Challenges, debates, and reflections on the “post” in “post-conflict” Côte d'Ivoire: an introduction

How do you rebuild states after war? How do you restore confidence in state institutions weakened by violent conflict? How do you repair deeply divided social relations after more than a decade of political crisis and violence? How do you help citizens gain faith in politics after politics has brought so much pain and suffering to the civilian population? How do you address the underlying causes of conflict that drove war in the first place? How do you create stability from a period of fragility and instability? How do memories of violence and atrocity influence politics and social well-being? These are some of the questions that every country faces after a period of armed conflict and violence. In recent years in sub-Saharan Africa, these questions have been especially present in numerous countries in every sub-region of the continent. In Southern Africa, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, and even post-apartheid South Africa wrestled with these challenges. In East Africa, the same can be said of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, and South Sudan. As for Central Africa, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, the Central African Republic, and Chad have all been forced to grapple with these questions. Finally, in the case of West Africa, Niger, Mali, Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have all sought to rebuild their states and societies after war. The collection of papers in this special thematic section of the Canadian Journal of African Studies addresses the case of Côte d’Ivoire. As with the other post-conflict states across sub-Saharan Africa, President Alassane Ouattara inherited a plethora of challenges when he assumed the presidency in April 2011. Chief among the issues that confronted President Ouattara was the question of legitimacy, a situation common for postwar governments, especially those that came to power through military means. For more than a decade, President Ouattara was locked in a bruising political fight with his predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo. That fight intensified in 2000 when President Gbagbo came to power in a flawed election (in which Ouattara was barred from running). The situation became even more tense after the civil war started in 2002. In the end, the resolution – a word to which I shall return – came after an election in 2010 that Ouattara won but the results of which Gbagbo refused to accept. This led to a violent post-electoral crisis in 2011 in which proGbagbo forces initially repressed pro-Ouattara supporters, ultimately prompting the northern-based rebels, renamed the Forces républicaines de Côte d’Ivoire (FRCI), to advance on Abidjan. With the assistance of the United Nations (UN) and the French, the insurgents unseated Gbagbo and ceded power to Ouattara. This brief summary shows the fraught and complicated nature of the political terrain that confronted Ouattara when he was invested with the authority to run the state. On the