TWO

STATE DECAY AND CIVIL WAR

INTRODUCTION

Civil wars are most often remembered for their destruction and the manner in which they are resolved. However, beneath the stories of tragedy and triumph are the most critical questions pertaining to the causes and objectives of these wars. Understanding such causes and objectives is critical for both resolving conflicts and building stable and democratic states. As Bishop Joseph Humper noted, for example, the report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) “is intended to enable Sierra Leoneans to understand the conflict and to come to grips with the problems which gave rise to it, many of which continue to plague Sierra Leone today. In this way, the Commission hopes the Report will serve as a roadmap towards the building of a new society in which all Sierra Leoneans can walk unafraid with pride and dignity.”¹ Indeed, the TRCs of both Sierra Leone and Liberia examined the causes of their civil wars.² Unfortunately, the lessons about the causes of the civil wars have often been neglected as the push for justice and reconciliation became paramount. There is always the urge to leave the past behind as a way to consolidate peace. However, the prewar nature of the state is difficult to leave behind given the fact that the main objectives of the protagonists of civil wars are to control the state and shape its character. The civil wars and emergent postwar states can hardly be understood without questioning the prewar conditions of the state. As numerous studies have shown, the civil wars that erupted in West Africa are not simply the result of chance; rather, they are rooted in the fundamental problems of the state.³ When civil war broke out in Liberia in 1989, the state had already failed. The Liberian state was plagued by chronic political, economic, and administrative problems that led to further deterioration. In 1990, Sierra Leone was in a similar predicament. The one-party regime had long lost its legitimacy, and economic and social conditions had severely worsened. The state had not only failed; it was continuously deteriorating. By 1990, Côte d’Ivoire was also experiencing an economic and political crisis that weakened the state. The state fell into deep turmoil following the death of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny in 1993, and a civil war ensued in 2002. Notwithstanding their unique realities, all three countries were in a state of decay during the period leading up to civil war.⁴

The conditions that typify state decay are similar to those in failing and failed states.⁵ In his discourse on the temporality of states, Christopher Clapham sees state decay as part of a continuum of vulnerability that may end in state collapse.⁶ Stephen Holmes employed the notion of state decay to describe the crumbling of the system of power and the emergence of a modern version of the state of nature in the former Soviet republics. Holmes’s central concern was the erosion of the constitutional order that underpins modern democracy and superpower security relations.⁷ The term state decay has been used loosely in the literature on Africa. In his study of corporate military intervention in Sierra Leone, for example, Abdel-Fatau Musah alluded to state decay in his description of the gradual deterioration of the security, political, and economic situation of the state.⁸ Similarly, Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja referred to state decay in his analysis of Mobutu’s misrule of the former Zaire, which eventually led to the collapse of the state.⁹ In fact, most of the studies of state failure in Africa rest on analyses of the deteriorated political, economic, and security conditions of African states. However, these studies tend to emphasize the outcome of such conditions rather than the process of deterioration. As such, state failure and collapse, which are the cumulative results of state decay, remain the central analytical categories of the African states. The task of statebuilding requires not only a proper analysis of the notions of failed and collapsed states, however, but also a thorough examination and conceptualization of the condition of state decay. And it is important to point out that there exists a dialectical relationship between state decay and civil wars; while state decay can trigger a civil war, it can also be caused by civil war. We acknowledge this point and clarify that our approach rests on the dialectical nature of civil wars and state decay rather than on the language of variables associated with quantitative and some qualitative works influenced by scholars like Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba.¹⁰

State decay is the process of significant deterioration of the state’s capacity to deliver positive political and social goods. It is also a transformation of the state into an oppressive political force and an impediment to economic and social development (note that both weak and strong states can be highly oppressive). It is both a manifestation of the chronically poor political, economic, and social conditions of the state and the continuous worsening of such conditions. State decay differs from temporal decline in that it is a dramatic shift in the political, economic, and social trajectory of the state in a way that undermines the stability of the country and the well-being of its citizens.¹¹ Moreover, it is triggered by malevolent attempts by political leaders to monopolize power, resulting in a systemic abuse of power and inefficiency of state institutions. State decay is a precursor to state failure that is manifested in increased political oppression, a breakdown of the rule of law, severe economic decline, and the dilapidation of state institutions and infrastructure. State decay has three synergetic dimensions: political, economic, and social. Politically, state decay is the erosion of civil rights and the increased use of coercion to achieve certain objectives. It is marked by an entrenchment of dictatorship, a loss of legitimacy, the suppression of civil society and the media, and the lack of a fair and transparent process for a peaceful change of government. Economically, state decay is the bankrupting of the state and the forestalling of the production of goods and service as a result of high-level state mismanagement and corruption, which may be compounded by adverse international fiscal conditions. As one interview respondent clearly indicated for this study, “Any country becomes ripe for rebellion when there’s endemic corruption.”¹² This problem is characterized by prebendalism, huge budget deficits and debts, hyperinflation, and a shrinking economy. On the social level, state decay is a generalized despair emanating from the state’s inability to deliver basic social goods due to poor political leadership and economic mismanagement. This state of affairs is typified by declining standards of living, inadequate basic services (education, transportation, health care, etc.), and high rates of chronic unemployment and underemployment. The political and economic aspects of state decay feed into its social dimension and frequently produce a strong desire for revolutionary change that can be exploited by people seeking to gain power by force.

THE EMERGENCE AND DECADENCE OF THE STATE

The state in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire came into being in earnest at the time of independence. In Sierra Leone, this was marked by the formal recognition of the country as an independent state on April 27, 1961, by the British government. Côte d’Ivoire gained independence from France on August 7, 1960, after the French Union in West Africa collapsed. On July 16, 1847, the Americo-Liberians severed themselves from the American Colonization Society and declared “a free, sovereign, and independent state, by the name and title of the Republic of Liberia.”¹³ These states, whose foundations were laid by the colonial powers, faced a series of challenges that culminated in civil wars. The states’ development climaxed shortly after the decolonization of Africa around the 1960s and reached its lowest ebb during a series of civil wars. For most of the postindependence period, the conditions in these countries hardly improved significantly, and in many cases, they actually regressed. As such, these countries never developed into stable democracies or fairly industrialized countries. State decay in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire can be gauged by examining their political, economic, and social development trajectories.

Statehood and Postcolonial Political Developments

The most critical element of statehood is the international legal status of a country. Since achieving independence, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire have emerged as sovereign members of the international community and have become full members of the United Nations (UN). The key juncture in their statehood was the recognition of their sovereignty by the former colonial powers and the superpowers.¹⁴ In the case of Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, this recognition came as part of the decolonization of Africa around the 1960s.¹⁵ The colonial powers had accepted their independence as a fait accompli even before the formal declarations of independence. In the case of Liberia, the United States did not recognize the country’s independence until 1862. Interestingly, Liberia received early recognition from Britain, which was still acquiring colonies in Africa. While the legal status of these countries is clear, their sovereignty has arguably been compromised by neocolonialism.¹⁶ Sierra Leone did not actually become a republic until 1971. Since then, it has remained in the British Commonwealth. Despite its status as an independent state, Côte d’Ivoire maintained strong military, political, and economic dependency on France. This dependency has been most evident in Houphouët-Boigny’s pro-France African policies, the Franco-Ivoirian military pact (including an important French military base), and the French monetary control over the franc de la Communauté financière de l’Afrique (CFA franc), which is used in Côte d’Ivoire and most other francophone countries in the region.¹⁷ Despite its early independence, Liberia has been under the shadow of colonialism in Africa. Between 1847 and 1960, Liberia was virtually an island of independence within a continent that was under European rule. Liberia’s potential to develop as an independent state was effectively limited by the European colonial domination of the continent. The country’s independence became more meaningful when the decolonization of Africa began in earnest in the 1950s. In addition to the shadow of colonialism that loomed over it, Liberia has had a dependent relationship with the United States, especially during the Cold War, which hitherto shaped its politics and economy.¹⁸ Support from the United States has been critical for the survival of various Liberian regimes, which have mostly been undemocratic.¹⁹ The dependency of these countries on former colonial powers extends from the political to the economic realm. Postcolonial ties to Western powers are often characterized by continued dependency and neocolonialism. Some of the most adverse effects of this dependency became evident in the debt crisis and the instability that followed the reorientation of Western policies toward Africa at the end of the Cold War. Since the outbreak of the civil wars, this dependency has increased and evolved into a new breed of humanitarianism. While independence and the overall decolonization of Africa were critical periods in the development of the state, meaningful sovereignty has been difficult to attain due to excessive dependency on aid and external debts.

Politically, most states in Africa emerged as democracies but failed to consolidate democracy. The nationalist movements that led to independence were struggles against colonial rule but also for civil and political rights. There was also a struggle for power among elites. Fundamental rights were affirmed in the constitutions of the new states, which were modeled after the democratic political structures of the metropole. The 1847 Constitutions of Liberia, for example, affirmed that “all power is inherent in the people; all free governments are instituted by their authority and for their benefit and they have the right to alter and reform the same when their safety and happiness require it” and called for an elected legislature and an elected president.²⁰ The preamble of the 1960 Constitution of Côte d’Ivoire commits to the principles of democracy and human rights. Article 3 asserts, “La souveraineté appartient au peuple. Aucune section du peuple ni aucun individu ne peut s’en attribuer l’exercice.”²¹ It calls for a president and a legislature elected through competitive multiparty elections. Similarly, the 1961 Constitution of Sierra Leone was modeled after a British parliamentary system of democracy.²² The affirmation of democratic principles and the establishment of democratic institutions were significant points in the development of the state. They not only rejected colonial dictatorship but also laid a foundation for democracy.

