One day in late March 2011, at the height of Ivory Coast‘s postelection violence, a 23-year-old cocoa farmer was shot in the back by unknown gunmen and left for dead on the outskirts of Niambly, a village of 400 mud-brick houses three kilometers outside the western town of Duekoue.
In response, the village’s roughly 3,000 residents decided it was no longer safe and began to flee. According to village chief Gabriel Tahe, nearly all of them ended up in Duekoue’s Carrefour neighborhood, inhabited mainly by fellow members of the Guere ethnic group.
With this move, Niambly’s residents unwittingly placed themselves at the center of the deadliest episode of the conflict, which erupted after former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down despite losing the November 2010 runoff vote to current President Alassane Ouattara.
Days later, on March 29, pro-Ouattara fighters including soldiers, militiamen and traditional hunters tore through Carrefour, killing hundreds. Many of the victims were men from the Guere ethnic group, which largely supported Gbagbo in the disputed vote. At least 30 were confirmed Niambly residents, said Chief Tahe.
The trouble for Niambly did not stop there. After the conflict ended and Ouattara took office in May 2011, 800 residents of the village were settled in a United Nations-guarded camp for people displaced by the fighting. In an attack last July that underscored persistent tensions in the region, the camp was overrun by a mob assisted by traditional hunters, known as dozos, and soldiers from Ouattara’s army, the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast. Nearly the entire camp was burned to the ground and at least eight people were killed, including two from Niambly, according to Chief Tahe. Rights groups suspect the total was higher.
Today, around two-thirds of Niambly’s residents have returned to the village, rebuilding homes that were still salvageable after the fighting ended; some homes remain little more than rubble. But while many residents said they were ready to move on from the conflict, which claimed more than 3,000 lives nationwide, they described lingering fears about the pro-Ouattara forces that took part in the attacks against them.
The violence inflicted on Niambly residents, apparently with impunity, shows the problem of one-sided justice that is troubling Ivory Coast. Two years after the postelection violence, only supporters of former president Gbagbo have been charged for crimes, although it is widely acknowledged that abuses were committed on both sides. The Ivorian judiciary has charged and detained 55 Gbagbo loyalists for violent crimes.