First, the city was frozen in fear. Then came a day of fierce and hot battle, with a scorching chaos. Now, Abidjan, afloat on watery lagoons, is parched, its citizenry athirst yet fearful of stepping out into the streets, where bodies lie uncollected and the smell of death emanates.
The showdown between the rival claimants to the Ivory Coast’s presidency have brought the country’s richest city and de facto capital to a civil collapse. The two men aren’t too far from each other in terms of distance. Allassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of a run-off late last year, is surrounded by U.N. peacekeeping troops in the Golf Hotel in a northern district of Abidjan. His opponent, Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent president, was believed to be in a bunker beneath the official Presidential residence in the Cocody district, just two miles away from the Golf.
In Cocody, an estimated 3,000 of the armed youth militia loyal to Gbagbo had surrounded the Presidential residence, putting up a stiff fight against the Republican Army loyal to Ouattara. But at about midday in Abidjan, the spokeswoman for the Republican forces, Affisa Bamba issued a statement saying that it had “launched an assault against Mr. Gbagbo’s residence. They have entered the residence. They have been given formal orders to capture Mr. Gbagbo without physically harming him.” The speculation, however, is that despite all the effort, Gbagbo may have left his residence days ago and may be somewhere else. Said one Cocody resident of the chaos: “It is absolute mayhem here. There are youths driving around in 4x4s shooting in the air. We can hear gunfire and the smell of corpses is getting worse.”
If Gbagbo is not found in his residence, the suspicion is that he may be at the Presidential Palace in the Plateau district, which is also in the northern Abidjan, just one lagoon across from Cocody. At the moment, there are about 300 of his loyalist youth militia around the place, apparently part of a 700-man force. But they are said to be disspirited and undirected. They are also very thirsty as the water supply situation is getting worse. The rest of the city is parched and starving too because of the fighting. The pro-Gbagbo militia had been going from door to door knocking, asking for water. But all that is available seems to be the polluted liquid in the lagoons that make up Abidjan, drawn out by people brave enough to head out and fill cannisters and cans.
The last time many residents of the capital were able to go out to buy food was Saturday. One small supermarket was secured by three Republican guards that the owner, a hardy Lebanese man, had managed to bring over to protect himself and his shoppers after pulling some strings. Inside, people shoved and pushed desperate to buy anything they could grab. Some had been trapped in their homes for two days. The shelves emptied within a few hours.
People have been isolated in pockets in the city. One woman had been trapped in her office since Thursday, unable to leave as gangs of armed men roamed the street below. She survived on of a packet of biscuits and two cans of soda. Unable to wait for a promised United Nations rescue any longer, she ran the two blocks to a more promising location, which was itself falling low on supplies. “This place is paradise,” she repeated to the people that took her in and provided her with water and some food. “This place is paradise.”