Nevertheless, democracy did not really last long in any of the three countries. In Liberia, the True Whig Party (TWP) dominated the state from 1870 to 1980. Under the rule of William Tubman (1944–1971), Liberia effectively became a single-party state, and this continued under Tubman’s successor, William Tolbert.²³ Dictatorship became more entrenched under the rule of Samuel Doe, who overthrew the TWP in 1980. In Sierra Leone, the ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) introduced a one-party system that ruled the country until 1992, when it was overthrown by the National Provisional Reformation Council (NPRC). Even before the adoption of the one-party system in 1978, there were numerous instances of electoral fraud, political oppression, and military coups.²⁴ Côte d’Ivoire was also a one-party state until 1990. The Parti Démocratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), led by Houphouët-Boigny, dominated Ivoirian politics until Houphouët-Boigny’s death in 1993. From 1960 to 1990, it was the sole political party.²⁵ Despite its affirmation of democratic principles, Côte d’Ivoire failed to develop a democratic system of government. Elections under the one-party system fell short of providing opportunities for meaningful democratic participation. These three countries all abandoned multiparty democracy and instituted one-party regimes, which eroded civil and political rights. In Sierra Leone and Liberia, the political problems were worsened by the intervention of the military in politics. Instead of consolidating democracy, they substituted neopatrimonial rule for colonial rule, which further undermined the stability of the state. It is important to note that while neopatrimonialism is most frequently understood as a source of instability, as with the case of leaders like former Liberian President Doe, it can also (although more rarely) be viewed as a glue that keeps the state together, as with the case of former Ivoirian President Houphouët-Boigny and the system of hegemonic exchange he established during his rule.²⁶ The net results of the one-party and military dictatorships were the suppression of civil and political rights, corruption, abuse of state power, and erosion of the legitimacy of the government, all of which created the conditions for the civil wars. The regression from democracy to dictatorship led to state decay not only in the political sense but also in the economic and social realms.

Economic Trajectory of the State

Economically, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire failed to develop. The most telling indication of their prewar poor economic realities was their low standing in the global economy. These states had not only failed to industrialize, they had largely remained underdeveloped agricultural and mining economies.²⁷ As Peter Harrold, Malathi Jayawickrama, and Deepak Bhattasali candidly pointed out in their study of African and East Asian industrial and trade policies, “Africa’s factor endowments and economic structures are quite similar to those found in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. The Southeast Asian countries—Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand—have achieved rapid industrial growth over the past three decades, while Africa has struggled with adjustment, and witnessed a marginal industrial response.”²⁸ According to a side-by-side country comparison, for example, Côte d’Ivoire’s development lagged behind Malaysia’s in all critical measures. Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increased from around $700 in 1960 to above $2,500 in the early the 1990s, while Côte d’Ivoire’s GDP per capita in the early 1990s was around $800. At its prewar climax in late 1980, Côte d’Ivoire’s GDP per capita was under $1,300. By 1991, the rate of manufacturing had significantly increased in Malaysia from its 1970s level, while Côte d’Ivoire saw a significant decline during the same period.²⁹ The failure to industrialize is most evident in the predominance of mining and agricultural goods in the exports of the three West African counties. In 1965, for example, primary commodities (excluding fuels, minerals, and metals) accounted for 93 percent of Côte d’Ivoire’s exports. In 1987, they still accounted for 86 percent of the exports.³⁰ In Liberia, too, fuels, minerals, and metals accounted for 72 percent of exports in 1965 and 57 percent in 1987, while other primary commodities accounted for 25 percent in 1965 and 41 percent in 1987. Sierra Leone’s export was also heavily based on primary commodities. Fuels, minerals, and metals accounted for 25 percent of exports in 1965 and 22 percent in 1987, while other primary goods accounted for 14 percent of exports in 1965 and 19 percent in 1987.³¹

The economies of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire registered their best prewar performances during the 1970s and early 1980s. However, the economic conditions were poor even at their peak performances, underscoring the underdeveloped nature of the states and their inherent economic weakness.³² Côte d’Ivoire showed great potential for economic development before the civil war but failed to achieve solid results. The poor economic realities of these states prior to the civil wars are best illustrated by their low GDP per capita (see fig. 2.1).

Figure 2.1 shows that Sierra Leone’s GDP per capita steadily grew during the first two decades of independence. It peaked in 1984 at $537.90. By the time of the outbreak of the war in 1991, however, GDP per capita had fallen to $277, which was among the twenty lowest in the world.³³ For most of the war period, GDP per capita was under $300. In 2000, it reached a mere $219. Liberia’s GDP per capita also grew during the 1970s. It reached $445 in 1982 but steadily declined to $387 in 1986. It rose to a high point of $451 by the start of the war in 1989 but sharply declined to $225 in 1990, which was among the thirteen lowest in the world.³⁴ For most of the war period, Liberia’s GDP per capita was under $200. It reached an abysmal $88 in 1994. Though Côte d’Ivoire had a significantly higher GDP per capita, it too had a problematic trajectory. Côte d’Ivoire’s GDP per capita sharply increased during the first two decades of independence. It jumped from a mere $286 in 1970 to an impressive $1,209 in 1980. However, its GDP per capita sharply declined to $666 by 1985. Though this bounced back up to $943 by 1990, it was under $800 for most of the period of the political crisis (1993 to 2004). At the worst moments of the political crisis (i.e., 1994, 2000, and 2002), its GDP per capita was just around $600. Despite its strong potential, Côte d’Ivoire failed to consolidate its economic gains during its first two decades of independence; instead, the economic decline weakened the state and compounded its political crisis. Even without adjusting for inflation, the rate of decline in GDP per capita has been dramatic in all three countries. In Sierra Leone and Liberia, it is important to note that GDP per capita has always been very low.

Along with their GDP per capita, other key economic indicators showed problematic trajectories for Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire before the civil wars.³⁵ These trajectories were manifested in three of the most critical moments in the development of these states (see tables 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3). In the case of Sierra Leone, the critical moments are the immediate postindependence period (1960s), the period of highest economic performance as measured by GDP per capita (1984), and the outbreak of the civil war in 1991. The critical moments in Liberia’s development are also during the 1960s, when the country was just over a century old. As noted earlier, Liberia was under the shadow of colonialism until the late 1950s. As such, the decolonization of Africa is a much more useful benchmark for the economic realities of the Liberian state than the actual decade of independence. Moreover, economic data on Liberia prior to the 1960s is hardly available. Apart from the 1960s, the other critical moments for Liberia were the periods of highest economic performance as measured by GDP per capita (1982) and the outbreak of the civil war in 1989. In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, the critical moments were the immediate postindependence period (1960s), the period of highest economic performance as measured by GDP per capita (1980), the onset of the political crisis in 1993, and the escalation to civil war in 2002.³⁶ Unlike in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire was preceded by a prolonged period of severe political violence. In essence, 2002 marked the escalation into civil war rather than the outset of war. While Sierra Leone and Liberia quickly degenerated into full-scale and brutal civil wars, Côte d’Ivoire was plagued by a violent political crisis that evolved into a relatively low-key civil war.³⁷

Figure 2.1. Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone: GDP Per Capita (1970–2008).

Table 2.1. Sierra Leone: Selected Economic Indicators (1964 to 1991).

Sources: International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistical Yearbook, 1994 640–643.

Nation Master, “Economy > GDP > Per Capita: Countries Compared,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_percap-economy-gdp-per-capita&date=1964.

United Nations, “Per Capita GDP at Current Prices—US Dollars,” UN Data: A World of Information, accessed October 12, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=GDP+per+capita&d=SNAAMA&f=grID%3a101%3bcurrID%3aUSD%3bpcFlag%3a1.

World Bank, World Development Report, 1979, 154–155; and 2000/2001, 295, 315, accessed October 12, 2023, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2124.

As indicated in table 2.1, Sierra Leone’s GDP was around $303 million in 1964, while GDP per capita was at $153.90.³⁸ In 1984, the GDP was just above $1 billion after it fell from its peak of around $1.3 billion in 1982. By the start of the civil war in 1991, the GDP was at a meager $508 million. The GDP grew at an average rate of 4.2 percent during the 1960s but stalled at 1.9 percent (1970–1977) and 1.2 percent during the 1980s. Sierra Leone’s export also showed a similar pattern of decline. It rose from $93.2 million in 1964 to a high of $256.4 million in 1981. By 1984, the value of export had fallen to $115.5 million. The value of exports remained under $150 million until the outbreak of the war in 1991, with the exception of 1989, when it spiked to $273.3 million. The fall in exports was reflected in Sierra Leone’s balance-of-trade deficit, which rose from $0.5 million in 1964 to $17.2 million in 1980 before dropping again to $0.5 in 1991. At best, Sierra Leone’s trade balance reached a surplus of only $11 million in 1968. Even without adjusting for inflation, Sierra Leone’s economic decline was sharp. The government deficit remained low until 1974, when it was just $24.4 million. The deficit was at $82 million in 1984, $35 million in 1991, and reached its worst prewar point in 1983 at $143 million. The external public debts grew from $59 million in 1970 to $190 million in 1977 and reached an alarming $1.2 billion in 1990. In 1987, external debts amounted to 54.6 percent of the gross national product (GNP). The national reserve (excluding gold), which had grown from $20.4 million in 1964 to $54.6 million in 1974, dropped to $7.7 million by 1984. It reached its lowest prewar point of $3.7 million in 1989. In 1991, it was a paltry sum of $9.6 million. Economically, Sierra Leone was extremely underdeveloped. Even more problematic was the continuous economic deterioration of the state during the decade preceding the civil war.

Liberia reached its prewar economic peak in the early 1980s but failed to make progress during the rest of the decade. Given the country’s low level of economic development, even during its best periods, stagnation was tantamount to failure.³⁹ This failure dramatically worsened during the civil war. Liberia’s GDP had grown from $247.2 million in 1965 to $1.1 billion in 1982.⁴⁰ For most of the 1980s, GDP hovered around $1.1 billion and reached its highest point of $1.18 billion in 1989. The GDP grew at an average annual rate of 5.1 percent during the 1960s but fell to 2.7 percent (1970–1977) and -1.3 percent between 1980 and 1987. GDP per capita grew from $206.70 in 1965 to $445.30 in 1982 but had barely reached its prewar high of $450 in 1989. Similarly, the value of Liberia’s exports significantly grew from $144.2 million in 1965 to a high of $613.5 million in 1980 but fell to $487.4 million in 1982. In 1989, it had increased to only $521.9 million. The trade balance fell from $104 million in 1975 to $87.2 million in 1982. It reached $166.6 million in 1985 but rapidly fell to $63.2 million in 1987. By the time of the outbreak of the war, Liberia’s economy was no better than it was in 1982, even without adjusting for inflation. The stagnation in export and GDP was compounded by huge government deficits and external debts. The government balance, which was at a deficit of $18 million in 1965, improved to a surplus of $13.2 million in 1972. By 1982, however, the deficit was at $116.6 million after reaching a high of $141.2 million in 1979. External public debts grew from $158 million in 1970 to $266 million in 1977 and $1.2 billion in 1987. The national reserve (excluding gold) dramatically fell from $81.7 million in 1974 to $6.5 million in 1982 and a meager $0.4 million in 1989. By the time of the outbreak of the war, Liberia’s economy was very weak. The long and brutal war compounded the economic and political decay of the state and led to state collapse.

