The Slippery Slopes into Civil War: Comparing Explanations for the Intra-state Wars in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire

Abstract

The main thrust of this study is an in-depth comparative examination of the distinct and shared factors of civil wars in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire. The scourge of civil conflict in these two countries had widespread implications for the stability of the West African sub-region as a whole. The first Liberian Civil War (1989-1996) spread like a bush fire to Sierra Leone (1991-2002), snowballed to Côte d'Ivoire (2002-2011), and turned back to Liberia with the Second Liberian Civil War (1999-2003) ending with the unceremonious exit from power of warlord cum President Charles Taylor who had been implicated in so much of the fighting across the region. These post-Cold War intra-state wars killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and created millions of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Masses of refugees crossing international borders created insecurity in neighbouring Guinea-Conakry but also impacted on Ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia through the refugee camps established there. Apart from the Anglophone/Francophone civil war comparison, the distinctive feature of this thesis is that it is firmly based on the views of Africans, many of whom were active participants, as to what were the most significant factors of the civil wars. Whilst it draws upon the growing theoretical literature on the factors of civil war, interviews in the field made it possible to interrogate the validity of these theories in the eyes of local stakeholders themselves. The focus was on two distinct types of theories: the psychological theories of conflict (Dollard et al, 1939; Davies 1962; Gurr 1970; Berkowitz 1989; Goor, Rupensinghe, and Scarcorne 1996) and a subset of the economic theories of civil war.