI (it's a French acronym for the Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire), the rebel's political wing. The rebels have their administrative headquarters in a former ministry public health building. I arrive, we are checked in by some vacant looking young men with guns, and then ushered into a large unairconditioned conference room to wait for the spokesman. An hour later he still hadn't arrived. So I decided to leave and try to make another appointment for later. (He actually was there for that meeting and didn't make me wait for more than two minutes.) But it seems that everywhere I go I have to wait for long periods of time. Or I can't talk to them because it is lunch - a period that last for two and half hours. Or they are sleeping. While in Abidjan I used some of that waiting time to make phone calls to try to arrange more appointments, here in Bouake the phone service is poor so it is hard to even do that.

Bouake is a weird town. It sort of sprawls out from the center, where there is a crowded marketplace. Like most cities I've seen here, it is relatively squalid by Western standards. One day, near the hospital, I see a guy herding cattle along the street. You would think you were in the country, but this is right in the middle of Bouake. I later see this in other cities too.

***

Fanny took me to visit the campus of the University of Bouake, where he and the woman he calls his "wife" (who is really just his fianc? and the mother of his child) had been students prior to the war. The place was a complete wreck, far worse than the conditions I saw when I was at the University of Baghdad. The University campus had been the scene of ferocious fighting during the war - in December -- between FANCI and the rebels. At the time, FANCI was making a push to reoccupy Bouake. They managed to take the university but the rebels then recaptured it. Afterwards, they executed many of the FANCI forces they captured there and buried them in mass graves or burned them in pits. (Apparently this event is referred to as Lundi Noir - or Black Monday.) The grass of the campus is now overgrown and the place is deserted. The buildings all look badly damaged. We enter one former woman's dormitory to try to locate Fanny's wife's student identity card. She left it behind when she fled the campus at the start of the war and now has no identification papers whatsoever, which is a big problem here in Cote d'Ivoire. Fanny's wife isn't the only one to have left things behind. It looks as though most students left behind the majority of their belongings. It also appears that the rebels later came and looted every room - strewing people's things all over the place in the process. The floors of the rooms and the hallways are littered with the personal effects of the former occupants - clothing, toiletries, notebooks, letters and photographs. We find the room that Fanny thinks belonged to his fianc? but we can't find her card right away and I don't want to stay long, so we leave. Fanny seems upset about this, but Yoda was getting nervous waiting outside. While we were inside, a couple of rebels who are living on the campus grounds had approached the car to find out why we were there. We receive icy stares on our way out. (Fanny said that when he had returned to the university to try to salvage some of his things it had taken him two full days of searching to locate his own student ID card amidst the wreckage.)

My last day in Bouake I met with the French colonel who commands the battalion of soldiers assigned to the area around Bouake. I really wanted to meet with him and talk to some of his troops because I thought I would use them in the lead to a magazine story I am supposed to file soon. But, unfortunately, this was one of the most useless interviews I've ever in my entire career. The colonel, a nerdy, lanky guy in his 40s with glasses, was probably annoyed with me because I showed up 15 minutes late for my appointment with him (I had been stuck in Col. Bakamoko's office). Maybe that's why he decided to give me only 15 minutes (and exactly 15 minutes at that - he timed the interview and cut if off abruptly when the time had elapsed.) Trying to get him to say anything interesting during that time was nearly impossible. He spoke English but then he kept saying he didn't understand my questions. He said he had no opinion to offer about discipline among Force Nouvelle. He offered no security assessment of Bouake except to say that things were improving. (I asked him from what they were improving and he said he didn't know, he wasn't here before. I asked how he could say things were improving then. Well, there are fewer guns on the street and more security, he says. So when his troops got here there were many more guns on the street? How was it less secure? How have the French helped take guns off the street? He wouldn't answer any of these.) He refused to tell me how many soldiers he had under his command, saying only it was a heavily reinforced battalion (I have no idea what that means in the French military.) He refused to delineate his area of operation, only saying it was a large zone that happened to include Bouake. He refused to offer any useful assessment of his troops' morale. He kept saying the French were "professional soldiers" and would act accordingly. Why he thought this is what I wanted to hear I don't know (except that maybe he was trying to overcome the American stereotype that the French army drills daily in how to raise a white flag.) Any way, it was totally frustrating and I think he could tell I was getting angry with him. And he wouldn't let me interview his rank and file soldiers or his other officers. So far my experience with the French army has been exactly the opposite of that I had with American soldiers in Iraq. There, the top American spokesman generally offered platitudes while the field commanders were far more open. And the enlisted men were happy to talk. (Of course, maybe that's changed after some soldiers were demoted for talking to reporters about low morale and criticizing Rumsfeld.) 0h well...I will have to go back to the French colonel in charge of public relations for Licorne and try to get another opportunity to spend time with French forces.