Table 2.2. Liberia: Selected Economic Indicators (1967 to 1989).

Note: LRD = Liberian Dollar

Sources: International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistical Yearbook, 1994, 474–477.

Nation Master, “Economy > GDP > Per Capita: Countries Compared,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_percap-economy-gdp-per-capita&date=1964.

United Nations, “Per Capita GDP at Current Prices—US Dollars,” UN Data: A World of Information, accessed October 12, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=GDP+per+capita&d=SNAAMA&f=grID%3a101%3bcurrID%3aUSD%3bpcFlag%3a1.

World Bank, World Development Report, 1979, 154–155; and 2000/2001, 295, 315, accessed October 12, 2023, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2124.

While Côte d’Ivoire’s economic trajectory was better than that of Sierra Leone and Liberia, the country experienced major setbacks before the war.⁴¹ As shown in table 2.3, Côte d’Ivoire’s GDP dramatically increased from $1 billion in 1964 to an impressive $10.2 billion in 1980, while the GDP per capita jumped from $223.4 to $1,208.60 during the same period.⁴² The GDP grew at an annual average rate of 8 percent during the 1960s and 6.5 percent between 1970 and 1977. The value of exports also significantly increased from $0.3 billion in 1964 to $3.6 billion in 1980. While the external public debts grew from $256 million in 1970 to almost $2 billion in 1977, the debts were still under 35 percent of the GNP. Despite its huge debts, Côte d’Ivoire’s prewar economic development looked promising until 1980. The country had made significant progress, which could have been a foundation for major economic development. Since the 1980s, however, Côte d’Ivoire had not made major prewar economic gains. The GDP fell to $6.8 billion in 1983 before climbing again to $10.3 billion in 1988. At the outset of the political crisis in 1993, the GDP was at $10.4 billion. Between 1995 and 2002, the GDP fluctuated between $10 and $12 billion. The GDP increased by only 0.7 percent during the 1980s. Throughout the early 1990s, the value of exports hardly reached their 1980 level of $3.6 billion. At the outset of the political crisis in 1993, the value was $3 billion. Between 1995 and 2002, it fluctuated between $4 and $5 billion. Côte d’Ivoire had consistently maintained a positive trade balance. Its surplus grew from $68.1 million in 1964 to $399 million in 1980, after reaching $573.8 million in 1976. It reached $1.5 billion in 1986 before falling to $748.3 million in 1993. After 1994, it steadily grew to $2.7 billion in 2002. In addition to its trade surpluses, Côte d’Ivoire maintained a reasonable level of liquidity. Its reserve (excluding gold) grew from $40.1 million in 1964 to $448 million in 1978. It dropped to $19.7 million in 1980 and a mere $2.3 million in 1993. After 1994, it increased to $1.86 billion in 2002. Despite some of these gains, Côte d’Ivoire’s prewar economic potentials were not fully materialized. While its trade balance and liquidity significantly grew, the growths in GDP and exports from their 1980 levels were modest, even without adjusting for inflation. Moreover, the growth was not steady. In contrast, external debts grew at an alarming rate, reaching $17.2 billion in 1990 before dropping to $11.8 billion in 2002. As a proportion of GNP, external debts grew from 89.5 percent in 1987 to 122 percent in 1998. Similarly, the government deficit grew from $0.8 million in 1979 to $1.1 billion in 1980 before slightly dropping to just under $1 billion in 1994. While Côte d’Ivoire was on a path to economic development during the first two decades of independence, its economic development essentially stalled before the war.

Table 2.3. Côte d’Ivoire: Selected Economic Indicators (1964 to 2002).

Note: Francs refers to CFA francs.

Sources: International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistical Yearbook, 1994, 302–305; and 2003, 243–245.

Nation Master, “Economy > GDP > Per Capita: Countries Compared,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_percap-economy-gdp-per-capita&date=1964.

United Nations, “Per Capita GDP at Current Prices—US Dollars,” UN Data: A World of Information, accessed October 12, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=GDP+per+capita&d=SNAAMA&f=grID%3a101%3bcurrID%3aUSD%3bpcFlag%3a1.

World Bank, World Development Report, 1979, 128–129, 154–155; 1989, table 2, table 24; 2000–2001, 294, 314, table 21, table 11; 2005, 260, 262, accessed October 12, 2023, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2124.

Social Development and Well-Being of the Citizens

The development of the states in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire must also be gauged by the level of social development and the associated well-being of their citizens.⁴³ As noted in the introductory chapter, the state does not necessarily have to be the primary provider of the services that ensure the well-being of its citizens. However, the modern state must create the conditions for its citizens to have reasonable access to basic services such as education, health care, clean drinking water, and transportation. The absence of such services creates poor living conditions and increases the level of political and social discontent, which can undermine the stability of the state. As such, social development is critical. States that are economically and politically progressing tend to have favorable living conditions, while those that are decaying tend to exhibit poor living conditions. One of the most prominent measures of well-being is the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI), which gauges and ranks the performance of countries on critical indicators of economic and social well-being. The UN Millennium Development Goals reports also provide valuable measures of the progress toward economic and social well-being in developing countries. Some of the most critical indicators of well-being include the level of poverty; life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, and literacy rates; access to clean water; employment opportunities; and the availability of proper roads. Since social well-being is contingent on the economic and political conditions of the state, the trajectory of the state’s social development will be linked to three critical moments: the immediate postindependence and decolonization period of the 1960s, the period of peak economic performance as measured by GDP per capita, and the outbreak of civil wars. In the case of Côte d’Ivoire, there is an additional category—the outbreak of the political crisis that escalated into civil war. Côte d’Ivoire has been in a precarious peace situation, as peace and democracy have not really been consolidated. In fact, the 2016 changes to the constitution to allow Alassane Ouattara to stand for a third presidential term seriously risks reversal into civil war.⁴⁴ The opposition boycotted the dubious election, and Ouattara installed himself as president and positioned himself to stay in power for an excessively long time. In the cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone, there is an additional category for the civil war and the immediate postwar period. These trajectories are illustrated in tables 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6.⁴⁵

Table 2.4. Sierra Leone: Selected Social Development Indicators (1960 to 2004).

Note: Pre-1990 data unavailable for some of the indicators.

Sources: United Nations, “Millennium Development Goals Indicators,” https://www.developmentgoals.org/About_the_goals.html. (May 15, 2017).

United Nations, “Explorer,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx.

United Nations, “Life Expectancy,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=life+expectancy&d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3a68.

United Nations, “Infant Mortality Rate,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=infant+mortality&d=WHO&f=MEASURE_CODE%3aimr.

United Nations, “Population Using Improved Drinking-Water Sources (%),” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=drinking+water&d=WHO&f=MEASURE_CODE%3aWHS5_122.

UNDP, Human Development Reports, 1991, 1993, 2002, 2004, 2009, accessed October 23, 2023, http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports.

UNESCO, “Data Browser,” Institute for Statistics, accessed October 23, 2023, http://stats.uis.unesco.org.

UNMDG, “Employment-to-Population Ratio, Both Sexes, Percentage,” https://data.un.org.

World Bank, World Bank Open Data, accessed October 23, 2023, https://data.worldbank.org.

World Bank, World Development Report, 1978, 108; 1979, 166, 168; 1989, 226; 2000/2001, 286, accessed October 12, 2023, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2124.

Sierra Leone’s low level of social development before the civil war was poignantly reflected in its mortality rates, which were among the worst in the world.⁴⁶ In 1960, for example, life expectancy was 37 years. By the late 1980s, it had increased to only 41.7 years. In 2002, it had barely increased to 44.7 years. The infant mortality rate, which was at 210 per thousand live births in 1965, had fallen to 151 per thousand in 1987, but increased to 169 per thousand in 1990, and fell down to only 162 per thousand in 2000. In 1980, the maternal mortality rate was 450 per hundred thousand live births. By 2005, the rate was at an alarming 2,100 per hundred thousand. In 2000, only 55 percent of the population had access to safe drinking water. In 2004 the adult literacy rate was 34.8 percent. The transportation infrastructure was also poor: only 10.8 percent of the available roads were paved in 1991, and in 2002, the figure was 8 percent. These poor social conditions were also reflected in people’s precarious economic situations. In 1991 and 2002, around 64 percent of the people were unemployed. In 1990, 62.8 percent of the people lived on less than one dollar per day; in 2003, that figure was still 53.4 percent. Sierra Leone had not only failed to improve the well-being of its citizens but had actually regressed in some areas. This low level of social development was amply illustrated by the HDI. Sierra Leone’s HDI score was 0.048 in 1990 and 0.273 in 2002. In 1990 and 2002, the country was ranked last in the world on the HDI.

Table 2.5. Liberia: Selected Social Development Indicators (1964 to 2002).

Notes: Pre-1990 data unavailable for some of the indicators.

Liberia’s HDI could not be computed in 2002 during the height of the war (2002–2004).

Countries in the HDI (1990, 160 countries; 1993 and 2002, 173 countries; 2009, 182 countries).

Sources: United Nations, “Millennium Development Goals Indicators,” https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal.

United Nations, “Explorer,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx.

United Nations, “Life Expectancy,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=life+expectancy&d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3a68.

United Nations, “Infant Mortality Rate,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=infant+mortality&d=WHO&f=MEASURE_CODE%3aimr.

United Nations, “Population Using Improved Drinking-Water Sources (%),” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=drinking+water&d=WHO&f=MEASURE_CODE%3aWHS5_122.

UNDP, Human Development Reports, 1991, 1993, 2002, 2004, 2009, accessed October 23, 2023, http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports.

UNESCO, “Data Browser,” Institute for Statistics, accessed October 23, 2023, http://stats.uis.unesco.org.

UNMDG, “Employment-to-Population Ratio, Both Sexes, Percentage,” https://data.un.org.

