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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Briefing: post-election crisis in Côte d'Ivoire: the 'gbonhi' war |
| Author: | Banegas, Richard |
| Year: | 2011 |
| Periodical: | African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society (ISSN 1468-2621) |
| Volume: | 110 |
| Issue: | 440 |
| Pages: | 457-468 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ivory Coast - Côte d'Ivoire |
| Subjects: | political violence militarism presidential elections 2010 |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/41240215 |
| Abstract: | The presidential election of 2010 was supposed to rescue Côte d'Ivoire from crisis. Three and a half years after the signing of the Ouagadougou Agreement, the country seemed ready to turn its back on the years of violence. Yet the opposite happened. Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to accept defeat at the hands of Alassane Dramane Ouattara plunged the country into a new political crisis. As part of understanding the conflict, this article identifies the dynamics of insurrectionary and counter-insurrectionary mobilization from below. It proposes that extreme radicalization of political violence is not just the result of a simple electoral dispute. Rather, it reveals twinned processes of upheaval in political modes of action: on the one hand, a militarization of the political battles around issues of citizenship, which confers the role of 'kingmaker' on those who carry arms; on the other, a 'militianization' of State and society, which makes control of the street the principal determinant of access to power. This 'gbonhi' (Abidjan argot for 'gang') policy has been pushed to the limit in the urban guerrilla warfare conducted in Abidjan by the armed forces of Gbagbo and Ouattara. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
