Pro-Gbagbo militias undergo military training in the heart of Abidjan

Even the girls have shaved heads in the Institut Marie-Thérèse, a primary school named after the wife of Ivory Coast’s first president. Dressed in kaki T-shirts and camouflage gear, they work in the kitchen to prepare food for the young men who invaded the school grounds on August 15. These "Young Patriots" have turned it into a military training camp for young hardline supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. The school, in Abidjan's bustling Adjame district, now serves as the headquarters of Cote d'Ivoire's best-trained militia organisation, the Patriotic Grouping for Peace (GPP). The entrance to the playground is protected by sandbags and a barrier of old tyres in the road outside forces cars to slow down and negotiate the hazard in single file. Zeguen Toure, the GPP's undisputed leader, makes no bones about his organisation's real aims. “The authorities have a passive attitude in managing the situation and we are tired of that,” he said. “We back the president in everything he does, but we’re tired of his negotiating." "Our only aim is war and we will decide ourselves when the time is right.” The school's classrooms have been turned into orderly dormitories and TV-rooms packed with youngsters in military camouflage wearing polished new boots. They stand to attention and salute smartly as visitors enter the room. "We are not just a gang of killers" Toure told IRIN during a tour of the premises that the building is now used to provide military training for 1,600 GPP volunteers. Detailed drawings of an automatic rifle and its various parts on a blackboard, made clear that this training included instruction in the use of fire-arms. But Toure denied that his men were just political thugs who attacked people suspected of being rebel sympathisers at the behest of the president and the barons of his Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party. “We are here to show that we are not a gang of killers,” Touré told IRIN. “In fact, we will tidy up the neighborhood.” “Organizations like the United Nations say bad things about us, they say we are a tribal militia,” he said. “But we are just volunteers who consider it their duty to defend Cote d'Ivoire. All we want is to take our country back from the rebels.” The GPP and other pro-Gbagbo militia groups sprouted into existence after Cote d'Ivoire plunged into civil war two years ago, leaving the country partitioned between a rebel-controlled north and a government-controlled south. They form part of a hadline nationalist movement known collectively as the Young Patriots. Diplomats say its key leaders take their orders from the presidential palace and the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based thinktank, came to the same conclusion in a report published in July. Although nobody knows for sure who commands the militia groups, ICG said, they have "internal hierarchies leading up to the presidency." The man widely suspected of coordinating their activities is Bertin Kadet, a former defence minister, who now acts as Gbagbo's personal adviser on security matters. Bizarrely, the GPP's training camp is situated in a lively and populous neighborhood that is considered a stronghold of the Rally of the Republicans (RDR) opposition party, accused by Gbagbo of being hand in glove the rebels. A peace agreement in January 2003 led to a ceasefire just over three months later and the establishment of a broad-based government of national reconciliation. But after two years of tortuous negotiations, the peace process remains deadlocked and rebel leader Guillaume Soro warned earlier this week that Cote d'Ivoire was heading back towards open conflict. Uncompromising towards the rebels The civil war has spawned dozens of nationalist movements pledging their support for President Gbagbo, although for a long time the existence of armed militias among them was denied by the government. The demands made by these groups change according to the political climate, but their belligerent stance is unmistakable. Generally speaking, the Young Patriots refuse to acknowledge the rebels’ right to share in government and want them to be crushed by force unless they agree to lay down their weapons unconditionally. They claim that the large community of immigrants from other West African countries in Cote d'Ivoire is in league with the rebels since many of them ethnic have links with the rebels bedrock supporters in the north of the country. And they accuse France, the former colonial power which has 4,000 peacekeeping troops in Cote d'Ivoire, of supporting the rebel cause. French citizens and French commercial interests have repeatedly been attacked by the pro-Gbagbo militants. The Young Patriots have even demonstrated outside the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping force in Abidjan and have smashed UN vehicles to press their