World Bank, World Bank Open Data, accessed October 23, 2023, https://data.worldbank.org.

World Bank World Development Report, 1978, 108; 1979, 166, 168; 1989, 226; 2000/2001, 286, accessed October 12, 2023, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2124.

Table 2.6. Côte d’Ivoire: Selected Social Development Indicators (1964 to 2002).

Notes: Pre-1990 data unavailable for some of the indicators.

Countries in the HDI (1990, 160 countries; 1993 and 2002, 173 countries; 2009, 182 countries).

Sources: United Nations, “Millennium Development Goals Indicators,” https://www.developmentgoals.org/About_the_goals.html.

United Nations, “Explorer,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Explorer.aspx.

United Nations, “Life Expectancy,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=life+expectancy&d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3a68.

United Nations, “Infant Mortality Rate,” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=infant+mortality&d=WHO&f=MEASURE_CODE%3aimr.

United Nations, “Population Using Improved Drinking-Water Sources (%),” accessed October 23, 2023, http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=drinking+water&d=WHO&f=MEASURE_CODE%3aWHS5_122.

UNDP, Human Development Reports, 1991, 1993, 2002, 2004, 2009, accessed October 23, 2023, http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports.

UNESCO, “Data Browser,” Institute for Statistics, accessed October 23, 2023, http://stats.uis.unesco.org.

UNMDG, “Employment-to-Population Ratio, Both Sexes, Percentage,” https://data.un.org.

World Bank, World Bank Open Data, accessed October 23, 2023, https://data.worldbank.org.

World Bank, World Development Report, 1978, 108; 1979, 166, 168; 1989, 226; 2000/2001, 286, accessed October 12, 2023, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2124.

Liberia also had a low level of social development before the civil war and even regressed in some areas.⁴⁷ Life expectancy increased from 40 years in 1960 to a mere 47.5 during the 1980s. In 2002, it was still at 55.8 years. Infant mortality went up from 139 per thousand live births in 1965 to 159 in 1975. In 1990 and 2000, the rate was still an appalling 157. Maternal mortality increased from 173 per hundred thousand live births in 1980 to 1,200 in 2005. Access to clean drinking water barely increased from 58 percent in 1990 to 65 percent in 2000. Only slightly more than half of adults were literate in 2004. The adult literacy rate only increased from 9 percent in 1960 to 15 percent in 1975 and 32.1 percent in 1984. In terms of infrastructure, only 5.5 percent (1990) and 6.2 percent (2001) of the available roads were paved. These conditions were compounded by poverty. Only 65 percent of the people were employed in 1991 and 2003. In 2007, 83.7 percent of the people lived on less than one dollar per day. Liberia’s social and economic conditions were among some of the worst in the world. It ranked 132 out of 160 countries in 1990 and 169 out of 182 in 2009 on the HDI. For most of the war and immediate postwar periods, Liberia was not even featured on the HDI; its HDI score was 0.220 in 1990 and 0.434 in 2006.

Côte d’Ivoire presented a slightly better level of prewar social development, but it did experience stagnation and in some areas regressed. As in the economic realm, Côte d’Ivoire failed to maintain its social development gains or significantly improve the well-being of its citizens.⁴⁸ Life expectancy significantly increased from 37 years in 1960 to 55.7 in 1980. For most of the 1990s, however, it stagnated at around 57.3 years and fell to 55.4 in 2002. Infant mortality dipped from 150 per thousand live births in 1965 to 96 in 1987. However, it rose again to 106 in 1990 before dropping to 95 in 2000. For most of the 1990s, maternal mortality was at 600 per hundred thousand live births. It increased to 810 in 2005. The proportion of people with access to clean drinking water only increased from 76 percent in 1990 to 78 percent in 2000. Though the adult literacy rate steadily increased from 9 percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1974 and 34.1 percent in 1988, half of the adult population was not literate in 2000. The proportion of paved roads barely changed, going from 9.2 percent in 1993 to 9.7 percent in 2000. Côte d’Ivoire’s stagnation and failure to significantly improve the well-being of its citizens was reflected in its HDI ranking and score. It fell from 122 out of 160 countries in 1990 to 136 out of 173 in 1993 and 156 out of 173 in 2002. Its HDI was 0.357 in 1993 and barely increased to 0.399 in 2002.

THE CAUSES OF STATE DECAY

The deterioration of political, economic, and social conditions that characterized state decay in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire is not the result of accidental factors. Rather, state decay in these countries can best be understood through the prisms of structure and agency. Aristide Zolberg made one of the earliest attempts to interject structure and agency into the African political discourse by examining the processes that shape African regimes and conflicts. As he argued, “To understand political life in Africa, instead of viewing political disturbances as the shapeless ground surrounding institutions and processes which define the regimes of the new states, we must try to view them as characteristic processes which themselves constitute an important aspect of the regime in certain types of political systems.”⁴⁹ Many studies of Africa have focused on the nature of the one-party and military regimes and the structure of African economies, especially with respect to mineral dependency.⁵⁰ These studies not only point out the political and economic challenges in African states but also attribute the problems to structural factors and leadership issues.⁵¹ Though these studies rightly point to fundamental problems, they do not frame the discourse in terms of state decay. Instead, the discourse has mostly revolved around issues of democracy, economic failure, mineral resources, and civil wars.⁵² In contrast, this study sees these problems not simply as distinct pathological aspects of the African state. Rather, it views these structural and leadership issues as chronic problems that account for the gradual deterioration of the state as a whole. In particular, state decay in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire is the result of the domestic political structures, the failure of political leadership, and the residual effects of the international environment.⁵³ These problems led to major political crises and the dilapidation of the economies and fueled the violent conflicts that characterized state failure. However, poor leadership cannot be blamed for everything. Deep structural problems can confront even the best of leaders, making their job at times virtually impossible. Plus, as some argue, benign and enlightened leaders are few and far between.⁵⁴

In terms of political structure, states range from democracies to a variety of nondemocratic regimes, not to mention the so-called hybrid regimes that fall somewhere between democracy and authoritarianism. Democracies are typified by elected governments that have legitimacy with the people and an environment in which citizens enjoy civil and political rights. Nondemocratic regimes tend to be lacking in both legitimacy and freedom.⁵⁵ By design, nondemocratic regimes, such as the one-party and military regimes in the three West African countries examined here, do not provide meaningful political choice or accountable governments. This structural limitation to political freedom and accountability tends to breed irresponsive governments and a system of patronage that rests on state corruption and oppression, which are the hallmarks of state decay.⁵⁶ One-party and military regimes emerged very early in the three West African countries and shifted the political structures toward authoritarianism.⁵⁷ This trajectory was seen similarly in most African cases shortly after independence. The political environment gradually became more oppressive as the democratic mechanism for accountability eroded. Because the authoritarian political structures that emerged shortly after independence foreclosed meaningful political opposition, regime change happened only through military coup or violent revolt, which further contributed to state decay.

The TWP in Liberia, for example, stayed in power until it was overthrown. In Sierra Leone, the APC regime, which was resisting the prodemocracy campaign and battling an armed rebellion, was eventually overthrown in a military coup. In Côte d’Ivoire, a popular revolt forced the PDCI to introduce multiparty democracy, which it barely survived through the savvy politics of Houphouët-Boigny and outright political oppression under Henri Konan Bédié. The PDCI was eventually overthrown in 2000 by a military coup. Both of these methods of regime change carried the risk of degenerating into further political oppression and violence and thereby contributed to more state decay. In Liberia, the military regime of Doe turned into the worst dictatorship out of the three cases examined here. It resisted popular demands for democracy, rigged the 1985 elections, and eventually plunged the country into civil war. The antidemocratic nature of the regime not only hastened state decay but also contributed to state collapse. In Côte d’Ivoire, the rigged democratic transition and military dictatorship paralyzed the state and pushed it into a civil war after a prolonged period of massive political violence. Similarly, the APC’s suppression of the prodemocracy campaign and military intervention in politics in Sierra Leone aggravated state decay and the nascent civil war, which eventually led to state collapse.

In addition to the antidemocratic political structures, African states have been plagued by poor leadership. The general trend has been to concentrate power in the hands of a president who nurtures a system of political patronage in order to stay in power indefinitely.⁵⁸ This poor form of political leadership has resulted in the development of personal rule, the entrenchment of a dictatorship, and the internalization of state corruption.⁵⁹ Not surprisingly, African presidents and their anointed successors have tended to stay in power for too long even when the economic and social conditions of their countries continue to deteriorate. Until the push for democracy in Africa that started in the late 1980s and early 1990s, military coups were the only viable means of removing dictators. Unfortunately, the military rulers themselves turned out to be poor leaders and dictators.⁶⁰ Poor political leadership has dovetailed with the antidemocratic structures to produce colossal forms of corruption that simultaneously breed and thrive on state decay. Corruption is so ingrained in many Africa countries that it has become an integral feature of failing and failed states.⁶¹ This dialectical relation between corruption and state decay has made the fight against corruption nearly impossible without a fundamental transformation of the state. The critical question is whether the civil wars would serve as catalysts for fundamental transformation of the state.

Poor political leadership and the dialectical relation between corruption and state decay are amply manifested in all three countries, especially Sierra Leone, where the state virtually failed even before the outbreak of the civil war. The conditions that led to state decay there can largely be attributed to the corrupt leadership of Siaka Stevens, who introduced postcolonial dictatorship and prebendalism.⁶² Since the time of independence, Stevens manipulated the political system to advance his personal quest for power. He transformed the country into a one-party state and nurtured a form of personal rule built on corruption, patronage, and ethnic loyalty. He passed the same system to a hand-picked military successor who proved to be incapable of managing the dilapidated political and economic system. Joseph Saidu Momoh failed to halt the economic decline, condoned corruption, increased nepotism in government, and resisted popular demands for democracy.⁶³

In Liberia, too, poor political leadership under the TWP perpetuated the division of the state, increased alienation, and nurtured corruption.⁶⁴ Tubman, who ruled the country from 1944 until his death in 1971, drifted toward authoritarianism despite some of his earlier efforts to expand the inner circle of the TWP.⁶⁵ His successor, Tolbert, continued the status quo, albeit with some modest reform to expand beyond the Americo-Liberian circle that had dominated Liberia.⁶⁶ The failures of Tubman and Tolbert to undertake meaningful political reforms underscore their penchant for authoritarian rule but also the failure of leadership. They missed critical opportunities to revive democracy and seriously address the division of the state, which had marginalized the natives for too long. The poor leadership became even more acute during the rule of Doe, who was a sergeant in the military with no meaningful political or administrative experiences. He executed political opponents, increased state corruption, and manipulated the democratization process in order to stay in power.⁶⁷ The political brutality coupled with old political grudges from the Americo-Liberians led to an armed struggle to remove Doe from power and eventually resulted in state collapse.

