For the Destabilization of Ivory Coast, Ex-Child Soldiers Recruited

Hundreds of ex-child soldiers and dissidents from several Liberian disbanded factions are being recruited from the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana to help stage a rebellion in the Ivory Coast in favor of the indicted ex-president Laurent Gbargbo.

 Early in June of this year a team of Ivorian Scots were seen on the Liberian Refugee Camp trying to recruit ex child soldiers and former generals for a possible rebellion in the Ivory Coast. According to information gathered from some reluctant ex-rebel generals who were approached by the strange men from Ivory Coast, they are recruiting Liberian ex-fighters to stage a rebellion to unseat the current Ivorian government, and that their action is endorsed by the current president of France who has had a personal relationship with the imprisoned ex-president, Gbargbo.

 It can be recalled that the Ivorian madness, which began immediately after the 2000 disputed elections that brought Gbagbo to power, sparked up a coup in 2002 that escalated into a bloody crisis that saw more than twenty thousand dead and displaced. And as early as the onset of the crisis, it was reported that Liberia ex-president, Charles Taylor had a mercenary troop led by his Sierra Leonean’s RUF commander, General Mosquito. However, Mosquito was later executed on order of Charles Taylor for aborting the mission and returning to Liberia by Taylor’s SSS Boss, General Benjamin Yeatan, who himself was reported to have gotten involved in the latter part of the crisis.

 Last July, when Gbargbo’s refused to concede power to Mr Ouattara, after a December 2010 presidential election which UN said he lost to Alansan Outatra, another waves of violence erupted in the country. And In 2011 Mr Gbagbo was eventually captured by UN peacekeepers and forces loyal to Alasan Ouattara, and handed to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to be tried on charges of crimes against humanity.

 However, earlier this week, campaign group Human Rights Watch published a report saying militants loyal to Mr Gbagbo based in Liberia had killed at least 40 people in cross-border raids since last July. According to the New York-based human rights watch group, militants are recruiting children as young as 14 to attack Ivorians who are aligned to President Alassane Ouattara and live close to the border. The report is based on HRW’s field work in Liberian towns bordering Ivory Coast where interviews with 21 Ivorian and Liberian former mercenaries were conducted. It is no hidden secret that hundreds of Liberian ex-combatants have been involved in the Ivory Coast from the onset of the madness.

According to a research conducted by IDEFOCS earlier this year on the Buduburam Refugee Camp, hundreds of Liberian mercenaries have fought both on behalf of the deposed former Ivorian president, Laurent Gbagbo, and current president Alansan Ouattara in last year's political unrest. And many of these mercenaries who fled Ivory Coast following the arrest of the former president Laurent Gbagbo last year are now living in exile, awaiting fresh conflict to spark up in West Africa.

 About two weeks ago, UN reinforcements were sent to a bordering region between Liberia and Ivory Coast following rumors of a planned attack by militias loyal to Mr. Gbargbo. The BBC's John James in Abidjan reported last week that the volatile border region has seen a number of cross-border attacks over recent months, blamed on Liberian mercenaries and Ivorian militia fighters.

 However, this mass recruitment of ex-combatants living in Liberia and exile for the destabilization of the sub region can actually be attributed to the failure of the UN DDRR program intended to rehabilitate and reintegrate thousands of Liberian ex-fighters with special emphasis on child combatants. In my previous work, ‘Hot Boys: the search for Africa lost children’, it was predicted that, ‘with several thousand of such people (ex-child soldiers) unaccounted for around West Africa, there yet remain a more serious impediment to sustainable peace and security in the region.’

 Unfortunately, the warning was ignored as governments in West Africa failed to establish relevant programs to address the plight of former child soldiers left unaffected by the UN DDRR programs.

 The UN Security Council resolution 1509(c) (2003) mandates UNMIL to: “develop an action plan for the overall implementation of a disarmament, demobilization, reintegration, and repatriation (DDRR) program for all armed parties, with particular attention to the special needs of child combatants...in the DDRR process”.

 Sadly, with about 80 million United States Dollars exhausted by the DDRR program it had failed tremendously to meet the needs of its targeted beneficiaries, many of whom are now full grown mercenaries, awaiting fresh trouble to spark up in the region.