Case Study: Le conflit Kotoko et Arabes Choa au Cameroun

I. Outline of the study

The Institut pour la Gouvernance en Afrique Centrale (Institute for Governance in Central Africa) has recognised that identity-based conflicts are a major research issue. A certain number of reasons linked to the context of Central Africa and particularly Cameroon justify this:

• Local level clashes between groups or communities, who justify their reciprocal hostility through their ethnic, religious or regional belonging, are regularly reported by the media and sometimes take on worrying proportions. At their root are often land disputes, political disturbances or unimportant events.

• At the national level the workings of the State and national cohesion, are weakened as a result of a the plural nature of society, and the instrumentalisation to various ends of the range of identities (positioning of the elites, organisation of political parties, elections) and access to privileges (both material and symbolic) of the State etc. This instrumentalisation, because it very often generates exclusion and therefore frustration, has the potential to generate conflict.

• These phenomena, whilst they have been touched upon by isolated research initiatives, and stayed within the sphere of academic interest, remain only partially documented. This kind of conflict has up until now not been the object of any deliberately constructed political action from which we could expect effective solutions in terms of the governance of diversity.

In the measure that any victim is one victim too many the work of public actors needs to consist of finding just remedy to these conflicts, and to prevent their occurrence whenever possible. This is the issue at the basis of the global IGAC research programme into conflict.

Through the development of the conflict analysis tool for inter-community conflict at the local level (ICLL), the IGAC is seeking to have at its disposal a tool to comprehend the dynamics of such conflicts. This would entail an understanding of how these conflicts emerge, and how they are linked with reality as well as with the subjective views of the populations who are its protagonists. Fieldwork was put carried out to this end: with the aim of observing and analysing the evolution of relations between the Kotoko and Choa Arab communities in the Far North of Cameroon, with a focus on their apparent tendency towards conflict. The town of Kousseri was chosen for the application of this method.

–  1. Methodological choices

The following phases were defined:

• a. The theoretical development of the conflict analysis tool ICLL that was used for the implementation of the case study.
• b. Field research in order to collect data. This was done through three basic methodological approaches consisting essentially of qualitative research methods: observation, in depth interviews, and group discussions. Three methods were used in order to be able to cross-reference the data collected. We included in our research sample a wide range of people, selected to include a spectrum of: origins, age, gender, socio-economic statuses, people of influence within the two communities, and people with different roles in past events.

–  2. The context of the case study

The town of Kousseri was the site of bloody confrontations between the Kotoko and Choa Arabs, the two main populations of the town, at the start of the 1990s [1]. The Kotoko and Choa Arabs have long been engaged in a struggle for predominance and control of local political positions. When new rules came into play as part of the process of democratic reform, the former, who are at a numerical disadvantage, feared that they would be totally ousted. The latter (the Arabs) converted their demographic advantage into a resource for the “democratic” conquest of key positions at the local level.

–  3. And the wider context of Cameroon

In Cameroon there are regularly conflicts between different communities [2], who are mobilised in violent battles on the basis of ethnic rivalries. The size and impact of these conflicts are strongly dependent on context, stakes, and the capacity of the State to preserve public order when it is shaken in this way. It is important to understand the importance such incidents by remembering the risks that such conflicts can present in the context of a fragile State [3]. This is because over and above the fact of their intrinsic violence, these conflicts are far from having a simple origin in the ontological rivalry between the communities and are much more symptomatic of the short-comings of the State in matters of governance [4]. They reveal how often a society can be exposed to the risk of civil war, in the measure that these are very often the result of the aggravation or extrapolation of local turf wars.

Has the pacification of nearly two decades, combined with other social processes, succeeded in curbing the tendency and predispositions of both parties to conflict?

Since the conflict of 1992 [5], the region of Logone – Chari has not been the site of any conflicts of comparable intensity. Does this mean that we can imagine that, nearly twenty years later, that the two communities that confronted each other have buried the hatchet? The relations between the two communities, as well as the dynamics of their conflict come from various sources:

• Population, occupation and the control of space.
• A long history in collective memory of humiliations, and competitive victimhood.
• Contemporary political stakes.