In Côte d’Ivoire, Houphouët-Boigny’s leadership produced mixed results.⁶⁸ To his credit, he managed to advance the Ivoirian economy and maintain stability without using the excessive force against opponents typical of most African countries.⁶⁹ In many ways, he developed domestic and foreign policies that provided meaningful economic advantages for Côte d’Ivoire. His economic achievements earned him a reasonable level of legitimacy and support to temper the discontent over the lack of democracy. However, his leadership was largely based on political survival rather than a long-term democratic vision for his country.⁷⁰ As such, he nurtured a neopatrimonial regime and failed to use his political capital to build democratic institutions that would survive after his departure from office. He relied on expedient ethnic political alliances, the massive immigrant population, the dominant foreign entrepreneurs, and France to maintain support. The net effect of these political survival stratagems was an emergence of personality cult in politics, ambiguous citizenship policies, xenophobia, and excessive dependency on France and foreign capital, which undermined the cohesion of the state. Shortly after his death in 1993, the political system he had managed with dexterity crumbled. Côte d’Ivoire fell into political violence that escalated into a civil war. In retrospect, Houphouët-Boigny missed the opportunity to turn the 1990 democratization exercise into a fundamental democratic reform that would address issues of ethnic and economic marginalization as well as the citizenship question. Instead, he relied on political manipulation and the weaknesses of the opposition parties to salvage his rule. While it is difficult to lump Houphouët-Boigny with other dictators in Africa, it is clear that he missed the opportunity to be a great leader for Côte d’Ivoire. The situation there was made worse by the outright manipulation of ethnicity and nationalism under the rule of Bédié and the intervention of the military in politics.⁷¹

While state decay has largely been the result of domestic factors, it is also important to recognize the constraints placed on African states by wider global forces. Most notably, the political and economic development of African states has been impeded by the legacies of colonial rule, the Cold War ideological and geopolitical struggles in Africa, and the capitalist world economy.⁷² While these elements alone could not account for all the factors that led to state decay, they do provide an important context for understanding the structural and leadership problems that contributed. As noted earlier and argued succinctly in a recent book by Catherine Gegout, colonialism created states that were difficult to maintain.⁷³ The issue of the colonial legacy (borders, etc.) had an enormous impact on state formation in postindependence Africa, as most evident in the relationship between colonialism and external intervention since independence and the overreliance on the intervention of former colonial powers.

The states were fragmented along ethnic lines and built around the authoritarian political institutions and culture of colonialism.⁷⁴ The ethnic divisions and the authoritarian notion of power to which African leaders have been accustomed made multiparty democracy difficult to consolidate. Accordingly, our main task is not to provide a blueprint on how to solve these shortcomings but to problematize the issues and provide insights for scholars and policymakers based on rich historical cases and comparisons. The unfavorable colonial legacy for the development of democracy was exacerbated by the struggle for dominance during the Cold War between the Western and Eastern bloc countries. African leaders exploited the international divisions to form expedient alliances to gain weapons and some form of economic aid, which they used to consolidate their own power and to pacify political opposition in their home countries.⁷⁵ Moreover, they cherry-picked elements of capitalist and socialist ideologies to serve their ambitions for power. While many African leaders espoused the socialist doctrine of a one-party state, they failed to embrace socialist ideals of economic justice. Instead, they operated economies that were tied to the capitalist world economy, albeit peripherally, and relied on capitalist institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and mining corporations. At the same time, they failed to adhere to capitalist values of freedom and choice in the political sphere. In many ways, African leaders combined the oppressive elements of socialism with the exploitative elements of Western capitalism. In the process, they left out the virtues of democracy and freedom associated with Western capitalism and the noble goals of economic justice in socialism.⁷⁶ As a result, African leaders failed to fundamentally transform their countries into modern socialist or capitalist states. These countries remained trapped in the authoritarian rule and mining and agricultural economies that came out of colonialism. Their ambiguous position within the international political and economic system left them at the margins of the international system and relegated them to the bottom of the international division of labor and to donor dependency. By the end of the Cold War, a vast number of African countries were in a state of decay, including Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. But, as Gegout argues, why would the major world powers in the international system allow these states (among others) to decay to the point of failure instead of intervening in a proper manner when the evidence shows they could have stopped or even prevented war from starting in the first place?⁷⁷ This question is critical, and we return to it later.

African leaders’ ability to exploit the international political structures was significantly reduced after the end of the Cold War. When communism failed, they had no option but to agree to the IMF and World Bank demands for political and economic liberalization.⁷⁸ The changes in Western policies toward African governments contributed to the democratic changes and decline in authoritarian rule in several countries. However, the economic rise of China opened a new avenue for African leaders in the global economy.⁷⁹ Many have increasingly turned to China and Russia, both of which have shown no interest in promoting democracy in Africa and do not ask for the political or economic reforms that the major Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) donors demand in the form of conditionality in exchange for economic assistance and trade. In the meantime, Western countries are softening their stance on human rights, good governance, and free and fair elections in Africa and turning more attention to security issues and the struggle to control mineral resources. The struggle for economic dominance in Africa has critical political implications for African countries that largely rely on rents from minerals. The governments in those countries could gain access to resources that enable them to support the political and military apparatus of the state without conceding to international or domestic pressures for democracy and good governance. Such a situation not only impedes democracy but actually leads to state decay.

FROM STATE DECAY TO STATE FAILURE: THE DIALECTICS OF CIVIL WAR AND STATEBUILDING

The outbreak of civil war in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire hardly came as a surprise, as state decay had already created the conditions. However, the way the wars were conducted and their implications could hardly have been fully anticipated. One of the most intriguing questions from the three cases is the potential impact of the civil wars on the future development of the state. All three wars have been viewed as both the result of and potential remedy for state decay. In that sense, the civil wars are dialectically tied to both the prewar and postwar state. They could mark either the climax of state decay and the restoration of the prewar status quo or the end of state decay and the dawn of progress toward democracy and economic development. Paradoxically, while the civil wars were intended to halt state decay, they actually led to state collapse.

In Sierra Leone and Liberia, civil war became the instrument of eventual destruction of the state, which could not be resurrected without massive international intervention. In Côte d’Ivoire, the civil war not only brought the state to near collapse but also exposed its underdeveloped notion of citizenship and its inherent vulnerabilities to nationalist and regional-cum-ethnic politics. The other part of the paradox is whether these destructive civil wars could serve as a catalyst for the development of a democratic and economically successful state. This is the challenge of statebuilding. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, the international community started the process by undertaking massive postwar reconstruction with the aim of consolidating democracy and addressing the economic and social causes of the wars. This started with the enforcement of the peace agreements. As one respondent noted: “By and large, the international community came and ensured that there was an agreement [in Sierra Leone], we call it the peace accord.”⁸⁰ In Côte d’Ivoire, Ivoirians agreed on a mechanism to rectify the citizenship problem. However, they also needed to build a democratic system and ensure even development. While the process was largely driven by Ivoirians, there was some significant international support to organize elections and remove Laurent Gbagbo from power. As one respondent noted, “We need to be grateful at the international community because . . . they began to put a stop to the war. . . . This was something good.”⁸¹

In Liberia, the civil war quickly shifted from a struggle to end the dictatorial regime of Doe to anarchy and a criminal war enterprise driven by power-hungry warlords.⁸² The war, which occurred in two phases, started in 1989 with the invasion of Nimba County by the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPLF), led by Charles Taylor. Taylor’s purported goal was to remove Doe and establish democracy. Though the war ended shortly after the warring factions signed the Abuja Peace Agreement in 1995, it quickly erupted again in 1999. Peace only returned to the country after the international community forced Taylor into exile in 2003. The departure of Taylor, who was the main figure behind the war, paved the way for the 2003 Accra Peace Accord and the establishment of a transitional government. The international community deployed a massive intervention force and steered the country toward multiparty elections in 2005. The NPLF was at the center of the Liberian war. It began as a rebel movement against Doe and metamorphosed into the National Patriotic Party (NPP), which dubiously won the 1997 elections. Prior to 1997, the NPFL fought to seize control of the government. When it came to power in 1997, it continued to brutalize opponents and wage war against the other factions in the Liberian war in order to stay in power. In addition, Taylor supported the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in the Sierra Leone civil war and engaged in the trade of blood diamonds. Even though Doe was assassinated in 1990 by a splinter group of the NPFL led by Prince Yormie Johnson (the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia, or INPFL), Taylor showed no interest in ending the war. As early as 1990, it became clear that his primary goal was to take power by any means possible. In 1991, the NPFL established an alternative government, the National Patriotic Reconstruction Assembly Government which was based in the town of Gbarnga. However, this government failed to gain international recognition or popular domestic legitimacy.

