No hope, no money, no life, in the war-scarred rebel north

When rebel soldiers raised their guns and fired a salvo into the air at a comrade's funeral earlier this month, 12-year-old Michel heard the noise several streets away and hid in the classroom cupboard. “Ever since the bombings we’ve been panicked by noise, we’re scared of war,” said his little friend Siaka Outtarra. Last November, President Laurent Gbagbo sent jets and helicopter gunships to bomb and strafe rebel strongholds in the north of Cote d'Ivoire for three days in a row, breaking an 18-month ceasefire in the country's simmering civil war. “I can still hear the noise,” said teacher Suzanne Zongo. “Nobody here ever imagined the president would bomb the people,” she said, recalling how the two Sukhoi 25s incessantly circled and dipped over the rebel capital in nightmare attacks that have traumatized the city's 500,000 inhabitants. One of the bombing raids killed nine French peacekeeping troops stationed in Bouake. Retaliation was swift in coming. Within hours, French troops knocked out Gbagbo's small air force in a ground attack in the government-held south of the country. The air raids stopped and the ground offensive they were supposed to pave the way for was never launched. But after two years of stalemate in the peace process, people in the north suddenly realised a resumption of all-out war was a very real possibility. Life for the six million people trapped behind rebel lines in the north of West Africa’s wealthiest nation is already difficult and could soon become hell. The country split in two days after the civil war erupted in September 2002. Tens of thousands of southerners fled the north, including civil servants, teachers, doctors and nurses, the government cut off funding, its economy fizzled and life slowly began to ebb. The November bombings painfully reminded those who stayed in rebel territory that they could die from bullets and bombs as well as poverty and neglect. “We felt abandoned and powerless,” said Penda Toure, who heads Centre SAS, an local organisation that fights AIDS. “It’s true that the rebels are based here, but it’s too awful for words to think that the population could have been wiped out.” “It’s as if people here don’t have a right to live,” she added.

Rebel building bombed in November

Little goes on in emptied northern towns Nothing much works nowadays in Bouake, or in other big towns in the rebel zone, such as Korhogo, 225 km to the north. Gun-toting rebel soldiers in odd uniforms and French and UN troops in the 10,000-strong peacekeeping force monitoring the shaky ceasefire still keep the bars and restaurants busy and some of the population happy. But banks, supermarkets and factories have closed, business has slowed to a trickle, and investment has dried up completely. When the war erupted most civil servants fled south to where their salaries were paid, further reducing work for the builders, plumbers and other tradesmen who once thrived in Bouake, Cote d'Ivoire's second largest city. As government services shut down, the aid agencies moved in to try and keep at least some essential services going. Bouake’s general hospital is run by the international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and World Food Programme (WFP) are helping to keep schools open. CARE is collecting rubbish and the ICRC is keeping water supplies clean. But across the country, schools and clinics stand empty, buildings need repair and water pumps have broken down.

Children drawing water

“We are tired, there’s no money to be earned,” said one hotel manager in Bouake. He keeps a few rooms open and running, but just airs the others to keep out the damp. The north still gets electricity from hydro-electric dams in the south and the telephone system works as a result of pressure from the international community on Gbagbo. But the president's supporters grumble that the rebels get their power and telephone calls for free and haven't paid any utility bills for nearly three years. Bouake, which is 380 kms north of the capital Abidjan, has water in the mornings but none at night. Korhogo, further north, has water at night but none in the morning. “We, the economic operators, want peace, we want to see Cote d’Ivoire reunited,” said Silue Nahouo, a merchant who heads the Korhogo Traders’ Association. “We can’t work without banks and now that the civil servants have gone there’s no-one to do business with. Farmers are our only customers, but all they buy is rice.” Toothless 80-something Ncumbe Soro, an elder of the nearby village of Dassoumble, said "all this is dragging on too long. People are hungry and having to leave. There’s no water, no school, no money. Ha! Life is too hard,” he told IRIN Roman Catholic nuns running a clinic in the village of Koni, 15 km north of Korhogo, said the lack of cash in the northern economy was contributing to malnutrition and meant the sick could not afford drugs. “The children are suffering,” said Sister Brigida. “They are dying of HIV/AIDS and are malnourished.” In Waraniene, a small town of 9,000 people just to the east of Korhogo, several hundred traditional weavers used to collecting buckets of cash from droves of tourists for the cloth, have not seen buyers in months. “The market dried up when the war began," said Vali Coulibaly as he worked his primitive hand loom. "We get the occasional French or UN soldier, but even the bulk buyers have stopped coming.”

Weaving cloth near Korhogo

Korhogo, a market town which lies close to the northern border with Mali and Burkina Faso, is busier than Bouake. Local farmers sell cotton to Burkinabe dealers and there is a thriving trade in motorbikes and scooters. The bikes are imported by the truckload and sold for a third of the price demanded in the government-held south because there are no taxes to be paid. Border customs posts have long closed. Cars and scooters without number plates are a common sight across the north, underlining the chaos and theft . Aid agencies and missionaries complain of vehicles being requisitioned by rebels and never returned. Northerners take life into own hands but don't want partition But Sidiki Konate, spokesman for the rebel New Forces movement, said that despite the absence of a police force and a functioning court system, the once fractious and undisciplined rebels were managing to re-establish law and order. He said, for example, that the insurgents had evicted people who were illegally occupying empty homes. They had also moved to end harassment and extortion, he added. “Our soldiers now are well-behaved,” Konate said. “After all, we have a huge area to look after, we oversee 60 percent of Cote d’Ivoire.” “The state is no longer present here, there’s been a total break with the south,” the rebel spokesman added. “But we are trying to keep life going, with the help of UN agencies, although most things get done informally, using volunteers.” Moussa Dosso, a rebel leader who is Minister for Crafts and the Informal Sector in Cote d’Ivoire’s sporadically functioning government of reconciliation, said the rebels were levying taxes on transport and had asked businessmen for financial help to keep the economy running. “There are huge health and education problems here. That’s why we’ve set up customs levies on trucks carrying coffee, cocoa and the like. Right now we’re buying a huge consignment of drugs with the funds,” he said. The civil war was supposed to end with the signing of the French-brokered Linas Marcoussis agreement in January 2003, but although fighting petered out three months later, the peace deal has never been implemented in full. A power-sharing government of national reconciliation including ministers from Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), the parliamentary opposition and the rebels was set up in April 2003. But six months later, the nine rebel ministers in the 42-member cabinet staged the first of several walkouts and have refused since September to attend cabinet meetings. “The November bombings have further undermined trust,” Dosso said. “Now we neither trust the south nor the impartial forces who let the government troops through the buffer zone in November.” Konate, the rebel spokesman, accused the international community of being too soft on Gbagbo, who has dragged his heels over implementing political reforms promised by the Marcoussis peace agreement “The United Nations has failed to fulfill its role," Konate said. "We asked for sanctions, we asked for an embargo on arms. We played the game and now everyone’s become poorer.” The rebels have consistently ruled out seceding to create an independent state in the mainly Muslim north of Cote d’Ivoire. But as the peace process remains blocked, the north finds itself adapting a little more each day to a situation of “neither war nor peace.” De facto partition is becoming a part of daily life. As time goes on the rebels are throwing up more and more parallel structures of government. In early February, the New Forces announced they were opening their own police academy in Bouake to train a 600-strong police force. But Konate insists that the New Forces remain committed to a one-nation policy. “Although the north has cotton, diamonds and peanuts we don’t want to secede, we don’t want partition,” Konate said. “Ivorians have been living together for almost 50 years, we have a common culture, we don’t want a split.”