We think that it is not possible to understand the relations between Kotoko and Choa Arabs, what this relationship has become today and how it is likely to evolve, without understanding the three sources cited above. These sources structure the specific context in which we carried out our research.

–  4. Culture: The issue of the populating of space

The region of the Far North is bordered to the north by Lake Chad, to the east by Chad, to the west by Nigeria and to the south by the Cameroonian region of the North and is made up of six regions of Mayo Tsanaga, Mayo-Sava, Mayo-Danay, Mayo-Kani, Diamaré and Logone - Chari. It is in the region of Logone - Chari [6] that has an area of 10.969 Km2, and more specifically in the town of Kousseri, which is the administrative capital of the region, where we focussed our research.

Besides the capital of the region the following districts make up its administrative geography: Zina, Waza, Makari, Logone Birni, ile Alifa, Goulfey, Fotokol, Darak and Blangoua. The climatic conditions of the region Sudano-Sahelian to its south, and Sahelian to its north, and therefore do not favour agro pastoral activities due to a lack of water. In effect, the low levels of precipitation mean that this area of Cameroon is ecologically austere, even though it has the highest population density of the country. Despite this the administrative district of Logone - Chari has had a significant population influx, with immigrants coming in search of water points and access to fishing resources - due to the location of Lake Chad at the top of the region and the Logone and Chari rivers to the east. As well as these ecological resources other factors have also influenced the movement of populations to this region.

Most important are the commercial routes that have crossed this area since the prosperous times of the 14th and 15th centuries and which are today supplied by trade networks of modern goods, from both local and western manufacture. These goods are exchanged by various means of circulation between neighbouring Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. The dominant modes of trade are trafficking and smuggling, as the landscape of the bush is the dominant configuration of the southern shores of Lake Chad and is well adapted to strategies of fiscal disobedience. This area is used by numerous networks of smugglers who operate across the different frontiers that border this region. The town of Kousseri is therefore geographically in a prime location for carrying out trade, which could explain its importance for a group who are traditionally traders like as the Arabs who dominate the local economy [7]. This domination is to the level that the Arab language, originally the language of trade, has become the main language of communication between all the communities and even amongst the Kotoko themselves, whose ethnic unity [8] masks a diversity of dialects.

Secondly, humanitarian issues have also contributed to giving a specific form to the demographics of the region. The wars occurring in Chad over the past forty years have led to massive population movements across the Logone, with Kousseri and its surroundings as the principal destination. After arriving as temporary exiles, some parts of the population have chosen to put down roots here.

In this maelstrom of migration, movement and population, this area has developed a socio-ethnic map in which the Kotoko and Choa Arab are the two principal ethnic groups. Along side them live a string of minority ethnicities: the Kanouri, Mousgoum, Massa, and Moundang.

–  5. Memory: The influence of history on the present

When we examine the long history of cohabitation between the populations that make up the diverse human mixture in the region of Logone-Chari we can see that between the two main communities of the Kotoko and the Choa Arab there is a swinging pendulum of alternating dominance, which depends on the influence of different outside actors [9].

The Kotoko benefit from holding the status of antecedence in terms of settlement in this area. Their presence here takes on character of legend when trace their ancestry back to the Sao [10]. The influence of the Sao civilisation between the 12th and 14th century has not escaped historical and archaeological notice. It is this antecedence and ‘indigenousness’ that provide historical and traditional legitimacy to their dominance of this region. This dominance started to be undermined in their relations with the Choa Arabs at the end of the 19th century to the favour of the Choa, with the arrival of the Arab cavalry led by Rabah.

This Arab conqueror obviously swung the hegemonic pendulum to the benefit of the immigrant Arab population through affinity based preferential treatment. This period was quickly brought to an end by French imperialism. The advance of French colonisation, in its work of checking and ousting Arab influences, relied on the Kotoko. This group saw in this an alliance allowing them to reconquer their dominant position, whilst gaining from this proximity substantial advantages in terms of education, which would allow them to build up the personnel and patronage used in the first post-colonial government.

