Ivorians on the front line

Ivory Coast was considered a model ex-French colony

By Mark Doyle BBC World Affairs correspondent

Shortly before leaving West Africa I wrote a series of radio talks about "collapsing states" in the region.

The theme was the almost complete lack of government in some countries - or, rather, government that is really little more than men with guns.

After looking at Sierra Leone and Liberia, I wrote about Ivory Coast and the fragile political and ethnic situation there, about the coups and attempted coups which had brought Ivory Coast down from being a model ex-French colony to being in danger of collapse.

But I concluded that Ivory Coast had not collapsed - yet. That word, "yet" was a sort of journalistic insurance policy, and I take no satisfaction, claim no prescience, in seeing, now, that it was a useful word to use.

The main Ivory Coast city of Abidjan started echoing to the sound of small arms and mortar fire. Small arms and mortar fire. It is a phrase that sort of rolls off the journalistic palate.

'Small arms and mortar fire'. That means hot, deadly bits of sharp metal flying through the air to kill people

Small arms and mortar fire. But then you realise. Abidjan was my home town for five years.

It is still the home town of dozens of friends and colleagues.

My old house is being lived in by my successor as West Africa correspondent, Paul Welsh, who has recorded the sound of that "small arms and mortar fire" on my - sorry, his - garden terrace.

My first, gut instinct was to regret not being there. Sure, I have covered plenty of coups, even some just outside my living room window, but this was the one in the headlines now, and I wanted to be there now.

My second thought, looking around my living room in north London, was to realise that, actually, in all honesty, I was quite glad not to be there.

'A good story'

"Small arms and mortar fire". That means hot, deadly bits of sharp metal flying through the air to kill people. Not exactly the sort of thing you want to hear from your garden terrace.

If you can hear it, it's much too close. A "good story" as we journalists say, doesn't have the same ring about it when it's in your own home town.

Foreign evacuees were taken to Yamoussoukro airport

So this is what it is like not being there. I have been listening to my colleagues on the ground and reading every scrap of the news - a bit like, I suppose, an exile in London from, say, Iraq scours the pages of the Times looking for news from home.

After thinking about my old house in Abidjan I thought about other peoples' houses. The main coverage of Ivory Coast in recent days has been the evacuation of Westerners.

Understandably, because French and American soldiers flying in to shield their nationals from danger, makes a lively story.

But it is Ivorians and other Africans who are in the real front line.

Early on in the coup attempt it was announced that the house of the main opposition leader, Alassane Ouattara, had been burnt down, almost certainly by government supporters.

I have written about his house before. It is - or, rather was - a magnificent semi-palace of a place, a pink-walled confection with air conditioned sitting rooms overlooking a glittering lagoon.

Irrespective of what I think of the man himself, I saw Mr Ouattara's house as something of a symbol of solidity in Ivory Coast.

If the opposition leader, after all, can live in such luxury, surely Ivory Coast can't be such a bad place.

Settling old scores

If the government lets him live like this, maybe democracy will survive. Perhaps I was wrong. Anyway, the semi-palace on the lagoon has been burnt down.

There are five million expatriate Africans living in Ivory Coast

There has been no evidence that Mr Ouattara was behind the coup attempt, but it seems that old scores are being settled.

That may be the next big story we hear about from Ivory Coast.

It is not very well known that in addition to the 30,000 or so Westerners living in Ivory Coast there are some five million farmers, workers and shopkeepers from other parts of Africa.

They fled poverty in their own countries to settle in a relatively wealthy nation.

But whenever there is political tension in Ivory Coast these foreign nationals are targeted by the security forces as suspect, siding with the opposition, or, well, for just being foreign.

Ask almost any African expatriate what they think of Ivory Coast and they'll say they are at best tolerated, rarely welcomed.

Immigrants victimised

The explanation for this lies perhaps in the raw deal most ordinary Ivorians have got from the relative wealth of the country. Only some of the money has trickled down to them, income disparities with the elite are still huge.

Migrants have been blamed for helping the coup

So what do poor people do when faced with such a situation?

Well, like elsewhere in the world, they use what little power they have to assert their superiority over the next group down, the immigrants.

I spoke to one such immigrant on the telephone, a low-paid worker from neighbouring Burkina Faso.

How was it?

"Oh, it's fine", he said, "Just normal really. The police are searching our houses and demanding bribes at road blocks", he said matter-of-factly, "and beating us up if we don't pay".

If the situation gets worse, and this man wants to leave, I don't think foreign paratroopers will be flying in to help him.