Unemployed and looking for a way to spend the day? Join the President's men

Jean Martial studied to become an accountant and Olivier trained as a mechanic. Neither ever found a job but neither readily admits to being unemployed. Instead both these Ivorian youths pronounce themselves to be 'Young Patriots'. They devote their time to the hard-line nationalist movement that supports President Laurent Gbagbo and describe their work as defending Cote d’Ivoire against France, the former colonial master, and against rebels occupying the north of the country. "I finished studying to be a mechanic in 2002. Then the rebels launched their attack in September and that's when I found my new calling," Olivier told IRIN at the Sorbonne, a leafy square in downtown Abidjan that is a magnet for soapbox politics. Olivier, like dozens of other youths milling about the square, is decked out in a T-shirt with "David versus Goliath" emblazoned on the front. For them the giant Goliath is France and they are weakly underdog David, trying to topple him with a simple slingshot. They have had some success. Mob riots in November, which many diplomats blamed on the Young Patriots, forced France to conduct the largest ever evacuation of its citizens from Africa in recent times. Almost 9,000 expatriates - most of them French - fled Abidjan as crowds of angry youths burned their schools and ransacked their homes. "France's imperialist rule is to blame for the unemployment," said Olivier, seemingly unaware that his favourite downtown hangout shares its name with the elite Parisian university. "I'm a bit ashamed to be 27 already and still without a salary," he admitted, explaining that he relied on his big brother, his extended family and his friends for financial support. "But I am a patriot, I go on the marches, I take part in the sit-ins. I have a job to do." Olivier faithfully trots out the Young Patriot mantra, extolling President Gbagbo and ranting against France. But occasionally his mask slips, raising questions about how much of what he says comes from his own convictions. For example, Olivier says that once the war is over he would like to do a computer course and work in Europe. Given that the only European language Olivier speaks is French, his most likely job market would be the country he presently regards as the enemy. But that doesn't seem to bother him. Eternal conundrum Youth employment in Cote d'Ivoire, as in most African countries, is very high and rising fast. According to government statistics, 23 percent of all males under the age of 25 were unemployed when the civil war began in 2002. Cote d'Ivoire's sophisticated economy, which was once the pride of West Africa, has taken a nosedive since then, leaving even more of the country's angry and frustrated youth, idle and without an honest income. Independent estimates are hard to come by, but experts at the forefront of efforts to prevent Cote d'Ivoire's fragile peace process from collapsing agree that high youth unemployment encourages violence and makes everything more complicated. "Clearly the large numbers of young people without much hope or opportunity has got to be a factor for instability," said Alan Doss, the United Nations' acting chief representative in Cote d'Ivoire. "Young people are more susceptible to violence when they are without opportunity or hope." "It’s the eternal conundrum," Doss added. "You need peace to get stability, you need stability to get growth... to get jobs which in turn underpins peace." Last November offered a startling reminder of just how much repressed anger lies smouldering beneath the surface, waiting for the fuse to be lit.