This dominance was consolidated at the time of the creation of the independent State of Cameroon [11]. In effect, eminent politicians such as Ousmane Mey, ‘Immovable Governor’ (Gaillard: 1994) of North Cameroon [12] and Ali Kirna, Provincial Delegate of Education for the Greater North were both of Kotoko ethnicity. This situation led Thierno Bah to say that: “The position of Ousman Mey in the high reaches of the State and the quasi intimacy between him and Ahidjo had, at the local level, an impact that no one could say was not prejudicial to good inter-ethnic relations between the Kotoko and Choa Arabs. The latter accused him of partisan behaviour in his politics, administration and in the allocation of resources which were of an almost exclusive benefit to the Kotoko” [13].

This observation highlights an important fact that also appears in the course of the narratives of our research sample: each community retains from their period of decline from dominance the memory of humiliation and marginality which bring out the various abuses from the other community. Both sides consider themselves, from a historical point of view, to have been the victim of the other. This brings them into a relation of competitive victimhood, where each accuses the other of being at the origin of the conflict, and contend that they only ever tried to protect themselves from the other group.

–  6. Politics: contemporary politics

In any event, to once again use the pendulum metaphor, it continues to swing. As it swings slowly, demographics [14] have insidiously become a resource which eventually, as a result of the democratic reforms at the beginning of the 1990s, become the political joker of the Choa Arab community. The Mayor of Kousseri used the following words to comment on this change: “They [the Kotoko] are intellectual, but they can do nothing against democracy …you are educated and you have a vote. You did not go to school [implying that the Arabs are less educated] and you still have a vote… in democracy it is the numbers that count” [15].

These latter used the demographic card to return to dominance, conquering their political prizes under the banner of the RDPC, the party in power [16]. The Choa Arab could not deny themselves the advantages of the possession of such an important captive constituency in their portion of the national electorate. It is in the midst of these events that, in January 1992, erupted one of the most violent conflicts that has been recorded between the two communities. Twenty years after these events, what is the legacy of this clash, and on what foundations are today’s relations between the two communities built?
The ‘razzia’ by the Arab community of political prizes in play is very clearly visible at the level of the distribution of municipal and parliamentary positions – resulting in a significant local marginalisation of the Kotoko political elites, who only now count as reserve candidate in the creation of electoral lists which have as a criteria to reflect social diversity. In the past an important aim, the neutralisation and vassalage of the Kotoko political elites is so well established at the present day, that it has been relegated to the place of secondary worry for the clan factions of the Arab bloc.

This situation of quasi dominance has resulted in a shifting of political divisions: these no longer bring the Arab and the Kotoko head to head, but now are rather a matter of the confrontation of different Arab clans under the leadership of political elites of this community [17]. The clans’ self-identification and distinctions are complex, even in the opinion of certain pre-eminent members of their own community . These distinctions are based on genealogical ramifications that are recorded within oral tradition (Oueld Eli, Banisset, Salamat, Hemmadiye, Essala, Kawalmé, etc.).

In this game of intra-ethnic and inter-clan alliances, each clan wishes to have the largest coalition and in order to collect the maximum number of votes seeks the support of the Kotoko. Is it possible to envisage that the situation is evolving towards a reconfiguration of political alliances that would result in the disappearance, at least in the political sphere, of the antagonisms between the Arabs and the Kotoko? It is not possible to draw conclusions from the current situation, let alone predict possible future changes. It is also worth thinking about to what extent the Kotoko will adapt to a situation where they are politically marginalised, and dominated both economically and culturally through language (Arabic).

In any case, whilst the ethnic origin of political protagonists continues to be a determinant political marker the powder keg of identity will not have been damped.

II. Research results

The interviews carried out allowed us access to various kinds of information analysed in the following sections:

–  1. The state of mind of the elite affected by sensitivity and suspicion

In exchanges with elites of both communities it appeared to us that beyond the conventions of the politically correct there is strong suspicion and sensitivity at the mention of relations between the communities.

