Ivory Coast Sends Army To Secure Cocoa Area

Disputes over land and who has the right to Ivorian nationality have been at the heart of a crisis that continues today.

Ivory Coast has sent hundreds of soldiers to bolster security in its cocoa-growing west, but farmers caught up in simmering land disputes say that won't lure them back to fields they abandoned during years of conflict.

The west of the world's top cocoa producer was the scene of some of the most violent clashes during and since a brief 2002-2003 war, in which rebels seized the north, dividing a country that was once the most stable in West Africa.

Disputes over land and who has the right to Ivorian nationality have been at the heart of a crisis that continues today.

Elections meant to consolidate a tortuous peace process have been repeatedly delayed, largely due to the slow issuing of identity papers and delays disarming rebels and pro-government militia.

"The hierarchy has announced the dispatching of 700 men, of which 300 are gendarmes," Colonel Rene Sako, the army's head of planning, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"These men have a mission to secure the borders with Liberia, fight against bandits and help the allogenes return to their cocoa fields," he added.

"Allogenes" is a term used to describe "outsiders", both foreign and Ivorian, in western Ivory Coast.

Liberal land policies under which land belonged to those "who worked it" helped attract millions of migrants to Ivory Coast in the decades following independence from France in 1960.

IMMIGRANT SOCIETY

The National Rural Development Association estimates that foreigners, often from Burkina Faso and Mali, have been farming around 90 percent of the country's western cocoa fields.

But a 1990s commodity price slump, nationalistic political rhetoric and the chaos of the war, sparked local clashes, occasional massacres and the flight of many allogene farmers.

Some 700,000 people were displaced by Ivory Coast's war.

"I am making every last effort to ensure that those who have not yet returned to their fields do so. Securing the farms is our concern today. I will not let you down," President Laurent Gbagbo said when he announced the initiative at the weekend.

"As we are now returning to normality, everyone must return to their farms," he said.

Various organisations are trying to restore confidence between communities. The government launched an initiative in September to demarcate rural land to try to end rows over land.

However, tensions simmered on and there were several clashes in October and November around the volatile town of Guiglo, near the border with Liberia, when allogenes tried to return to their fields. At least three were killed in one spat.

A refugee camp that had housed 10,000 allogene farmers in Guiglo officially closed in July, but nearly 800 remain. Some complain that pro-government militia have not been disarmed.

"We are still in the camp and no one has said what the (army) operation is about," said Issa Koma, an allogene spokesman.

"If they leave soon afterwards, that won't change anything because we know the youth around here. When the soldiers have gone, they will start harassing us again ... and it will be even worse during the elections," he added.

Having already missed several deadlines, it is not yet clear when post-war elections will take place. Diplomats and analysts say they are unlikely before the end of 2009 due to delays in identifying millions of voters and disarmament.