demands that the 6,000 UN peacekeeping troops disarm the rebels by force. The movement draws much of its support from students and the fast-growing ranks of unemployed youth. The leaders of the Young Patriots frequently whip their followers into a frenzy with intimidating xenophobic rhetoric. Their favourite rallying place is the "Sorbonne," the former speakers' corner in Abidjan's downtown business district. During their protest demonstrations, the Young Patriots can make a lot of noise. Earlier this year the movement managed to fill sports stadiums in Abidjan with several thousand people for its rallies. The most prominent Young Patriot leader is Charles Ble Goude, a charismatic student drop-out who is invariably accompanied by armed bodyguards. He enjoys the permanent use of a suite at the prestigious Hotel Ivoire and is widely believed to be bankrolled by the presidential palace. But the organisation which Ble Goude personally heads, the Panafrican Congress of Young Patriots (COJEP) does not have the very blatant military identity of Toure's CPP. Former student leaders at the helm Diplomats fear what may happen if the armed militias are let loose on the city, rather than stone-throwing tyre-burning demonstrators who are usually the most visible face of the Young Patriots. A UN inquiry into the government's bloody repression of a banned opposition demonstration in Abidjan last March concluded that at least 120 people were killed over a two-day period as armed militiamen joined police and soldiers to hunt down suspected opposition supporters in some of the city's poorest suburbs. Toure, like Ble Goude and Soro, the rebel leader, is a former activist in FESCI, Cote d'Ivoire's main student association. All three men are in their mid-30s and know each other personally. Toure, who is 36, told IRIN that he once studied economics and computer science, but one man who knows him well said he had never held a real full-time job. Toure confirmed that Moise Kore the man he describes as his "Defence Minister" was a serving member of the security forces, but he declined to say what rank he holds or in which regular unit he serves. Individual GPP militia members do not carry arms, but they are taught how to use them, Touré said. “Former army officers come and train my men,” he said. “As for arms, it’s easy to get them. Arms are everywhere.” Touré said Ivory Coast’s security forces alone were not strong enough to “liberate” the country on their own and the militias had been created to help them complete the task. “Our security forces cannot defend everybody. The conventional army is not the most appropriate army for warfare with rebels,” he said. But Toure dismissed the notion that most militia groups consist of people from President Gbagbo's Bété ethnic group from south central Cote d'Ivoire and their close relatives, the Attié and Dida. “I myself, I am a northerner,” he said, pointing out that he came from Touba, near the western frontier with Guinea. Last year, it was a common sight to see small groups of militia recruits jogging through the streets of Abidjan, particularly in neighborhoods where Gbagbo was popular. The militias disappeared from public view after Prime Minister Seydou Diarra asked the security forces to disband them in August 2003, but Abidjan residents say they are still very much in evidence. One blast on a whistle brings them into the street “Every neighborhood has its own militia, but it’s not like they hang out together all the time,” a Lebanese businessman told IRIN on condition of anonymity. “Yet, they’re organized. It only takes one blow of the whistle to get them pouring out onto the streets.” Apart from the GPP, the best-known militia force in Cote d'Ivoire is the Front for the Liberation of the Greater West (FLGO), which is based in the western town of Guiglo, near the buffer zone between the loyalist army and the rebels. Long after fighting died down in the rest of Cote d'Ivoire, the area around Guiglo remained plagued by ethnic conflict, fuelled by the presence of militia groups, some of which recruited heavily among Liberian refugees. According to the International Crisis Group, FLGO leader Mao Gloféi is a member of the central committee of Gbagbo's FPI and a close aide to the mayor of Guiglo. Gloféi speaks openly about his “armed movement”, but it is unclear how many men are under his command. Back in Abidjan, Touré said the authorities have accepted his informal takeover of the Institut Marie-Therese. However, one local government official in Adjame said the mayor and his staff could do little about the GPP's presence there since the militia group had an influential patron: Finance Minister Paul Bouhoun Bouabre, a leading member of the FPI and a close associate of the president. Toure himself declined to say who paid for the GPP's military uniforms, its food, weapons and training. “We are volunteers, we finance ourselves,” he said with a grin.