The former governor of the Northern province Mr Ousmane MEY [18], to whom the Arabs attribute the greater part of their problems, managed to say very few things in relation to our subject in the course of an hour-long interview. He restricted himself to affirming in a rather obscure tone, far from all contrition: “They tell themselves many things. But I will only speak in my memoirs. Who knows what would happen if I spoke now?” and later “We [Kotoko] have learnt the lessons of what happened [reference to the events of 1992] and remain vigilant… It is not yet the moment to speak”. A Kotoko civil servant told us under the protection of anonymity: “these Arabs know only violence. What kind of understanding is possible? With them we can only pretend… they want to take everything, control everything. We will see what all that will lead to”. In the same tone an important figure in the same community affirmed “It is them [the Arabs] who have the money. They think that they can buy everything. Buying civil servants from here and from Yaoundé, buy our girls, buy our lands… we have understood this. But each thing has its time.”

We recorded many similar sentiments, from which it appears that in the mind of the Kotoko elite the image of the Arab is built around a few strong (and caricatured) images and imbued with violence. They call them deceitful, invaders, aggressors… The sometimes shameless attitude of the Arab community that perpetuates this can be seen in certain facts and some stories, confirmed by sources in the judicial sector. Some Arabs guilty of the murder of members of the Kotoko community (in isolated criminal incidents) were helped to escape their criminal sentences by wealthy members of their own community. Far from being a compassionate action this kind of intervention seems rather to be part of a desire to defy the victim community (the Kotoko). A young Arab trader whom we asked for his opinion on the matter did not hesitate to say “In this type of situation, our honour is at stake. Those people [the Kotoko] when they killed us before, who protected us? It is they who held the administration and could read the law. If today we can, with the money we have, help one of our brothers who have problems with the Kotoko it is only just”.

In the same vein, the Mayor of Kousseri has the reputation (which he seems in part to take on) of having the tendency to rant about ethnicity in his public speeches. This was the case during local festivities for the 26th anniversary of the RDPC in March 2011. Is this simply a political tactic and populist manoeuvre, in order to consolidate his legitimacy within his electorate by playing the community card? In the privacy of his office at least he is convinced of the just cause that his power symbolises. “The Kotoko know what they made us suffer under Ahidjo…when injustices are accumulated, things end up erupting”. Later he affirms that: “For a long time the Kotoko treated us as less than nothing. People whose only value is behind the oxen. Since 1997 [election year in Cameroon] we have taken things into hand and they can no longer do anything as we are in the majority. It is the rule of democracy”.

However, Kotoko aristocrat circles are not prepared to accept that the Arab influence overflows even slightly from the sphere of modern politics, even when this is through taking possession of traditional sources of power as a result of mixed parentage. This is how the problem of the succession of the Kotoko sultanate of Afade, about 50 km from Kousseri has been viewed. Nobles of this fiefdom, with the support of other Kotoko elites were strongly opposed to the succession of a prince with an Arab mother. In talking about this problem one of our interviewees said “All the Kotoko sultans have Arab wives, but this is how they behave with us [children from mixed marriages]”.

–  2. Competitive victimhood

The widespread existence of an ‘ideology’ of victimhood is another attitude that appeared through the collection of narratives. This ‘ideology’ operates through a strategy of inversion of the roles of victim-perpetrator in the way that past and present are interpreted. This has been for example very noticeable in the way that members of the different communities recount the past. A typical example would be the following: the Mayor’s narrative of the events of 1992 fails to mention the fact that the act of violence that was at the origin of the escalation of conflict can be attributed to members of his community [19]:

« When I saw the tensions resulting from the refusal to register members of the Arab community due to their apparently uncertain nationality, I understood that some serious things could happen. We had just found out that the delegate of MINEPAT of the time, a Kotoko [called Djibril Ndali], had been killed by bandits on his return from a trip to the bush. This made me fear the worst. I went to see the Prefect to alert him of my fears and to recommend to him to take urgent measures. Barely had I returned when there were already fatalities ».

The author of this tale makes the significant omission of not mentioning the identity of the “bandits” in question who carried out the murder which he refers to [20]. Further on, he also fails to mention the identity of the author of shot that will result in the ‘fatality’, which is to say the death of a member of the Kotoko community, in order to place an emphasis on the exclusion of his community from the upcoming elections.