The Liberian war had numerous Liberian factions that frequently overlapped and changed.⁸³ One of the problematic aspects of ending the war was the proliferation of splinter groups and warlords. Though it is difficult to identify clear and consistent factional alliances, three loose clusters of Liberian forces remained prominent throughout the war. The first cluster was the NPFL led by Taylor, which was at the center of the fighting throughout the war. The NPFL had splinter groups, with the main ones being the INPLF, led by Prince Johnson, and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia–Central Revolutionary Council, led by Sam Dokie and Tom Woewiyu. These two splinter groups emerged largely due to leadership disputes within the NPFL. While they shared the NPFL’s goal of taking power, they were also bent on stopping Taylor from becoming president. The Lofa Defence Force later emerged as an ally of the NPFL. The second cluster consisted of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL), which supported Doe, and its militia allies, such as the Liberian Peace Council, which emerged in 1993. They fought to stop the NPFL from taking over the government and defended the interest of the Krahn people. The AFL crumbled after the assassination of Doe and increasingly became a smaller force in the conflict. The third cluster was comprised of groups that emerged after the assassination of Doe and were largely independent of the AFL. While some of them were sympathizers of Doe, they mostly included people, especially from the Krahn and Madingo ethnic groups, who strongly opposed the NPFL because they saw Taylor as a major threat to their personal and collective ethnic interests. Their ambition to take over the state evolved with the war. Unlike the NPFL, which was created with the goal of taking power, this cluster of forces was more interested in stopping Taylor from taking over the state or removing him from power than actually governing the state.⁸⁴ Taking over the state would not only mean gaining power but more importantly would indicate success in their effort to defeat Taylor. During the initial phase of the war, the main group in this cluster was the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO).⁸⁵ ULIMO was formed by Liberian exiles in Sierra Leone. They began fighting for the government of Sierra Leone against RUF and then entered Liberia to fight the NPFL. Ethnic conflicts between the Krahn and the Mandingo resulted in the split of ULIMO into two groups: ULIMO–J and ULIMO–K. ULIMO–J was a dominated by the Krahn and led by Major General Roosevelt Johnson, while ULIMO–K became a predominantly Mandingo group led by Alhaji Kromah. ULIMO disappeared after the 1997 elections, but its members reemerged in 1999. They combined with other factions opposed to Taylor to form Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). In 2000, LURD launched a massive offensive against the NPP government of Taylor. In 2003, a majority of the Krahn broke away from LURD and formed the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL).⁸⁶

In the midst of factional chaos and the divergence of war motives, the central rationale of the Liberian civil war was the struggle for power. In practical terms, this meant that the war was largely a struggle by Taylor to take over the government and maintain his stay in power on one hand and a struggle by a variety of forces to stop Taylor from taking power or remove him from power on the other. This is not to neglect the underlying political, economic, and social grievances associated with state decay that led to war.⁸⁷ Rather, it is to underscore how the war became a struggle for power instead of a struggle for democracy and good governance. While state decay was the cause of the war, the struggle for political power and control of the war economy built around illicit trade in timber, minerals, and weapons became the fuel that sustained the war. This shifted the war from a struggle to end state decay to a struggle that ruined the state. Despite this unfortunate shift, the implications of state decay cannot be underestimated. Indeed, the challenge for Liberia is not only to address the factors that fueled the war but also to understand and rectify the problems of state decay that led to the war in the first place.

In addition to the three clusters of Liberian factions, international intervention forces were an important category of military force in the Liberian war. This was mostly comprised of members of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), which was deployed in 1990 as a peacekeeping force. However, it quickly became a party to the war as it tried to stop Taylor from taking over the government. After the assassination of Doe, ECOMOG installed an Interim Government of Nation Unity (IGNU) headed by Amos Sawyer and became heavily involved in defending the IGNU against the various rebel groups. In 1993, the UN established the UN Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) to support ECOMOG in implementing the Cotonou Accord. UNOMIL was later transformed into the UN Peacebuilding Support Office in Liberia. In 1996, the US military was briefly deployed to halt the anarchy as part of Operation Assured Response. It is important to note that the primary objective of the American military operation was to evacuate US citizens trapped in Liberia.

The peacekeeping role of the UN significantly increased during the second half of the war and evolved from traditional peacekeeping to a comprehensive peacebuilding mission. After the signing of the 2003 Accra Accord, the UN established the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL). The force had a UN Chapter VII mandate and was made up of around fifteen thousand troops. UNMIL was a multidimensional force tasked with supporting the national transitional government and implementing the Accra Accord. It took over the peacekeeping role of ECOMOG and incorporated some of the ECOMOG troops.⁸⁸ UNMIL moved the country through the 2005 elections and took a lead role in the postwar reconstruction efforts. An interview respondent for this research indicated that it was “very commendable, in the sense that the international community did provide support both financially and logistically to raise the attainment of general peace and stability” in Liberia.⁸⁹

During Liberia’s fourteen-year civil war, 800,000 Liberians were displaced and an estimated 270,000 were killed.⁹⁰ An estimated 250,000 Liberians died during the war. At least half of the victims were civilian noncombatants.⁹¹ Many more were forced out of their homes. Between 1993 and 1996, the Liberian refugee population stood above 700,000, reaching a high of 797,800 in 1994.⁹² In 2003, there were over 350,000 Liberian refugees and an estimated half-million people displaced within Liberia. Seventy-eight percent of the refugees were between the ages of five and fifty-nine. Women accounted for 53 percent of the refugees. Nearly half of the refugees were in Guinea, while most of the others were in Côte d’Ivoire (74,200), Sierra Leone (61,200), Ghana (42,500), and Nigeria (3,700).⁹³ For most of the war period, Liberia was without a functioning government. During the first part of the war, the IGNU hardly functioned as a real body. Sawyer, who became chairman when the body was formed by Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1990, was a powerless figurehead of an interim government that was falling apart and being held hostage by warlords. When Sawyer resigned in March 1994, the IGNU became even more dysfunctional and constantly changed leaders.⁹⁴ Though some level of peace returned after the 1997 elections, the Liberian state barely functioned due to Taylor’s lack of legitimacy at home and within the international community. The Liberian state was further weakened by international sanctions for Taylor’s dubious role in fueling the war in Sierra Leone and the threat of insurgency by rival warlords. Not surprisingly, the state quickly collapsed again during the second part of the civil war, which erupted in 2000.

The Sierra Lone civil war was started in March 1991 by RUF, which was supported by combatants belonging to the NPFL and commonly referred to as rebels.⁹⁵ The declared goal of RUF was to overthrow the corrupt APC government of Momoh and implement a revolutionary change for economic progress, social justice, and democracy.⁹⁶ The war, which was officially declared over in January 2002, was very brutal. The TRC of Sierra Leone documented 40,242 violations that occurred between 1991 and 2000. The violations included forced displacement, abduction, arbitrary detention, killing, torture, forced labor, rape, amputation, sexual abuse, drugging, extortion, and destruction of property. The commission also identified 14,995 victims. It is estimated that there were around a hundred thousand amputations and over twenty thousand people killed during the course of the war.⁹⁷ At the height of the war in 1999, nearly half a million Sierra Leoneans were refugees and over half a million people in Sierra Leone were listed as persons of concern by the UNHCR.⁹⁸ By the end of the war in 2002, there were still 141,400 Sierra Leoneans listed as refugees.⁹⁹ The bulk of the refugees were in Guinea and Liberia. The war shattered more than three thousand towns and villages and destroyed the scanty infrastructure.¹⁰⁰ The TRC attributed 59.2 percent of the documented violations to RUF, 9.8 percent to the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), 6.7 percent to the Sierra Leone Army, 5.9 percent to the pro-government Civil Defence Forces (CDF), and 0.7 percent to ECOMOG.¹⁰¹

The civil war in Sierra Leone became largely a struggle for power between the RUF and successive civilian and military governments. The RUF, which was supported by Taylor, was formed by Sierra Leonean dissidents in Libya and led by Foday Sankoh.¹⁰² It fought the APC government and continued to fight the NPRC military government of Valentine Strasser, which overthrew the APC in 1992. The RUF refused to participate in the 1996 elections and continued to fight the elected Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government led by Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. Initially, the Armed Forces of the Republic of Sierra Leone (AFRSL), supported by Nigerian and Guinean troops, mercenaries, and ULIMO, fought the rebels on behalf of the successive governments. The government, especially the SLPP government of Kabbah, allied itself with the CDF, commonly referred to as Kamajos, created by local communities to defend themselves against the rebels and renegade soldiers of the AFRSL. As the war evolved, a significant fraction of the AFRSL began working with the RUF and formed the AFRC, which overthrew the SLPP government of Kabbah in 1997. The exiled government of Kabbah, supported by ECOMOG, CDF, and mercenaries, fought the RUF and the AFRC. In March 1998, ECOMOG deposed the AFRC and restored Kabbah to power.¹⁰³

The Sierra Leone civil war was born out of state decay but quickly became a struggle for power between the leaders of the various fighting factions.¹⁰⁴ The RUF claimed to be fighting to end corruption and dictatorship and promote economic development and democracy. However, it continued to fight even after the overthrow of the APC regime and refused to participate in the 1996 multiparty elections, in which there was no incumbent government. On an abstract idealistic level, the RUF saw its mission as a revolutionary agenda that should not be restricted by the mechanisms of democratic politics. On a practical level, however, the RUF failed to fight for the interest of the people. To the contrary, it committed grave human rights abuses against civilians and engaged in the illicit exploitation of minerals. By assuming that it alone had the solutions to the economic and social problems of the country, insisting on taking power by force, and using civilians as instruments of war, the RUF delegitimized its very vision of restoring power to the people and promoting economic and social progress. The RUF’s lack of legitimacy with the people further strengthened popular skepticism that it was simply another group of people hungry for power and wealth.¹⁰⁵ The RUF rebellion raised major concerns about how to reconcile the legitimacy of their grievances with their lack of a credible agenda.

Similarly, the ruling elite of the one-party and military regimes were mostly interested in salvaging their power. The APC’s claim to legitimacy and sovereign responsibility to protect the people was clearly contradicted by the corrupt and dictatorial nature of the regime; this led to state decay, undermined the well-being of the people, and contributed to the continuation of the civil war. These factors (state decay, bad leadership/corruption, and civil war) all interact in a dialectical manner, and it is difficult to parse out the order of the relationship between them. All three develop in a complex manner (see discussion in the beginning of this chapter). Notably, the APC refused to recognize the legitimacy of the war grievances or concede to the popular demands for democracy. As such, its military campaign against the RUF was no more than a struggle to hold onto power.

Despite the aura of change, the NPRC did not differ much from the APC regime. The NPRC brought high hopes for change and enjoyed initial popular support. Unfortunately, it, too, was corrupt, brutal, and reluctant to restore democracy. Popular support for the NPRC campaign against the RUF gave way to popular discontent with military rule and doubts about the loyalty of the military. Military officers formed alliances with local RUF commanders, engaged in illicit diamond exploitation, and victimized civilians.¹⁰⁶ The dubious role of the military became apparent in the emergence of the category of sobel in the war—military personnel who doubled as soldiers during the day and rebels during the night. The military’s lack of discipline and loyalty culminated in the AFRC coup that overthrew the elected government in 1997. The AFRC became a significant player in the conflict because of its brief rule (1997–1998), alliance with the RUF, and participation in the blood diamond trade. Unlike the RUF, it had no ideological vision or articulated grievances. The AFRC’s only argument for staying in power rested on its claim to have the ability to restore peace by working with the RUF, but this claim was questionable, as its alliance with the RUF was often tenuous. The RUF never gave up its ambition of taking power by force, as evidenced by the clashes between the AFRC and RUF. In reality, the AFRC further escalated the violence, abuse of civilians, and illicit exploitation of minerals.