If this was one of my more discouraging experiences during my time in Bouake, one of my better ones was visiting briefly with the team from Medecins Sans Frontieres that is currently running the hospital here. A group of seven doctors, all ex-pats of varying nationalities (including one American), treat 5,000 casualties a month here. (They only perform emergency services.) The surgical team, which consists of four of the seven doctors, performs 250 operations a month. They are aided by a local staff of 150, a quarter of the hospitals normal workforce. The hospital looks kind of creepy. I certainly wouldn't want to be treated there. But the MSF program director says conditions in Bouake are actually pretty good compared to other places he's worked. Laurent, the MSF program director, says they still get gunshot wounds from time to time but that they are never sure of the circumstances under which they occur. They don't ask too many questions. They just treat the injured and move on.

*

At first I don't notice anything different about the two boys walking across the dirt courtyard in front of the headquarters of Cherif Ousmanne, commander of the Force Nouvelle's Southern Command Zone and chief of the rebel's fierce Compaignie Guepard (or Leopard Company). As I watch them from a second-story window, they appear just like any of the other young soldiers here, one dressed in the blue uniform many rebels here wear, the other in brown fatigues, both with what I at first registered as the ubiquitous kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. But then I do a double take. Those aren't assault rifles they're carrying. They are laptop cases. I get a better look at them when the two teenagers mount the stairs and walk through the anteroom where I am waiting to try to get an interview with Ousmanne. Along with the Thuraya satellite phones I saw the had seen the day before, seeing teenage rebels toting powerful laptops while their compatriots mill about with AK-47s is an important reminder that while the rebels sometimes seem to be nothing more than a motley gang of undisciplined thugs, they are actually fairly sophisticated in their use of modern information technology. Seeing the teenage rebels with laptops is one of those wonderful little "lasers in the jungle" moments (taken from the lyrics of a Paul Simon song) that I love. The rebellion is a fascinating mixture of the primitive (soldiers who believe in magic talismans and amulets) and the futuristic.

The rebels have an overall command structure, but fighters seem to owe their allegiance mostly to individual "chefs de guerre," or chiefs, rather than Force Nouvelle as a whole. The chiefs are essentially war lords. Some of them really do resemble gang leaders from back in the States, especially since half of their foot soldiers are wearing hip-hop gear. I meet with Chef Mobio, the commander of Genie company (their insignia is a tank although it isn't clear they actually possess any armor), who is built like an NFL running back. Mobio arrived for our meeting at a local restaurant in a small black jeep with a custom paint job, accompanied by a large machine-gun toting security detail in two other 4x4s. Mobio was a sergeant major in the Ivorian army before the rebellion and he had also served as one of Alassane Ouattara's body guards. Talk about bling-bling: this guy was wearing more gold and silver jewelry than P-Diddy. He had four or five heavy chains around his neck and giant rings on every finger of each hand. Half of his accoutrements spelled out his name: MOBIO. He also flashed a lot of cash during the interview - I think he did this in part to prove to me that the rebellion had money. (In fact, he insisted on paying for drinks and offered money to Fanny and Yoda. I asked them to refuse this money, but they didn't.) Despite looking a bit like a gangland enforcer, Mobio actually seemed like a fairly thoughtful guy. He said he welcomed the French intervention and was ready for peace. He said he would lay down his weapons if the political wing of Force Nouvelle instructed him to do so and he said he was preparing his men to go back to civilian life. When I asked him about the ridiculous number of checkpoints on the way into town, he at first said these were necessary for defense of the city, but when I pressed him -- noting that one checkpoint on a road is good for defense, while 15 is good only for harassing passing traffic with demands for money -- he seemed embarrassed and said that Force Nouvelle was working to dismantle many of them. (Overall, it seemed like the commanders of Force Nouvelle realize that they had a bit of discipline problem with some of their younger and less trained troops and they did seem to be making some show of trying to improve things. I saw them drilling soldiers and reprimanding some for not saluting superiors. I also saw them trucking around a lot of new uniforms that I suppose they plan to issue to their troops soon.) My entire meeting with Mobio took place under the watchful of eye of a French soldier perched in an observation post atop the roof a nearby bank building (the French have been guarding all the banks in Buoake.) I am sure the French were probably wondering who I was and what I was up to.

The other chef de guerre I met with was Cherif Ousmanne. Ousmanne is a pretty scary character. He has a reputation for being one of the most ruthless rebel commanders and also the one whose unit is assigned the most difficult missions. He is in his early 30s but he seems younger. He has this ferocious stare: he looks like the cold-blooded killer he almost certainly is. Ousmanne was once a corporal in a crack Ivorian paratroop unit led by Robert Guei. He helped Guei stage the 1999 coup that brought Guei to power. But Guei came to distrust Ousmanne, in part because he is ethnically Mandingo and he thought he might be too closely affiliated with Guei's political rival Alassane Ouattara. He accused Ousmanne of plotting against him and had him thrown in jail. While imprisoned, Ousmanne was tortured. In a horrific scene reminiscent of "Marathon Man," Guei had a dentist extract Ousmanne's front teeth - without anesthetic. Ousmanne told me he could have had false teeth implanted, but that he has chosen to keep his gap toothed smile as a reminder of what he went through. He says thinking of the day he was tortured gives him the will to fight. (They say that during the initial phase of last year's rebellion Ousmanne tracked down the dentist who tortured him and killed him in some horrific manner. Ousmanne didn't confirm that part of the story, but it's probably true.)