Whilst the Arabs have the tendency to portray themselves as the eternal victims of the Kotoko, the latter are much more likely to enumerate the abuses that they are subjected to in the present day; ignoring the privileges that they had during the decades of authoritarianism under Ahidjo. This is the period in which the Kotoko are accused of having carried out various abuses against members of the Arab community. This attitude of denial, which consists of placing on the other the entire responsibility for all wrongs, is for example visible in the remarks made by a retired Kotoko civil servant who used to work in the region: “Choa Arabs do not like school. They prefer to look after their cattle or hang around in the bush. Leadership was difficult with those kinds of people. One needed to be firm. This is what the whites had understood. We are all Muslim. But they have the mentality of the bush. For their problems and backwardness they have only themselves to blame”. Such comments show, on the part of those who hold such opinions, the desire to retrospectively construct a clean conscience, or even an ideology through which to filter reality. But we can also see a grain of truth in these tales, as the wealthy Arab trader Mr AHMAT TOM, told us the following: “My parents gave two cattle to the ‘sous-préfet’ in 1961 so that I did not have to go to school”.

–  3. The outward looking attitude of the Arab community, and its impact on religion and security

Islam is the main religion of the two communities and as a result is plagued from within by the divisions between the two groups. This was visible during Ramadan in 2010 where the celebrations to mark the end of the period of fasting happen at the end of the lunar month, announced by the appearance of the crescent moon. This event does not happen in all Muslim countries simultaneously, and this is the case with Chad and Cameroon in 2010: a lag of 24 hours occurred between the date used by the Commission of the Crescent Moon based in Yaoundé in Cameroon, and by the Muslim Community of Chad.

It was reported to us that dissension appeared at this time between Muslim believers in Kousseri [21]. One group, the majority of which were Choa Arabs chose to celebrate at the same time as Chad, whilst members of the Kotoko community followed the date chosen by Yaoundé. This situation revealed a deeper fact, that of the close links to Chad of the Choa Arabs in Cameroon. This is any case the explanation put forwards by those that we questioned in administrative circles and within the Kotoko Community. One of our interviewees provided us with the following explanation: “The Arabs live here. But they have their hearts on the other side, where their ancestors came from, and where they still have cousins, uncles and grandparents. There are even Arab families where brothers end up one in a high military position in Yaoundé, and the other in an important position in Chad. It is therefore not surprising that the majority of them feel more linked to N’djamena than Yaoundé.”

This outward looking attitude, which seems to damage the harmony and cohesion within the local religious community, is a cause for worry for the authorities that we spoke to. Especially as they believe that such dissension can serve as a basis for the propagation of religious extremism from a neighbour such as Nigeria, where such phenomena has already resulted in serious social unrest. The other consequences of this are in the domain of security. There is a problem with the illegal and unregulated possession of fire-arms by the inhabitants of this region, a problem that seems more acute among the Arab community.

It was therefore common for us to hear: “Every family owns a weapon. They buy them easily from their brothers in Chad”. In the same way one of our local sources reported that “There were important political clashes during which the authorities had to delay votes and decisions because the intelligence services had established that the Arabs had come with in the boot of their [Peugeot] 504 weapons and ammunitions to be able to battle if necessary” [22]. The risk of escalation to armed conflict is therefore a constant reality in local conflict.

–  4. Latent struggle around land ownership

Traditionally the control of land belongs to the various Kotoko principalities. The Kotoko chiefs exercise the privileges of first rank traditional chiefs. This status, which goes back to French colonial arrangements, gives the Kotoko chiefs geographic jurisdiction and limits the power of Arab chiefdoms to a subaltern status with a purely symbolic function of ethnic representation, despite the large demographic majority of the members of these chiefdoms.

As a result it is through municipal and commercial power that the Arabs tried to challenge this aristocratic monopoly on the land by the Kotoko, in a context where there is more and more demand for land from Chadians. The latter consider owning property in Cameroon as a form of security against the uncertainties and instabilities that they fear at home. Petrol money plays a role in this as lever to their ambitions, as they must often use third parties to reach their goal of land ownership. The opinion of a Kotoko neighbourhood leader [23] is that:

« Money cannot buy everything… the land is everything that we have. Our ancestors are buried here, and our children will not go without because we have sold everything. Today, because they [the Arab] have a lot of money they want to grab everything ».

