Chocolate now fuels war in West Africa?
Government and rebel forces in Ivory Coast used the cocoa trade to fund war, says a new report.
from the July 17, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
"Where did they think we would find the money to make war?" says Appia Kabran, a vice president in the pro-Gbagbo National Congress for Resistance of Democracy (CNRD).
He says a group that is attacked has to find the money everywhere it is.
The rebels, meanwhile, deny using cocoa profits to fund their armies.
In his dismissal of the findings, Siratigus Konate, a spokesman for Mr. Soro, points out that the rebels are not in charge of the economy in the cocoa-rich part of Ivory Coast.
"We have nothing to do with the money of the cocoa to finance war or anything like that," he says.
But over the past decade in West Africa, governments and rebels relied on the money earned from commodities to build their bankroll.
What separates diamonds and timber in Liberia from Ivorian cocoa is that the United Nations Security Council slapped sanctions on them in order to thwart those who profited from the sales and sustained violent regimes.
And it's not just cocoa that's used to fund Ivory Coast's conflict, says Alphonse Djedje Mady, secretary-general of the opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), which ruled the country for nearly four decades until the 1999 military coup.
He says the government and the rebel New Forces used all of the country's resources, including coffee, cotton, and oil, for the war, adding that the sales of those commodities have never been transparent.
But Mr. Djedje Mady assigns particular blame for the opacity in the cocoa sector to the World Bank for pushing his country to drop price controls in favor of market liberalization, which eventually allowed the Gbagbo government to buy weapons.
His views are deeply partisan, yet the Global Witness report stresses there is a lack of transparency and accountability in the Ivorian cocoa sector.
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