Though the elected SLPP government had a legitimate claim to power and enjoyed significant popular support, it was deeply involved in the struggle for power. To its credit, the SLPP government made a significant concession to the RUF in the Abidjan Accord by agreeing to withdraw foreign mercenaries. However, the agreement insisted too much on the government’s legitimacy at the expense of addressing the genuine grievances that led to the war. After the RUF failed to honor the 1996 Abidjan Accord and used the cease-fire to rebuild its forces, the government took an even more hard-line stance in its claim to legitimacy and became extremely suspicious of the RUF.¹⁰⁷ This attitude made it even more difficult to peacefully solve the conflict and address the underlying causes of the war. In the process, the SLPP government became complacent with its legitimacy and failed to make meaningful reforms in governance. Corruption continued unabated as economic and social conditions further deteriorated. The SLPP government’s insistence on its democratic mandate became a cover for its desire to stay in power. In the process, it became more obsessed with its struggle for political survival than with addressing the root causes of the war and working with the RUF to end the conflict.¹⁰⁸ The SLPP government’s struggle for political survival became more intense after the 1997 coup. The government in exile engaged in a robust campaign to gain international support for its restoration. After it was restored in 1998, it became overtly focused on maintaining the international support that kept it in power at the expense of pursuing a peaceful solution to the conflict. In fact, the government reluctantly signed the Lomé Peace Agreement only after it became clear that ECOMOG was incapable of delivering a decisive military victory over the RUF and Nigeria signaled its desire to withdraw its forces from Sierra Leone.¹⁰⁹ The SLPP government had a precarious approach to the war and governance. While it had well-founded claims to legitimacy and mistrust of the RUF, it confounded democracy with peace and economic development. It wrongly assumed that its democratic mandate was to simply maintain the state as a democracy, instead of fundamentally transforming it and thereby addressing the root causes of the war.

As in Liberia, international forces were critical players in the Sierra Leone civil war. International military involvement occurred in the forms of ECOWAS and UN interventions, not to mention support from mercenaries and allied countries. The latter category included government and RUF mercenaries from countries such as Liberia, Burkina Faso, South Africa, and Ukraine and the intervention of Guinean, Nigerian, and British forces in support of the government. The most significant international military involvements were the ECOMOG and UN interventions. ECOMOG was deployed at the outset of the war to prevent cross-border attacks from Liberia. It quickly grew in size and reached around fifteen thousand troops, comprised of nearly twelve thousand Nigerians, six hundred Ghanaians, six hundred Guineans, and five hundred Malians.¹¹⁰ ECOMOG became the main defender of the government against the RUF as the Sierra Leone military became increasingly incapable and disloyal. When AFRC deposed the elected government, ECOMOG drove the junta out of Freetown and restored the elected government in March 1998. It continued to defend the government until the deployment of UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) forces in 2002. The UN military intervention began in 1998 with the established of the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL). However, UNOMSIL was an unarmed team mainly charged with monitoring the conduct of the war.¹¹¹ UN military intervention significantly increased with the establishment of UNAMSIL in 1999. UNAMSIL was established in the wake of Nigerian fatigue with the Sierra Leone war, the growing realization of ECOMOG’s inability to defeat RUF, and the signing of the Lomé Peace Agreement. UNAMSIL’s mandate was to implement the Lomé Peace Agreement. It was later given a Chapter VII mandate, and its size significantly increased.¹¹² By March 2001, UNAMSIL’s troop size had increased to 17,500, and its role had significantly expanded beyond traditional peacekeeping.¹¹³ Its overall objectives became “to assist the efforts of the Government of Sierra Leone to extend its authority, restore law and order and stabilize the situation progressively throughout the entire country, and to assist in the promotion of a political process which should lead to a renewed disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programme and the holding, in due course, of free and fair elections.”¹¹⁴ UNAMSIL suffered significant initial setbacks. It had a difficult relation with ECOMOG, while the RUF saw it as a pro-government force. The RUF humiliated UNAMSIL by kidnapping over three hundred of its troops and seizing their equipment in May 2000. However, with the help of a British military intervention, the strengthened force was able to meet the challenges posed by the RUF and AFRC and steer the country through the 2002 elections.¹¹⁵ UNAMSIL’s mission ended in 2005 with the establishment of the UN Integrated Office for Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL) to consolidate peace and democracy and help the country address the root causes of the war.¹¹⁶

The civil war in Côte d’Ivoire was the culmination of the violent political conflict that had been taking place since the death of Houphouët-Boigny in December of 1993.¹¹⁷ The conflict began as a power struggle within the ruling PDCI and between the PDCI and the opposition Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI) to succeed Houphouët-Boigny. The power struggle between Henri Bédié and his opponents within the PDCI led to the formation of the Rassemblement Des Républicains (RDR) by PDCI dissidents who opposed Bédié’s ascension to the presidency. The RDR, which was mostly supported by northerners, invited former Prime Minister Ouattara to be its presidential candidate in the 1995 elections. At the same time, the opposition FPI and its veteran opposition leader, Gbagbo, tried to oust the PDCI from power. The tripartite PDCI-RDR-FPI power struggle took a dangerous turn when Bédié started to restrict political freedoms and exploit the highly divisive doctrine of Ivoirité in order to win the 1995 presidential election.¹¹⁸ The antidemocratic tactics of Bédié forced the RDR and FPI to boycott the 1995 presidential election. The doctrine of Ivoirité was introduced into politics as a nationalist-qua-ethnic political stratagem disguised as patriotism. It rested on a controversial distinction between “indigenous Ivoirians” and “Ivoirians of immigrant ancestry” that weaved together antiforeigner and antinortherner sentiments.¹¹⁹ The tacit goal of Ivoirité was to marginalize northerners, who were lumped together with immigrants from Burkina Faso and other neighboring countries as foreigners or at best Ivoirians of immigrant ancestry, and facilitate a victory for PDCI, which was controlled by southern political elites.¹²⁰ The conflict increasingly became a north-south divide as the military government of General Robert Guéï and the FPI government of Gbagbo embraced the Ivoirité policies initiated by the PDCI.

Successive post-Houphouët-Boigny governments applied the doctrine of Ivoirité in the political arena in order to disqualify Ouattara from seeking the presidency. In the process, they denied Ivoirian citizenship to many people from the north of the country. In 1994, Bédié’s government passed a law requiring candidates for the presidency and legislature to prove that they and their parents were Ivoirians by origin.¹²¹ The law was later incorporated into the 2000 Constitution, which stated that a candidate for the presidency “must be Ivoirian by birth, born of a father and of a mother themselves Ivoirians by birth. He must never have renounced the Ivoirian nationality. He must never have had another nationality. He must have resided in Côte d’Ivoire continuously during the five years preceding the date of the elections and have totaled ten years of effective presence.”¹²² The restrictions in the laws were tacitly tailored to disqualify northern political leader Ouattara from running for the presidency. Southern political leaders alleged that Ouattara’s father was from Burkina Faso, while Ouattara argued that his parents were from Côte d’Ivoire.¹²³ The dispute over Ouattara’s ancestry evoked three key issues surrounding citizenship in Côte d’Ivoire, the first of which was the huge immigrant population from neighboring countries such as Burkina Faso. While some of these were recent immigrants, many others had been in Côte d’Ivoire for several generations going back to the colonial era. The second issue was rooted in French colonial policies and Houphouët-Boigny’s policies that facilitated the flow of immigrant labor and their participation in Ivoirian politics and the economy. The policies of the colonial administration and Houphouët-Boigny’s government blurred the line between Ivoirian and non-Ivoirian and promoted a loose notion of Ivoirian citizenship. The third problem was the cultural and ethnic affinity between indigenous Ivoirians in the north and the immigrants from some of the neighboring countries.¹²⁴ Collectively, these three factors made it difficult to differentiate an indigenous Ivoirian from an Ivoirian of immigrant ancestry in the absence of a long, accurate, and rich record of births and deaths.

As the conflict over citizenship expanded from the political elites to the voters, it became clear that the lack of proper birth and death records would complicate the implementation of a narrowly defined citizenship policy. The question of Ivoirian citizenship became less of a disagreement over the extant citizenship law, which was mostly based on the principle of jus sanguinis, and more of a dispute over the intent of the law and policies of the government and how to prove one’s claim to Ivoirian citizenship. The government insinuated that many people from the north were falsely claiming Ivoirian citizenship, while northerners accused the government of deliberately refusing to issue certificates of nationality to qualified Ivoirian citizens from the north. The successive post-Houphouët-Boigny governments applied Ivoirité policies to national identification, land tenure, and public sector employment policies. They refused to issue certificates of nationality to many people from the north on the grounds that they were not Ivoirians because they did not have proper documents to prove that their parents were Ivoirians. According to the 2001 identification policies of the FPI government, for example, “Anyone requesting an identity document was required to prove their nationality by obtaining a statement of origin issued by a committee from their village of origin.”¹²⁵ Under these policies, Ivoirian citizenship was based on proof of autochthony to an Ivoirian village. The controversial Ivoirité policies were adopted even though it was clear that the chasms in birth records would make it difficult to provide documentary evidence of ancestry.