Young Patriot leader Charles Ble Goude

After 18 months of uneasy ceasefire, Gbagbo's air force bombed rebel positions in the north in preparation for a ground offensive. When French forces retaliated for the deaths of nine peacekeepers during the raids, by destroying most of the president's warplanes, the Young Patriots were called out onto the streets of Abidjan in force. Giving the order was Charles Ble-Goude, Young Patriot figurehead and university drop-out. Sporting stubble and a baseball cap, he moves around town with armed bodyguards in military uniform and is said by diplomats to take his orders directly from the president's office. At his signal, tens of thousands of young Ivorians surrounded the main French military base near Abidjan airport and a hotel near the presidential palace. But thousands of others ran riot across the city, torching schools and trashing businesses belonging to Cote d'Ivoire's large French expatriate community. They also looted individual homes, sending nearly 9,000 expatriates scarpering home on hastily organised evacuation fights. All the Young Patriots interviewed by IRIN said they had nothing to do with the violence. They all pointed out that there was a mass break-out of 3,000 prisoners from Abidjan's main jail around the time. But the same youths nonetheless expressed satisfaction that the French position in Cote d'Ivoire had been weakened. Today street hawkers at the Sorbonne are doing a brisk trade in commemorative films about the November resistance. The movies include images of the headless corpse of a patriot draped in the Ivorian flag and show French helicopters firing canon shots to prevent a crowd of 50,000 Young Patriots charging across one of the key bridges spanning the city's lagoon to get to the airport. Expats take employment with them In this corner of Abidjan, there is scant mention of the thousands of jobs that disappeared with the expatriate businessmen as they left the country -- something diplomats worry will only exacerbate social and political tensions in this volatile nation of 16 million people. "With the departure of the French, there are fewer jobs now than there were a couple of months ago. It’s a food chain and when you break the first link... that adds pressure," one Western diplomat in Abidjan told IRIN. Despite Gbagbo's enthusiasm to bring in new foreign investors from places such as China and the United States to dilute France's control of much of the economy, few are likely to rush in and fill the void given the political deadlock and the deteriorating infrastructure. "How can we hope to attract foreign investment, essential for creating the jobs that so many millions of West African youths desperately need, if some of our leaders continue to pursue the logic of war and vendetta year after year?" lamented Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN Special Representative for West Africa after November's fighting. But some youths, like once-aspiring accountant Jean-Martial, see other options. Like many Young Patriots, Jean-Martial denies receiving any payment for his current allegiance to the president. But he is hoping to cash in once peace returns. “I help run one of the Young Patriot forums, working for the party in power. So I hope that when things return to normal, I might be compensated for my efforts,” he told IRIN in a cafe in the suburb of Koumassi. “Because they know we have been fighting for our country, we young people could be favoured.” The Ivorian government says the economy, which is heavily dependent on cocoa and coffee exports, registered zero growth in 2004, but independent economists think it contracted sharply. With no concrete progress towards peace and the flare-ups getting increasingly violent, aid workers, diplomats and UN officials worry that the militia-style Young Patriots may start to spiral out of control. Nothing to do, nothing to go back to "There’s a lot of unemployed people who have nothing to do. We're not talking about disciplined military movements, these are just young crowds," the Western diplomat said. Indeed one resident in Abidjan described how groups of young of men, who used to loiter outside his apartment block, suddenly jumped on the Young Patriot bandwagon during the crisis in November, not for ideological reasons, but more to have something to do. "When it’s time for these youths to go home they have nothing to go back to," the Western diplomat said. "The danger is that the situation begins to deteriorate and so they begin to take on a life of their own." It is a worry that is even shared by certain militia leaders, according to one humanitarian worker in the town of Guiglo, an epicentre of ethnic clashes in Cote d'Ivoire's "Wild West." He told the story of one local militia leader who journeyed to Abidjan to try to register his small group with the disarmament commission. “He was frightened that if peace came, he wouldn’t have the money to pay his young guns and they might then become a lethal force," the aid worker said. "He wanted the disarmament commission to take charge of ridding them of their weapons and sweeping up the problem." Although they have yet to swing into action, the UN disarmament plans provide for each demobilised fighter to receive a cash grant of US$900, big money in a country where half the inhabitants live on less than two dollars per day Looking around the West African region, there are troubling precedents for Cote d'Ivoire. In Liberia where drugged-up youths brought terror and bloodbaths to the streets during 14 years of civil war, the UN estimates that 85 percent of the population is unemployed. Even now, 18 months after the conflict ended, there are still legions of young men who have only known life as a combatant and who are struggling to adjust to peace. In Sierra Leone, whose decade-long civil war ended three years ago, the situation is little better. Thousands of demobilised fighters who once hacked off the limbs, lips and ears of innocent civilians still have no other useful occupation to turn to. Doss, who worked for the UN in Sierra Leone before moving to Cote d'Ivoire, is only too aware of where the downward spiral leads. "Dreadful things were done in Sierra Leone, far worse than thank god we’ve seen so far in this country," he said in his Abidjan office. "And I think that is one very important lesson -- when violence takes hold, you can never control it."