The Ivorian Crisis Jesper

Bjarnesen PhD

candidate

Reflections on a Case Study of Everyday Life in Post-Conflict Korhogo

The Ivorian Crisis – A Case Study from Korhogo

1. Introduction2. Empirical setting3. The Ivorian crisis4. The elite exodus from Korhogo5. Generational perspectives on the

Ivorian crisis

Youth Mobility in Korhogo

Exploring Family Dynamics, Intergenerational Relations, and Migration Trajectories in West Africa

1. Introduction

1. Introduction

”... The explanations behind the mobilization of youth and the social strain that it expresses, particularly in terms of inclusive/exclusive definition[s] of ’belonging’, are to be found in the internal dynamics of the society. We need to ’re-socialize’ and ’re-historicize’ the ’problem of youth” (Chauveau & Richards 2008:527)

The problem of youth

Fighting for the Rain Forest (Richards 1998)

Makers & Breakers (Honwana & De Boeck 2005)

Vanguard or Vandals (Abbink & Van Kessel 2005)

Navigating Youth – Generating Adulthood (Christiansen, Utas & Vigh 2006)

Etc.

2. Empirical setting

Introducing Korhogo

Korhogo, Côte d’Ivoire

Overlooking Korhogo

Downtown Korhogo

Korhogo main street

Periurban agriculture

2. Empirical setting

District capital Last census from 1998: 170.000

inhabitants. Current estimate 300.000 Close links with neighbouring countries,

especially Burkina and Mali; numerous bus companies to those countries

Home region of Guillaume Soro, the Secretary General of the Forces Nouvelles, and current Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire

A crisis economy

3. The Ivorian crisis

A decade of uncertainty

Félix Houphouët-Boigny

Succession struggles

’Zone de confiance’, Bouaké

Guillaume Soro & Laurent Gbagbo

The Ivorian crisis

Ethnicised politics of belonging The rhetoric of Ivoirité Zone de confiance Ouagadougou Peace Accords, August

2007 Guillaume Soro named Prime Minister Demilitarisation of Forces Nouvelles Elections scheduled for 29 November

4. The Elite Exodus from Korhogo

Conflict related mobility beyond conventional ’IDP’s

Retracting employment opportunities

Who leaves a conflict zone and who is left behind?

Elite Exodus

Globalisation

’The dimension along which those ’high up’ and ‘low down’ are plotted in a society of consumers, is their degree of mobility – their freedom to choose where to be’ (Bauman 1998)

5. No War No Peace

The Ouagadougou Accords and the Admistrative Transition in Korhogo

The state administration returning from exile

The state administration returning from exile

The state administration returning from exile

The State administration returning from exile

Préfécture officials returned in October 2007

Their presence still mainly symbolic; Under the protection of the Forces Nouvelles No police force

Increasing insecurity because of armed ex- combatants (no DDR)

The crisis not over until elections

The Forces Nouvelles still in power

The Forces Nouvelles still in power

The Forces Nouvelles still in power

The Forces Nouvelles still in power Internal divisions within the ranks of

the Forces Nouvelles Koné Zackaria and others did not want

the crisis to end the Delegate of the Secretary General

does not consider the administrative transition an obligation until the elections are “carried out in a satisfactory manner”

Street-level reflections on the administrative transition

”I will believe in the elections the day I enter the voting booth!”

Parallels to post-1999 Register to acquire ID-papers Distrust in voter-registration process Room for protest?

”Ill faut des changements!”

A call for state recognition

“The imagination of the rebellion as a new era of political articulation draws on the changing experience of the everyday social world. The experience that another political and social order was possible changed the expectations about future institutionalisations of power. From the northerners’ point of view, there is no way back to the former post-colonial state and its practices of statehood” (Förster 2009:21)

Challenges to the renewed political process

« Le très faible renouvellement de l'élite n'est pas banal en Côte d'Ivoire. Ce sont ceux-là même qui ont plongé le pays dans la guerre qui prétendent lui offrir les dividendes de la paix » (Toulou 2008:13-14).

5. Generational perspectives on the Ivorian crisis

The struggle for social becoming in West Africa

Paths to adulthood

Social becoming

Family idioms/expectations

Intergenerational tensions

A ’Youth Revolution’?

”Re-generating the Nation” (Arnaut 2005)”... at least since the December 1999 coup

d’état – sometimes called the coup d’état des jeunes ... – ... youngsters have incessantly manifested themselves as new political actors ... This became even more apparent when the military insurgency of September 2002 resulted in the formation of two movements whose names strongly evoke rejuvenation: the ’Young Patriotes’ (Jeunes Patroites) [and the] ... ’New Forces’ (Forces Nouvelles) ...” (p.111)

”Re-generating the Nation” (Arnaut 2005)”... it is difficult to imagine at his point

how any alternative political leader will be able to formulate a new future for Côte d’Ivoire without taking on board the ’youth’ that over the last decade and more have so thoroughly inscribed themselves in projects for the regeneration of the Ivorian nation” (p.140)

A ’Youth Revolution’?

For better or worse, most of what is presently happening that is new, provocative, and engaging in politics, education, the arts, social relations … is the creation either of youth who are profoundly, even fanatically, alienated from the parental generation, or of those who address themselves primarily to the young. (Theodore Rozack, The Making of a Counter Culture, 1969)

A ’Youth Revolution’?

A ’Youth Revolution’?

A ’Youth Revolution’?

A ’Youth Revolution’?

A ’Youth Revolution’?

A ’Youth Revolution’?

Continuities in Social Reproduction?

”West African Insurgencies in Agrarian Perspective” (Chauveau & Richards 2008)”... despite the growing tensions inside the

families, the customary moral economy still retains the respect of youth. The claims staked by the young rural ’patroits’ do not question the symbolic system of a gerontocratic order from which all members of the younger generation stabd eventually to benefit ... It is the elders, not the institution, that appear to have failed” (p.534)

Discussion

Reflections on a Case Study of Everyday Life in Post-Conflict Korhogo