As Daniel Chirot observed, a large number of “genuine” Ivoirians from the north found themselves in a precarious situation. Many did not have complete documents because of missing records, family relocation, or the confiscation of their documents by security agents.¹²⁶ Some of the southern leaders that were interviewed in this study insisted on applying the laws and placed the burden of proof of Ivoirian ancestry on the individuals. In their view, all genuine Ivoirians could obtain the necessary records to prove their Ivoirian ancestry. However, some agreed that the records were not perfect.¹²⁷ In addition, they understood that urbanization had weakened ties to ancestral villages. The wrongful denial of citizenship and exclusion for contesting the presidency were epitomized in Ouattara’s struggle with successive post-Houphouët-Boigny governments. Bédié claimed that Ouattara’s father was from Burkina Faso and was therefore not a genuine Ivoirian. Ouattara insisted that his parents were born in Côte d’Ivoire. When Judge Zoro Ballo issued Ouattara a certificate of nationality in September 1999, the government investigated the judge and forced him to resign. The Bédié government accused Ouattara of falsifying his documents and revoked the certificate in October 1999.¹²⁸

Ivoirité made northerners feel politically marginalized and see themselves as victims of state-sponsored discrimination in the application of citizenship policies. This sense of being wrongfully denied citizenship became the bedrock of the violent political protests that had marred Côte d’Ivoire since the death of Houphouët-Boigny and the civil war. The political and social crisis was exacerbated by the December 1999 coup that brought General Guéï to power.¹²⁹ Popular resistance to military rule dovetailed with the tripartite power struggle and vehement RDR-led campaign to end Ivoirité. Like the PDCI, Guéï suppressed political freedom, promoted Ivoirité, and prevented Ouattara from contesting the October 2000 presidential election. The PDCI and RDR boycotted the presidential election. Guéï manipulated the election results and arbitrarily declared himself the winner, which led to a massive street protest by the FPI. Guéï was forced to flee, paving the way for Gbagbo to be installed as president.¹³⁰ Violent clashes between the pro-FPI Young Patriots (YP) and RDR continued, and the RDR demanded a new election based on inclusive citizenship policies that would not disenfranchise northerners.¹³¹ Gbagbo insisted on his electoral mandate and continued to support Ivoirité. The RDR and disgruntled northerners dismissed the FPI government as illegitimate, while Gbagbo continued to insinuate that Ouattara was not an indigenous Ivoirian and was unqualified to be president.¹³²

The political and social crisis surrounding Ivoirité and democracy degenerated into a civil war after the September 19, 2002, coup-cum-rebellion. The mutiny in Abidjan was instigated by reports of an imminent involuntary demobilization program believed to be part of the Ivoirité purge against northerners. Rebel forces of the Mouvement Patriotique de Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI) attacked Abidjan and cities in the north.¹³³ The rebels retreated to their bases in the north after loyalist forces repelled the attack on Abidjan. The stated goals of the MPCI were to overthrow the government of Gbagbo, hold inclusive elections, and reinstate all disbanded soldiers. By the end of 2002, two smaller rebel groups had emerged. Both the Mouvement pour la Justice et la Paix and the Mouvement Populaire Ivoirien du Grand Ouest expressed similar intentions to overthrow Gbagbo.¹³⁴ The rebels regrouped into a new movement called Forces Nouvelles (FN) under the leadership of Guillaume Soro.¹³⁵ By the end of 2002, Côte d’Ivoire’s political crisis had degenerated into a civil war. The government had lost control of the north, while hostility continued to brew between northerners and southerners.

The fight to end Ivoirité was masked as a struggle for democracy. By seeking to oust Gbagbo and hold inclusive elections, the rebels were fighting to stop the marginalization of northerners. As Soro himself confessed, the rebellion was instigated by dissatisfaction with the 2000 elections and Ivoirité, which he characterized as “n’est ni plus ni moins qu’un concept xénophobe. L’ivoirité est un mot dont le vrai sens ne signifie rien d’autre que: «la Côte d’Ivoire aux Ivoiriens», c’est-à-dire, en clair, à ceux qui sont originaires du Sud, les Nordistes étant considérés comme étrangers dans leur propre pays.”¹³⁶ The rebels wanted to ensure that northerners were issued their citizenship documents and allowed equal participation in politics. Evidently, peace never started until the citizenship issue was properly addressed in the Ouagadougou Agreement. Despite the resolution of the citizenship issue, the north-south power struggle continues to fuel violence, especially around presidential elections.

In addition to the rebel attacks, violent demonstrations preceded Côte d’Ivoire’s civil war, especially in Abidjan. Most of the violence erupted during planned demonstrations by pro-government YP and opposition supporters. On October 22, 2002, for example, there was a violent anti-French protest by supporters of Gbagbo, which paralyzed the city of Abidjan. The protesters were angry with France for sheltering opposition leader Ouattara. In January 2006, supporters of Gbagbo attacked UN peacekeepers and staff when UN-backed mediators recommended dissolving parliament after the country failed to hold elections scheduled for the end of 2005. One of the worst violent demonstrations occurred on Mach 25, 2004, during an opposition rally in Abidjan. The demonstration left 120 people dead and many more wounded.¹³⁷

The initial phase of the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire left around three thousand people dead and up to seven hundred thousand displaced. At the height of the war in 2004, more than thirty-three thousand Ivoirians were listed as refugees, mostly in Liberia and Guinea. A huge number of West African immigrants were forced to leave the country. An additional five hundred thousand Ivoirians were displaced from their homes.¹³⁸ The conflict also led to serious human rights violations including extortion, arbitrary tax collection, forceful abduction, and summary execution. The disruption of basic services, especially in the north, led to major humanitarian problems. Numerous schools, hospitals, courts, and administrative institutions were forced to close. According to UN reports, in the areas controlled by the FN, up to 85 percent of the medical staff fled. The conflict contributed to an increase in malnutrition and such diseases as cholera, yellow fever, meningitis, and measles. The UN estimates that in 2004, seven hundred thousand children were out of school as a result of the war.¹³⁹ The war also took a heavy toll on the Ivoirian economy. After the violence in November 2004, 125 out of 500 foreign-owned businesses closed, leaving about thirty thousand people unemployed. Between 1999 and 2003, the GDP declined by around 7.4 percent. In November 2004, the country slipped into nonaccrual status after failing to service its debts with the World Bank.¹⁴⁰

While Côte d’Ivoire did not descend into the kind of prolonged and brutal war experienced in Sierra Leone and Liberia, it suffered significantly. In addition to the casualties and human rights violations, the country experienced significant economic decline that not only worsened state decay but also had tremendous negative impacts in the region. The escalation to civil war in 2002 brought significant international attention to the political crisis in Côte d’Ivoire. The international community was particularly concerned about the deteriorating political situation there because of its potential regional impact. As soon as the war erupted in 2002, ECOWAS began mediating the conflict and began plans to send an interposition force. France immediately deployed its troops to protect its interests and support the international peace mediation efforts of ECOWAS and the UN. However, the French forces were viewed with suspicion by the FPI government. ECOWAS brokered the October 17, 2002, cease-fire between MPCI and the government and organized peace talks in Lomé. The ECOWAS talks were followed by peace talks in France, resulting in the 2003 Linas-Marcoussis Agreement. In May 2003, the UN established the UN Mission in Côte d’Ivoire to facilitate the implementation of the Linas-Marcoussis Agreement in collaboration with French and ECOWAS forces. Despite the deployment of international forces and the international mediations, the war continued. Further peace agreements were brokered by the international community during peace talks in Ghana (2003, 2004) and Pretoria (2005). Unfortunately, all of these agreements failed to properly address the core issue of citizenship and end the conflict.¹⁴¹ The critical break in the conflict came in 2007, when the Ivoirians took ownership of the peace process and directly negotiated the Ouagadougou Peace Agreement. The agreement resulted in the formation of a power-sharing government led by Gbagbo and Soro, stipulated a mechanism for resolving the dispute over citizenship, and called for an election. Though implementation of the agreement was painfully slow, the country largely maintained a delicate peace that was dubbed ni paix, ni guerre (no peace, no war). That peace lasted until the 2010 presidential election, when both candidates claimed victory and declared themselves president. The UN eventually certified the victory of Ouattara. Renewed fighting erupted between the forces supporting Ouattara and those supporting Gbagbo. International forces eventually backed the pro-Ouattara forces, leading to the capture of Gbagbo and the pacification of the pro-Gbagbo forces. Since the 2010 defeat of Gbagbo and his allies, Ouattara has entrenched his rule and even extended his term in office to a third term. Ouattara’s pacification of southerners and grip on power has again placed Côte d’Ivoire in a precarious situation that is making the country ripe for renewed violence.

CONCLUSION

The three countries in this study present contrasting, albeit equally bitter, realities of civil war and statebuilding. The wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone were driven by warlords and the illicit trading of natural resources and weapons and used civilians as instruments of war. Unlike ideologically driven wars fought by disciplined and well-structured forces, the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia became emblematic cases of new wars, which often degenerate into a criminal enterprise that victimizes civilians and lacks any clear agenda for addressing the legitimate political and social grievances that lead to conflict.¹⁴² The states collapsed, and the countries were unable to resolve any differences and rebuild without enormous international intervention driven by the doctrine of new humanitarianism. In Côte d’Ivoire, the conflict did not degenerate into the kind of anarchy and criminal war enterprise that developed in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Though there were serious accusations that the FN was supported by foreign governments, most notably Burkina Faso, and that Liberian combatants were recruited in Côte d’Ivoire, the war was largely fought by Ivoirians and fueled by domestic grievances.¹⁴³ The war itself lasted for a relatively shorter period of time and produced fewer casualties; this was true for both the 2002 fighting and the fighting that erupted after the 2010 elections. However, Côte d’Ivoire, too, was characterized by gross violations of human rights and a war economy in the northern part of the country under the control of the FN. The Ivoirian war was contained partly because it had a clear and legitimate political grievance that centered on citizenship and partly because the state did not crumble, even though it was split into two halves. The state remained largely functional in the south, while in the north, the FN successfully established an administration that maintained quasi state authority. Most significantly, Ivoirians took ownership of the peace process and negotiated a mechanism for solving the citizenship aspect of the conflict, as evidenced by the Ouagadougou Accord. Thus, while the Ivoirian civil war was not a conventional conflict between two state actors, it did not degenerate into a typical case of new war. In fact, international intervention in Côte d’Ivoire was mostly limited to a supportive role for Ivoirians to resolve their conflict. The international peacekeeping missions fell short of undertaking comprehensive peacebuilding and reconstructions roles. This limited role of international peacekeeping is in stark contrast to the comprehensive statebuilding role that the international community assumed in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Côte d’Ivoire’s mixed results with state decay and the conduct of the war, which teetered between stability and breakdown, impart important lessons about the vulnerabilities and potentials of African states.