Economic aftershocks of crisis may be felt around region for years to come

The turmoil in Cote d'Ivoire has brought cross-border trade screeching to a halt and with thousands of people already flocking to the borders to escape, top UN officials fear the conflict could rock the economy of the impoverished West African region for many years to come. "In the medium and long term there are still serious concerns. We are not on the eve of a lasting settlement of the crisis," Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the United Nations Special Representative for West Africa, told IRIN in a recent interview. "This is not good for understanding between countries and it is certainly not good for confidence in the economy of the region." Cote d'Ivoire, with its vast cocoa and coffee plantations, was once the economic success story of the region, attracting immigrants from neighbouring countries and European expatriates alike. The gleaming skyscrapers in downtown Abidjan paid testament to what many called the "Paris of Africa". Before the outbreak of civil war, Cote d'Ivoire accounted for 40 percent of the economic output of the Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa (UMEOA), a group of eight mainly French-speaking countries that share the CFA franc as their common currency But a coup attempt launched by northern rebels against President Laurent Gbagbo in September 2002, unleashed a deadly cycle of violence. Earlier this month government troops shattered a precarious 18-month ceasefire, bombing rebel strongholds and raising the spectre of a return to full-scale fighting. "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?" Ould-Abdallah said. Gbagbo's attack on the north petered out after French peacekeeping troops in Cote d'Ivoire destroyed most of his small air force on the ground. The United Nations subsequently slapped an arms embargo on both sides in the conflict and African leaders are scurrying to resolve the crisis. However, many diplomats think the lull in hostilities is just temporary and they are worried about the regional fallout of the Ivorian conflict. Economic pain "We will most likely see a slow but lasting degeneration of the economies (of neighbouring countries)," said Herve Ludovic de Lys, the head of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' (OCHA) regional support team in West Africa.

Effects of Ivorian crisis likely to ripple out to neighbouring countries and beyond

"The informal sector, which can generate up to 70 percent of the revenues of certain countries in the region, will be disrupted in the long-term by this crisis," de Lys said. "Workers and vendors will move around with great difficulty from now on because of all the roadblocks and searches." He noted that many of the four million immigrants in Cote d'Ivoire, from Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and other nearby countries, would find it difficult to make the trip back home and hand over vital funds to their extended families. "Seasonal migrations, that are tied to the coffee and cocoa harvests, have been interrupted by recent events, depriving neighbouring countries of revenues from Cote d'Ivoire," de Lys said. Ould-Abdallah agreed that the latest unrest had taken a toll on cross-border traffic. "The economic exchanges at the border are at a standstill," he said in an interview in his Dakar office. "And related to it, but making it worse are roadblocks... People have been stopped, had money taken away from them, and they have been ransomed." An IRIN correspondent who visited Zegoua, a town on the main border crossing between Mali Cote d'Ivoire, earlier this month, witnessed this knock-on effect first-hand. The town lies on the all-important Highway 7, the road used by truckers used to ferry cotton, Mali's main export, to the Ivorian port of Abidjan. A host of imported goods, including fuel, cement and construction materials, are brought back into landlocked Mali on the return journey.

