Ivory Coast cocoa growers fear to return to farms

He is among 7,000 people, mainly farmers and their families, who have been living in a camp for displaced people in the west of the country since they were chased from their land after a brief 2002/03 civil war that inflamed ethnic tensions.

Three years later, and despite a United Nations-backed peace process, the rich cocoa-growing west is still a land of violence and an ethnic tinderbox. The instability and uncertainty pose a threat to future cocoa development.

Zoungrana's story illustrates the tensions.

Born in neighboring Burkina Faso, he and millions of other immigrants were welcomed in the 1960s and 70s and helped turn the former French colony into the world's No. 1 grower of cocoa.

"Since 1966 when I started my farm I had no problem, but when the war started (local people) told the farmers they should leave," said Zoungrana, 62, who has three wives and 16 children.

"There was no argument between us before," he said as he sat, dressed in a blue robe, at the displaced center in Guiglo.

"But since we left they have seen there is money in cocoa and they don't want us back. I would like to go back today but they (the locals) say no."

MELTING POT SHATTERS

Cracks first appeared in Ivory Coast's "melting pot" society - one quarter of the population are immigrants from nearby states - when a 1980s economic downturn drove some unemployed Ivorian city dwellers back to their villages to make a living - sparking tensions with "outsiders" now working the land.