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.
By
Blake Lambert | Correspondent of The Christian Science
Monitor
Abidjan, Ivory Coast - First came "blood diamonds"
from Sierra Leone.
Rebels
there partnered with former Liberian President Charles
Taylor in the 1990s to receive weapons that they used
to terrorize the population in exchange for the gems,
which were sold globally to unwitting consumers.
Then came "blood timber" from Liberia.
When
the UN imposed sanctions on diamond exports from Liberia
in 2001 Mr. Taylor - who is now standing trial for crimes
against humanity in The Hague - plundered his country's
forests to bankroll his brutal, cross-border wars.
Now
another West African conflict is being funded by yet
another commodity beloved in the West: chocolate.
Government
and rebel leaders of the world's leading cocoa exporter,
Ivory Coast, both siphoned off millions of dollars from
the cocoa industry to finance the 2002-03 civil war
that divided the once-stable and prosperous country
in two, according to a recent report from Global Witness,
a London-based group that focuses on resource-fueled
corruption.
The government received more than $58 million from institutions
and cocoa revenues, while the rebel New Forces pocketed
about $30 million since 2004 in taxes and revenues,
claims the report titled "Hot Chocolate: How Cocoa
fuelled the conflict in Côte d'Ivoire."
Ivory
Coast is the world's leading producer of the commodity,
responsible for about 40 percent of global exports,
which earned more than $1 billion in 2006.
Fighting
here ended with the government of President Laurent
Gbagbo in control of the south, where 90 percent of
cocoa production takes place, and the rebel New Forces
in charge of the north. The two sides signed a peace
agreement in March that put rebel leader Guillaume Soro
in the government as prime minister.
Global
Witness not only contends the cocoa trade drove the
war economy but that the industry still serves the interests
of both the government and the rebels who have reaped
political and economic benefits with impunity.
Yet
loyalists of Mr. Gbagbo's government reacted to the
findings with more bemusement than anger.
Rich Clabaugh - Staff