Nothing to do at the customs house in Zegoua

Local officials said that normally about 700 trucks use the Zegoua border crossing each day, earning the Malian state between 180 million and 200 million CFA francs (US $360,000 to $US 400,000) each month in customs duties. Now that revenue has vanished. “When the crisis broke out, the big trucks suddenly stopped coming and, as if by magic, the town emptied,” Fatogoma Ouattara, the mayor of Zegoua, explained. “Transit agents and other economic operators simply left town.” Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have been trying, with limited success, to divert their external trade to other ports on the West African coast since the Ivorian conflict began. But the economies of all three countries have been hard hit by the disruption of foreign trade and a reduced flow of remittances from migrant workers. What happens if migrants return home? Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea have also struggled to absorb an influx of more than 600,000 returning migrants fleeing conflict in Cote d'Ivoire. UN analysts have warned privately that the exodus could more than double if the country relapses into full-scale civil war. The race now is to stop the economic aftershocks toppling West African countries like dominoes. "We know there is a real "domino effect" linked to instability or the deterioration in living conditions for people which provides ripe ground for conflicts and crises," OCHA's de Lys said. He used the example of Burkina Faso, which is rated third from bottom in the UN's Human Development Index. Thousands of Burkinabe, mainly cocoa workers, have fled Cote d'Ivoire since 2002, fearing ethnic reprisals and allegations of being in cahoots with the rebels. Gbagbo has repeatedly accused Burkina Faso of supporting the insurgency. "What is the exact impact of 350,000 Burkinabe returning to the villages their families come from?" de Lys said. "The idea is to have an urgent economic plan for countries that are emerging from conflict and for the neighbouring countries that are suffering the consequences of those conflicts," he added. One of the key problems facing aid agencies is that most of Cote d'Ivoire's neighbours are already grappling to shrug off their own war-torn past, or trying desperately to prevent their own descent into chaos. Fragile neighbours "The neighbouring countries certainly cannot cope with this," UN representative Ould-Abdallah said. "Liberia has just started finding its feet, as has Sierra Leone and the Forest Region of Guinea is a difficult area. Exposing these countries, not to mention Burkina Faso and Mali, to economic constraints of this kind is a big problem." Even for better-off countries like Ghana, which is considered a beacon of stability and relative prosperity in the region, worries remain, particularly when it comes to refugees from Cote d'Ivoire. "It's the easiest destination for political reasons. And Ghana does not need large inflows of refugees or displaced persons. They have presidential elections in two weeks," Ould-Abdallah explained. But so far the main flow of refugees has been into eastern Liberia.

Refugees from Cote d'Ivoire are putting strain on host community

Officials of the UN refugee agency UNHCR told IRIN that up to 20,000 Ivorian refugees had marched through dense jungle or squeezed into canoes over the past three weeks, to reach safety in Liberia, even though that meant setting up camp in a country which is only just recovering from its own 14-year civil war. Residents in the Liberian border town of Butuo have been experiencing the fall-out from the conflict next door at first hand. The town had a population of about 1,000 at the beginning of November, but that has sky-rocketed to 6,000 as the refugees flood in. Host families are sheltering up to 10 refugees in a house. "Because those brothers and sisters who seek refuge here are mostly of the same tribe, we ordered our local dwellers to accommodate them into their homes and share with them whatever food they have," Albert Fanga, the superintendent of the district, told IRIN. "But the food is getting low." Another concern around the porous border areas, is that combatants, idle for more than a year since the end of the Liberia civil war, might be sucked back into conflict across the frontier. "If they find a new employer, they will go," Ould-Abdallah, , the UN's top official in West Africa, said.

Aid agencies say former child soldiers at risk

Aid workers are also fretting that child soldiers may be a particularly vulnerable prey for foreign recruiters. "(We are concerned) that many of the Liberian child combatants recently disarmed, demobilised and reunified with their families... will be re-recruited by the fighting factions in Ivory Coast," said Samuel Kamanda, a child protection officer with the US-based International Rescue Committee. Stealing the limelight Mediation efforts to break the political deadlock have intensified this month. The UN Security Council has weighed in with an arms embargo and has warned that travel bans and asset freezes will swing into action next month if the key players do not haul themselves back onto the peace path by 15 December. The African Union has designated South African President Thabo Mbeki to mediate and bring the two sides together. He has already met with Gbagbo as well as opposition and rebel leaders to try to find a way out of the impasse. The Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), chaired by Ghanaian President John Kufuor, has also been playing a key role. But experts noted that the diplomatic whirlwind around Cote d'Ivoire, while crucial, was also sapping attention away from other important but less headline-grabbing problems in West Africa. "It is a strain on these institutions and a drain on their resources," Ould-Abdallah said. "We have other problems -- Guinea Bissau, Liberia and Sierra Leone. We have countries that need to be supported, but no-one has time to think of them because of the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire." "How do we draw the attention of the international community and development partners to... others when you have a crisis of such magnitude?" It was a message echoed by a senior World Food Programme (WFP) official at the weekend in Sierra Leone, a country which is still recovering from a decade-long civil war that ended in 2002. Jean-Jacques Graisse told a WFP conference that donors had given the agency just three quarters of funds requested for the West African region for 2004 -- around US$ 61 million of a US$ 82 million appeal. "With all the crises in the world, it is easy to overlook Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where headline-grabbing conflict has ended," Graisse said. "But this would be exactly the wrong time to neglect this sub-region. It is up to the world community to secure this peace."