Ivory Coast Battle Nears Decisive Stage in Key City
Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Soldiers for Laurent Gbagbo patrolled Abidjan, Ivory Coast, as forces for the recognized president, Alassane Ouattara, moved in.
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: April 1, 2011
DAKAR, Senegal — The end of the Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo‘s rule appeared to be nearing on Friday as his rival’s troops pressed into the country’s main city of Abidjan, his own army chief of staff abandoned his post and his opponents claimed substantial defections of his troops and police officers.
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Times Topic: Ivory Coast
Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A soldier loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, who is losing troops to defection, on Thursday in Abidjan.
Luc Gnago/Reuters
Mr. Gbagbo.
After steadfastly refusing to leave the presidential palace despite losing an election four months ago — a refusal that has led to hundreds of deaths, international condemnation and sanctions, the financial collapse of what had been West Africa’s economic star and the country’s being plunged back into civil war — Mr. Gbagbo faced the gravest threat yet to his rule.
Insurgents attacked Mr. Gbagbo’s residence in Abidjan early on Friday, but there were conflicting claims about who was in control of state television.
With hostile troops bearing down, top officials of Alassane Ouattara, the man recognized by the United Nations, theAfrican Union and other international bodies as the winner of the election last November, gave him a tight deadline to give up.
Apollinaire Yapi, a spokesman for Mr. Ouattara, said that fighting between Mr. Ouattara’s troops and Mr. Gbagbo’s soldiers was taking place around the presidential palace, Mr. Gbagbo’s residence, and the headquarters of the paramilitary gendarmerie, which has been held responsible for many of the attacks on civilians.
“The fighting is sustained,” Mr. Yapi said, “with all sorts of weapons,” including mortars. He said it had gone on all night.
“Now the question is, where is he? If his residence is being defended, one can suppose he is inside it,” Mr. Yapi added.
He said Mr. Ouattara’s followers were not surprised that Mr. Gbagbo had not yet surrendered, despite the apparent collapse of his forces throughout the country. “With him, the knife must be on his throat. He is more afraid of prison than of death. He is someone who likes the good life,” Mr. Yapi said.
In towns across the country, Mr. Gbagbo’s feared security services and soldiers, who for four months have been the violent scourge of civilians in Ouattara-supporting neighborhoods, appeared to surrender with barely a shot on Thursday, leaving the path wide open for a rapid advance all week by forces loyal to Mr. Ouattara.
“Today they are at the doors of Abidjan,” Mr. Ouattara said in a televised speech on Thursday, appealing to Mr. Gbagbo’s forces to switch sides. “Put yourselves at the disposition of your country,” and “regain your legal status,” he urged, speaking in the formal, measured language for which Mr. Ouattara, a former prime minister andInternational Monetary Fund official, is known.
By early Friday morning, forces loyal to Mr. Ouattara had seized control of the state television and were attacking Mr. Gbagbo’s residence, said Patrick Achi, a spokesman for Mr. Ouattara, Reuters reported.
Mr. Ouattara, blockaded for four months in an Abidjan hotel by Mr. Gbagbo’s soldiers, attributed the swift turnaround in circumstances — Mr. Gbagbo’s increasing vulnerability and his own unexpected rise — to the heterogeneous band of soldiers he called the Republican Forces, a mix of former rebels from a 2002 uprising that left the country divided in two, and defectors from Mr. Gbagbo’s side.
“They have decided to re-establish democracy,” Mr. Ouattara said. “In all the towns they passed through, the people were joyful.”
In a matter of days, critical cities, including the nation’s administrative capital, Yamoussoukro, and the main cocoa-exporting port of San Pedro, fell to Mr. Ouattara’s forces with little combat. Officials of his government said resistance had principally come from hired Liberian mercenaries.
As many as a million people have already fled Abidjan, the United Nations said, and on Thursday residents described the city as tense, quiet and deserted, with periodic bursts of gunfire, explosions and sightings of pickup trucks full of Mr. Gbagbo’s armed militiamen circulating downtown. Firing was reported around the state broadcaster, and in the morning the city prison was attacked and some 5,000 prisoners freed.
Mr. Gbagbo’s youthful armed supporters, the Young Patriots, who have a well-earned reputation for violence, operated roadblocks and roamed Abidjan.
“There’s sporadic gunfire. It’s very heavy. Nobody is outside,” said Yacouba Doumbia, a lawyer and member of a local human rights organization. “It’s very, very dangerous. The armed bands have taken possession of the city.”
Earlier, the South African government said that Mr. Gbagbo’s army chief of staff, Gen. Phillippe Mangou, until recently one of the strongman’s unyielding loyalists, had sought refuge with his wife and five children at the South African Embassy in Abidjan.
A Ouattara spokesman, Apollinaire Yapi, said there had been numerous “rallyings” by Gbagbo forces to the opposition camp, and Mr. Ouattara’s prime minister, Guillaume Soro, told the television station France 24 that there had been “mass defections in the police, the gendarmerie and the army.”
Mr. Soro added that “the Republican Forces have taken control of most of the country,” while also referring to the curious lack of resistance the troops had encountered as they marched across Ivory Coast.
That is likely to remain the central mystery of the country’s swift turnaround this week, after months of bellicose language on state television by Mr. Gbagbo and his aides, promises to fight fiercely for what they called Ivory Coast’s sovereignty in the face of foreign interference and periodic killings of civilian protesters in Abidjan.
One expert on the country cited the tightening financial vise on Mr. Gbagbo because of international sanctions and his consequent inability to fully make the army payroll. But he also noted the historically unwarrior-like nature of the Ivorian army.
“They were very happy to draw their pay every month, but they were essentially like civil servants,” said Michael McGovern, a political anthropologist at Yale University. “So when faced with people actually committed to fighting” — the former rebels who make up the Republican Forces — “it’s not that surprising they stand down,” Dr. McGovern said.
“It’s easy to fire on unarmed civilians, but it’s a much different choice to decide whether you are going to engage with people who are as well-armed as you are,” he said.