Ousmanne's headquarters is bizarre place. First, he has this very efficient female secretary who apparently outranks a lot of the men in Ousmanne's unit (people were always saluting her). She dresses a bit like a member of the Black Panthers: green camouflage halter top with a matching jacket, red beret, and a pair very hip sunglasses with indigo lenses. Then there's the anteroom outside the secretary's office where everyone waits. I have go to Ousmanne's office three times before I am actually able to interview him and every time one of those waiting is a young woman in a tight skirt and died bronze hair. She smokes cigarettes and seems utterly bored. She is the girlfriend of one of Ousmanne's lieutenants. But her appearance and manner remind me of a gangster's moll.

Besides the chefs de guerre, I also met two of the senior commanders in Force Nouvelle. One was Colonel Bakayoko, the supreme commander of the rebel military wing. He was a former FANCI soldier and he seemed like a professional officer, in crisp dress uniform with blue epaulets and his reading glasses. He said he told me he is sure the rebels would have won had the French not intervened, but he admitted that he wasn't sure what the cost might have been in civilian lives. He said many of his men had been ill treated by Gbagbo's loyalist and that they might have sought revenge had they captured the city. I thought that was remarkably frank admission. I am also starting to come to believe that he is probably right about the rebels chances had the French not intervened. They don't have the kind of military hardware the government does, and yes, some of them seem pretty undisciplined, but they do seem highly motivated and relatively fearless.

The other guy I met was an intriguing fellow who went by the nom de guerre Capt. Sam (he refused to tell me his real name, although Fanny said he thinks it is Kareem something). Capt. Sam is a skinny guy with a thin moustache who appears to be in his early 40s. The day I met him, he was dressed in an old white T-shirt and faded slacks and wore sandals. Chief Mobio had asked him to drop by my interview with him because he knew Capt. Sam spoke English and he wanted him to speak to me for a bit. Capt. Sam indeed speaks very good English, which I was interested to hear Capt. Sam perfected while attending military training programs in the United States, including one joint training exercise with the US Third Infantry Division at Fort Benning. This leads me to wonder how many of the other rebel commanders learned the skills they have put to such deadly and effective use in Africa back in the woods of Georgia or Texas. I think the US has provided many West African troops training in an effort to bolster regional peacekeeping efforts but what if this training had a perverse effect? What if instead of helping to keep the peace, it merely led to more war by giving young officers the confidence to start rebellions in their home countries?

The rebels actually grew on me during my two days in Bouake. I met with members of the Force Nouvelle's political wing, The Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (which goes by the French acronym MPCI), who I found to be extremely intelligent and articulate. While they may not have defeated the government on the battlefield, they have clearly won the media war. This true in part because while the government attacks the foreign press for bias (creating an atmosphere that no doubt contributed to the murder of French radio reporter Jean Helene), the rebels welcome foreign reporters to their territory. They also have dispatched representatives to foreign capitals - including Washington, DC, and, interestingly enough, Tel Aviv - to argue their case. I met the guy who had recently returned after representing the MPCI in Washington. He was really warm and friendly and his English was perfect. (I'm noticing that I tend to like people better when I can understand them without using a translator which probably introduces a bit of bias into my impressions.) The other thing about the rebels is that, at least for an American, their political agenda has great appeal. They want to end discrimination against northerners and allow immigrant farmers to keep their land. One has to keep reminding oneself though that their method of achieving these goals - i.e. war - is totally anti-democratic and has resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians and forced thousands more to flee their homes. The rebels claim they had no choice but to take up arms, that Gbagbo would never have allowed free and fair elections and that he was about to launch a campaign of genocide against northerners and foreigners. It is true that under Gbagbo there was tremendous discrimination against these groups and some of Gbagbo's policies would have amounted to a kind of ethnic cleansing. It is also true that pro-government youth groups were accused of engaging in political violence and there may even have been some death squads operating in the country. But the claim of genocide is probably exaggerated and I think the rebels might have been able to use other tactics to achieve their ends. At least, the rebels probably should have tried civil disobedience and non-violent struggle prior to attempting a revolution.

The other problem with the rebels is that there is little doubt that they wanted to install Alassane Ouattara as president. The problem is that Alassane was disenfranchised through politically biased, but legal, means. And ultimately, it is the rule of law that guarantees a democracy. It's not a great analogy, but imagine if Al Gore, rather accepting the decision of the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, began supplying disenfranchised Floridians with weapons and encouraged them to overthrow the government. (Now there's an interesting thought...) That's kind of what's happened here in Cote d'Ivoire. The reason this sort of thing doesn't happen in the US is that we have a history of peaceful transition of power through elections. There is no real history of that in Cote d'Ivoire and I think the opposition is probably right to suspect that Gbagbo would not have allowed fully free and fair elections.

Posted by Jeremy Kahn at October 28, 2003 02:11 PM