Navy story.indd - Mars Group Kenya Publications

côte d’ivoire
Diamonds, gold and guns
Both sides in the divided country exploit the underground economy
to pay for fresh weapons
Another round of regional
negotiations has failed, a
credible election is impossible
by the deadline of 31 October and
the international and regional
organisations look increasingly
ineffectual. The Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS) has
endorsed an extension of President
Laurent Gbagbo’s time in office by
another year and nothing useful is
expected from the African Union’s
crisis meeting on Côte d’Ivoire which
started on 17 October.
The United Nations has been
sharply criticised by its own panel of
experts for failing to monitor the arms
embargo it imposed after Gbagbo’s
forces tried to re-launch the war
against northern-based rebels two
years ago. The experts’ report says the
UN’s monitoring failures are allowing
Gbagbo’s side to rebuild its air force,
which was almost totally destroyed
by France’s Licorne force in November
2004, after nine French soldiers were
killed when Ivorian Sukhoi bombers
raided rebel positions.
The UN panel is headed by Atabou
Bodian of Senegal, a civil aviation
specialist; Alex Vines, a British
weapons expert who runs the Africa
programme at London’s Chatham
House; and Jean-Pierre Witty, a
Canadian customs expert. It has
reported on test flights of a Mig-24
attack helicopter like the one used in
several massacres during the 2002-
2003 fighting, its nose decorated to
look like a khaki-coloured shark. In
February 2005, the UN Operation
for Côte d’Ivoire (ONUCI) gave
permission to test its systems once
a month, on the ground – against
the advice of the UN’s Department
of Peacekeeping Operations and the
Sanctions Committee on Côte d’Ivoire.
In July 2005, when the helicopter was
prepared for take-off to repel an alleged
rebel attack on Anyama, near Abidjan,
the Licorne commander, General Elrick
Irastorza, telephoned Ivorian Chiefof-Staff
Philippe Mangou to warn him
that France would consider use of the
aircraft a hostile act.
Eastern European technicians look
after both the Mig-24 and at least
one Antonov AN-12 troop-carrier
supplied by a Belarussian stateowned
company, Belspetsv Technika
(BSVT) via a company owned by
Robert Montoya, a French citizen and
former leading member of ex-President
François Mitterrand’s Cellule
Antiterroriste. The UN’s Peacekeeping
Department has said that the use of
foreign technical experts to repair
military aircraft would breach the
arms embargo. Last year, ONUCI
discovered that tyres for the AN-12 had
been flown in by Ethiopian Airlines.
The Ivorian authorities obstruct
ONUCI, whose inspectors have
been refused permission to search
the hangar where the helicopter is
kept and have called off at least one
inspection due to threats. The panel
notes that ONUCI must give at least six
hours’ notice for almost all inspections,
which are refused for Gbagbo’s home
area of Gagnoa and for key units of the
presidential guard and gendarmerie.
Gold production is set to rise as
the exploration phase moves into
production. The only operational
commercial mine is in the west,
which produced 41,000 ounces in
2005. South Africa’s Randgold is
diamond dollars
exploring with the blessing of the rebel
leadership at its Tongon site (believed
to hold the largest gold reserves) and
Australia’s Equigold is exploring at
Bonikro in the south, targeting output
there of 130,000 to 150,000 ounces
a year. With Britain’s Cluff Mining
aiming to produce 40,000 ounces a
year at its Angovia site, Côte d’Ivoire’s
output could reach 300,000 ounces a
year if these projects start.
The initial one-year, UN-backed
extension of Gbagbo’s term in office
was due to end on 31 October. Its
prolongation for another year has been
accompanied by extremist statements
from Gbagbo and the President of his
Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI), Pascal
Affi N’Guessan. Gbagbo appealed to
the ECOWAS meeting for an end to
the buffer zone between rebels and
loyalists, bringing their troops face to
face. He also called for a new premier
and accused the UN’s Working Group
of planning to oust him.
Affi N’Guessan has been even more
provocative, attracting condemnation
from Kofi Annan and ECOWAS which,
he said on 3 October, ‘must not forget
that it has millions of its nationals here
in Côte d’Ivoire. Each one of these
countries must think about them, so
that they don’t create disorder here’.
He talks of chasing Licorne out of the
country, disarming the rebels by force,
and said that after 31 October ‘the
purge will begin in the government’s
zone’. Gbagbo’s foreign friends include
China, which invited him to a Sino-
African summit on 3-5 November.
His party’s newspaper claims China
and Russia oppose a Security Council
proposal to sanction Affi N’Guessan
and Speaker Mamadou Koulibaly. l
Diamonds slip through the export ban imposed on Côte d’Ivoire last
year. Many are now routed through Ghana. Production is estimated at
between 114,000 and 214,000 carats, compared with 300,000 carats prewar.
Most of the diamonds come from alluvial deposits in the Bobi dyke
area near Séguéla town, run by Zacharia Kone of the Forces Nouvelles,
which denies the UN panel’s claim that it organises the mining.
Two unnamed Belgian diamond brokers moved to Ghana when the war
broke out and have a thriving business there, possibly smuggling rebel
stones to Israel; specialist Belgian police are investigating. Ghana’s
recorded diamond output has risen steadily from 626,840 carats in 2000
to 1.014 million carats in 2005; in the first quarter of 2006 it was 317,000
carats. Since Ghana’s own production appears to be falling, the exports
presumably originate in Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. l
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