The local courts today are processing many cases touching on land ownership, in which members of the two communities are opposed. The local prison services [24] also informed us that they had received many inmates as a result of land related cases, condemned for their involvement in violent acts (members of all the communities). In managing these conflicts the administrative authorities seem preoccupied with the search for appeasement, to the point of leaving cases unprocessed for fear that all possible outcomes will result in a violent reaction from the wronged party.

–  5. Alarmism of the authorities

In our formal and informal conversations with members of the administration we found a strong tendency towards alarmism and a feeling of helplessness in the face of the sensitivity and the complexity of the situation. The feeling of permanent instability, linked to the fact that even an isolated incident can result in an outburst, seems to be shared. The experience and personal ingenuity of those in positions of responsibility seem to be the only sources of direction for decision making within the local administration.

There is no institutional role in place in a directed and planned sense that can capitalise on knowledge of managing crises (within an inter-cultural context) within the administration. Moreover this position would be indispensible in order to accumulate institutional knowledge, and to respond in situations of conflict. Some of our interlocutors stated their dissatisfaction with the fact that in such a sensitive zone the responsibility for certain districts is given into the care of: “green-horns, for reasons that are only known to those in Yaoundé who nominate them to these positions”.

The exercise of public power is faced with the need to integrate local power interests, outside influences as they are exercised on the local level, and the interests of the political-administrative elites whose influence is exercised from Yaoundé. This was brought to our notice in terms of the positive aspects of this influence, through the initiative by the President of the National Assembly to start a dialogue between the two communities at the beginning of 2011 (the same as that taken by other elites). It is no less important that for certain authorities encountered many local troubles, including at the political level, are the consequence of the kind of leadership exercised locally by the bureaucratic elites of the different communities. These latter, in a game of fireman and arsonist, use divisions in order to render themselves indispensible in the eyes of the central authorities, concerned with maintenance of balance in the distribution of administrative positions between members of the different communities.

–  6. The mindset of young people: between rupture and continuity

The two major tendencies that affect the mentality of young people are urbanisation and education. Through a focus group with young people of the Kotoko [25] we glimpsed a tendency to reject the heritage of past hatreds. “We play football together during holiday championships. In our teams we do not differentiate ourselves. These problems are those of our parents and of politicians. People can fight without it being about their ethnic differences”. Is it the effect of education that is at the root of this different mindset? It was pointed out to us that the school authorities have been making an effort to erase ethnic references within the classroom [26] and have abolished of all forms of grouping on the basis of community.

This is not to say that the promotion of education does not meet with numerous obstacles. Firstly due to insufficient investment on the part of the State: “the last programme was the one piloted by the PDRP [Programme de Développement Rural et Participatif – Programme for Rural and Participatory Development] and its end several years ago signalled the end of financing of educational structures here” [27]. On the other hand, the end of this investment was also due to the inter-community tensions and the low level of investment of the elites in this work.

Urbanisation [28] affects the set of values that establish hierarchies and legitimate riches. The ideological domination of capitalism has reached the bush. Henceforth money and profit are king, after the desolation of rural agricultural economies that followed structural adjustment [29]. Young people are the motors of this change. It is they that are first affected by the desire to possess, accumulate, hoard and invest money. The fact of possessing it confers a certain power to its holder, as does the accumulation of goods and commodities, the to ability distribute or buy favours, to command and be obeyed. To lack these things becomes to the contrary a state of dispossession, powerlessness, dependence and social marginality.

One of the visible effects of this empire of money, combined with the shrinking of the State capacity to maintain effective and sufficient influence through the offer of public employment, has pushed many young people down the road of trafficking and the informal economy. These latter are not interested in the fact that trade is not one of the traditional professions of their family. The essential for them is that they find their place and can become “somebody”. “We, we want to get out and also become rich. School is good. But we need money… when we do business no one cares who is Kotoko or Arab” a young Kotoko trader told us.

