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The South African Airways flight touched down in Abidjan at 9 p.m. Tuesday after a nine-hour journey from Johannesburg. I was on my way to Liberia to interview Africa's first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and had planned a one-night stopover in the capital of the Ivory Coast before continuing to Monrovia. I had been to Abidjan a dozen times in the mid-1990s, when the city was the sophisticated hub of West Africa, a glittering jewel of skyscrapers, French-style cafés and bustling markets. But elegance and stability had long since given way to a civil war, corruption, and near continuous political unrest.
I didn't know it at the time, but the day before my arrival the United Nations-backed International Working Group on Ivory Coast had recommended disbanding the National Assembly controlled by southern strongman Laurent Gbagbo because its mandate had expired. This effectively put the Ivory Coast under the control of a 7,500-member U.N. force. At that news, Gbagbo supporters took to the streets and began attacking U.N. bases. The day after I arrived, Bangladeshi troops fired on rampaging crowds outside a U.N. compound in a town in the western part of the country, killing four people. The violence continued today, with rioting youths ignoring Gbabgo's pleas for calm and the U.N. threatening sanctions over an announcement from Gbabgo's party that it was pulling out of U.N.-backed peace talks.
For me, the first sign of trouble was the fact that hotel had failed to send a car to pick me up, as the reservations clerk had promised. When I phoned the front desk, the receptionist mumbled something about "car trouble" and told me to take a taxi for 3,000 West African francs (about $6) to the hotel in Le Plateau, the commercial center of Abidjan built on the shores of a steamy lagoon. Then, outside the terminal, I was set up on by an aggressive gang of taxi drivers and hommes de securite (security men) who wrenched my bags away from me and demanded $50 for the trip. It felt more like an encounter in such lawless countries as Congo or Nigeria than in the orderly city I'd remembered. "But the hotel told me it costs $6," I argued. The drivers shook their heads. "It's not worth the risk," said one. What risk? I wondered. We settled on $20 and I climbed in the back of battered Toyota.
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We hit the first roadblock two minutes later: piles of tires, chunks of metal, big rocks and other detritus scattered in the wide avenue leading from the airport. In the darkness of a near-moonless night I could make out bands of young men stopping cars, pounding on windshields and windows, and shouting epithets. Some of them carried clubs or bricks. "Les Jeunes Patriotes," my driver mumbled. These Young Patriots are Gbagbo loyalists and much of their anger was aimed at France--the former colonial power now accused of supporting rebels who have controlled most of the north since civil war erupted in 2002. As we approached the first barricades, my sweating driver told me that gangs were looking for "white men"--automatically assumed to be from France.
Suddenly, young men were all around the car. "Give me some money--quick!" the driver said. I shoved a $20 bill into his hand. He proffered the note to a shirtless teenager carrying a club, who glared at me, then waved us through. We hit five more roadblocks over the mile; I followed the same procedure each time. After what seemed like hours we reached a wide bridge leading to the Plateau. I took in the sight of Abidjan's brightly lit skyline, which now seemed little more than an illusion, a mocking memory of the grand city that it used to be. A pack of government troops--the first official authorities I'd seen since starting out from the airport--had set up another roadblock on the bridge. They pulled us over. Two soldiers staggered toward the vehicle, AK-47s slung over their shoulders; both were obviously drunk. Terrified, I thought of my colleague Jean Helene, a French war correspondent who had been shot dead by an Ivorian policeman while sitting in his car in front of Abidjan's police headquarters in 2003. The authorities here were not to be trusted.
"Where are you from?" slurred one of the soldiers in French, inches from my face.
"I'm an American," I said.
He demanded my passport, leafed roughly through it. He circled around the car, peered at my luggage in the trunk.
"Open," he demanded. I complied. I've been around drunk soldiers many times in the course of a decade of reporting in Africa; few encounters were more frightening. In my heaviest American accent, I began chatting him up in French. I told him how wonderful his country was, what a great job the troops were doing; I asked him if I could buy him a beer. As he rifled through my computer bag, he seemed to soften. He zipped up the bag and stepped away.
"You can get in the car," he said. I sat in the back and closed the door. Then both of the troops leaned in the window. "OK," the first one said. "So what do you have for us?" I reached into my wallet, pulled out two fifties, stuffed them in their hands. "Buy yourself a great meal, take care of your families," I said. "Can I go now?" They nodded. We crossed the bridge and, after 30 minutes of driving around barricaded streets and alleys in near total darkness, we found our way to the Hotel Tiama.
The situation had worsened the next morning. Le Plateau was dead quiet--shut down by the Young Patriots. Schools and shops were closed, no cars moved. I stepped out of the lobby and looked both ways: gangs of youths strutted around at both ends of the street. I had a plane to catch at 9:20 a.m. to Monrovia, but the hotel manager told me that it was too dangerous to travel back to Abidjan airport. "They are looking for white faces," he said. In the lobby I ran into two members of a flight crew from Emirates Airlines, a Briton and a Canadian, who had been attacked at 1 a.m. on the way in from the airport. Wielding nail-studded clubs, a band of thugs had surrounded their two-car convoy, beaten on the hood, and threatened to pull out four terrified French female flight attendants. Somehow, they had made to the Tiama without getting hurt. A dozen other foreigners sat in the lobby, marooned. I begged an American diplomat, who was heading to the airport with a pack of private security men, to give me a lift. "Can't assume the responsibility," he said, then hustled off.
Finally, 40 minutes before my flight, the hotel manager reappeared with the police chief from the local station across the street. "He'll give you protection," the manager said. "But for a price." A quick negotiation ensued; we settled on $200. The chief stuck the money in his pocket. I climbed into the back of a Volkswagen Golf with him and two AK-47 wielding comrades, and we set out for the airport. The cops stuck their guns out the windows. "Even for us this is a big risk," the chief said. On the streets the Young Patriots were out in the thousands. The cop sitting next to me, a good-natured sort who wanted to practice his English, told me that the Ivory Coast was filled with "boys like these--unemployed, no schooling, nothing to do each day. It makes them feel important to go into the streets to make trouble." The real villain, he said, was France. "The French colonials stole everything from us," he said, "and they are still interfering in our affairs. Now these boys want revenge against them." At one barricade I thought I saw a battered corpse pressed up against a tire. We didn't stop. We reached the final barricade before the airport. Before the cops could swerve around it, two dozen young thugs surrounded the Golf. The Young Patriots peered inside. "Francais! Francais!" they shouted.
"No, no, he's an American," the police chief said. "Quickly--show them your passport." The passport was locked in the trunk. Hands shaking, I fumbled for my wallet and extracted my California driver's license. "American! American!" I said, thinking: this must be one of the few places left in the world where such a declaration can get one out of trouble. After inspecting the license, the Young Patriots gave me the thumbs up and waved us through. I thanked the cops--wondering if they would have intervened if the Young Patriots had pulled me from the car--and ran into the terminal, just in time to board my flight to Monrovia. The last time I had traveled in West Africa, a decade ago, Liberia was a country in chaos while the Ivory Coast was a vacation destination. Now Liberia is a country at peace while Ivory Coast is spiraling into deepening violence. The only thing certain on this turbulent continent, it is seems, is that the tables never stop turning.
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