Zeal for War

Morle Gugu Zawoo is a former child soldier and the executive director of the National Excombatant Peacebuilding Initiative. He helped found the organization in 2004 to "discourage [excombatants'] zeal for war," he tells me over the blast of a generator in his office on Camp Johnson Road. He estimates more than 2,000 excoms, as he calls them, have crossed into Ivory Coast to fight in the civil conflict that erupted over last November's disputed elections. Former warlords have recruited in secret, enticing excoms with $500 in upfront pay and the spoils of war. Many of the excoms I meet are disabled, missing a limb, and survive begging money from people attempting to park their car at grocery stores. "These guys see war as an opportunity, access to a better life," Zawoo says. While a national disarmament campaign after the war in Liberia ended in 2003 disarmed 103,000 ex-fighters, a great number of people did not participate in the disarmament, says Nelson George, another excom and NEPI's head of finance. "These are capable men who could stage a coup or carry out an assassination," he says. There is still a command structure, George explains, and popular former generals easily persuade legions of ex-combatants to follow them into Ivory Coast.