What is the impact that this slow change in the sociology and anthropology of trade practices can have on the survival of identity and inter-ethnic relations? It is a major factor whose consequences are imagined through the hypotheses of decompartmentalisation of community trade networks, with the inevitable result of the creation of new social links based on trust, and movement towards new forms of otherness. The ancient institution of the community based division of labour would in this way crumble, taking with it one of the facets of the old world and its obsolete identities.

It is from the starting point of such a hypothesis that we could study the new networks of trade; the way in which young entrepreneurs place themselves within them; their perception of each other; the values that structure the alliances that make these networks; and the manner in which ethnic distinctions are reinvested, disinvested or blurred within these new relations. It would especially allow us to understand or see how the practices and trust that emerge from purely commercial stakes; and the reasoning and discursive suppositions that underpin them modify the identity based relations of the protagonists without their knowledge.

–  7. Perspectives and recommendations

This outline we have created of the local discourse, and observed or reported attitudes, allow us to highlight the categories characteristic within a discourse with a strong polemical [30] and ostracising tendency, based on social prejudices and representations. This essentialist, pompous and peremptory discourse that does not put into perspective its verdicts, is not able see the nuance between the individual and the group to which it is attached. The acts of individuals are in this way systematically attributed to the community from which they originate. One speaks of others with words and images that are stereotyped and trivialized. This is to the point where our informants no longer imagine that they need to supplement their statements with explanations, since “Everybody knows that!”

From the above development of the analysis, what is brought to light is the persistence of conflict generating behaviours. What is their actual reach? How might they interact with specific contexts such as those that will occur during the next elections? What are the tendencies revealed by the behaviour of the actors? Away from the alarmism of the authorities who are guided by empirical knowledge gathered in their practice, away from the fears that divide actors, we need to identify the methods from which it would be possible to construct solid prevention strategies, and strategies for the sustainable construction of peace. The value of this case study has been giving us leads as to the subject of further research.

Among these leads we have identified for example that at the political level, the dominance of Arabs has created a unique situation were competition is no longer constructed along the lines of Kotoko/Arab antagonism, but rather from clan rivalries within the Arab community. The vigour of these clan rivalries seems moreover to go beyond the strictly political sphere and engage with social stakes.

On this subject, a significant fact was reported to us. A project for the construction of a school (for the whole of the schooling cycle) in a village [31] where three Arab clans cohabit was rejected by two of the clans who considered that they had been slighted though the choice of the site, preferring that the available resources be divided into three parts. The result is that three schools, which do not cover the whole school cycle, of two classes each were built between the three areas. This could lead us to conclude that for the Choa Arab the lack of a “common enemy” is leading to the resurgence of clan rivalries up until now buried, which will end up subsuming the ethnic unity that they currently artificially maintain in the face of their common Kotoko enemy [32].

The lack of literature on questions as complex as those that we have raised here have led us to realise the importance of carrying further the research that we carried out. Many authors ask questions or contradict each other as to the effect of history on conflicts that appeared at the beginning of the 1990s, and in a more general manner on the link between memory and violence in the relations between two communities [33]. This is most certainly due to the lack of an in-depth analysis of discourse. We are proposing to carry out such a study, which presupposes a more substantive research sample, and further collection of narratives.

On the basis this research we make the following recommendations:

• 1. In the light of the upcoming elections, local government needs to be reinforced beyond the routine methods used by the administration. These latter are still confined within a narrow paradigm of the maintenance of order.

• 2. This reinforcement needs to have a strong preventative dimension, using the specific tools of legitimate and intercultural governance. Including:
  — Systematic use of intercultural mediation;
  — The creation of discussion groups around problems and issues;
  — Taking into account and valorising traditional legitimacies in prevention and management of conflicts;
  — Reconciliation of traditional and modern logics within institutional practices.

• 3. The election period should also be capitalised upon within the framework of further research, in order to add to the observation and understanding of the issues at stake.

• 4. This would necessitate the construction of a much more ambitious framework of research, on the one hand including tools for the evaluation of processes of peace and reconstruction in post-conflict, and on the other hand widening the research to include cross-border issues.

• 5. Reinforcing the structure of the research project (through the dimension of a research-action methodology) whilst working to gain legitimacy with local actors and populations for this approach in order to convert it into a tool for changing local political action.