31. Blaise Compaoré in the Resolution of the Ivorian Conflict: From Belligerent to Mediator-in-Chief
- Author:
- Amy Niang
- Publication Date:
- 03-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Social Science Research Council
- Abstract:
- In the often troubled politics of West Africa, Blaise Compaoré, the former president of Burkina Faso, is a quaint figure, almost of another era. Yet with all he has experienced over a quarter century of the region’s upheavals, he is also very much a man of his time, politically astute, and a fine strategist when it comes to preserving his friendships with powerful countries and leaders whose backing has provided immunity of sorts for his alleged crimes. Compaoré has always been equally keen on keeping a clean image as a peacemaker, given the intolerable association of his name and career with a bloody 1983 coup that cost the life of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary pan-African figure. This paper is not, however, focused on Compaoré’s political career, and it is not a diatribe meant to support or amplify common critiques of his political activism or his perceived destructive practices. The popular insurgency of October 2014 that resulted in the resignation of the long-serving president gives a good measure of popular sentiment on Compaoré’s model of governance and moral ethics more emphatically than any speculative account on political rule in Burkina Faso. The aim here, rather, is to examine how, as a mediator, Compaoré builds and deploys a particular kind of “sovereignty,” informed by his capacity to tap into different registers of legitimacy, while reinterpreting the terms of mediation mandates as part of his strategies. This paper is concerned with his role in facilitating dialogue and brokering peace in the Ivorian conflict, and it specifically examines the “Compaoré system” at work in one of West Africa’s most protracted political crises. The question is whether there are ways in which a mediator can and does appropriate the mediation process by giving it a direction it might otherwise not have taken. In our case of interest—the 2002–10 military and political crisis—a consideration of Compaoré’s personal touch with regard to political and legal processes, the nature of agreements, actors’ conduct, and mediation outcomes points to different possibilities of understanding conflict management and resolution patterns in different African contexts. More important for the mediation literature, the ways of an unlikely mediator provide useful methodological and empirical resources for thinking differently about mediation as an applied science. In fact, Compaoré’s mediation career poses an analytical puzzle to perspectives commonly developed in the literature; this puzzle has to do with his counterintuitive and unconventional methods, which deserve proper engagement.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Sovereignty, and Political Crisis
- Political Geography:
- Africa and West Africa