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Special Report
Ivory Coast’s Tragedy
An African country falls prey to the tribal wars it had formerly been spared.
Forces loyal to Alassane Ouatarra, the Côte d’Ivoire opposition leader who claimed victory in last November’s presidential election, said the mass graves they uncovered in Duékoué, a large town in the Côte d’Ivoire’s west near Liberia, are filled with the bodies of civilians massacred by soldiers or militias loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent president who says he won in November. They said there were about 800 victims.
However, a Catholic humanitarian organization, Caritas, which had observers in Duékoué, noted that the Ouatarra forces controlled the town when the killings occurred. After some denials, the spokesman for the Ouatarra forces, Guillaume Soro, said there would be an investigation. By then the count was over 1,000 and rising.
Similar discoveries have been reported elsewhere in the country.
Monitors and observers working for the United Nations and human rights watchdogs have backed up several of the mass graves reports, usually with the caveat that they could not establish court-room type proof of the perpetrators. Some of the atrocities have been reported by the Ouatarra forces, some by the Gbagbo ones. The latter claim the graves in the western part of the country must be blamed on their enemies, because, as an informant said on the phone from Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s largest city and economic capital, “the Forces Nouvelles [Ouatarra’s militia, lately renamed Forces républicaines de Côte d’Ivoire] are the ones advancing and taking control of cities and towns.”
They broke out of their northern bases about a week ago and are presently in Abidjan. Abidjan is a small city, built on an island. The Forces Nouvelles fighters, backed up by French air power, were reported in the neighborhood of Cotonou yesterday, where the President, or ex-President, depending on your view, Laurent Gbagbo lives. He lives in the presidential palace, which is blocks away from the French embassy.
There was a time when African presidents dashed out of their palaces to the French embassy to seek refuge. In the era of humanitarian intervention, this may no longer be correct etiquette.
GUILLAUME SORO’S Force Nouvelles have controlled most of northern Côte d’Ivoire since 2003, above a line at about the eighth parallel, with their main base at Bouake, which is right in the middle of the country. The “north” goes roughly from Touba in the west near Liberia through Seguela and Katiola, a few kilometers north of Bouake, and ends at Bondoukou near Ghana in the east. Their strongest base was in the Malinke and Senoufo regions.
The northerners’ champion is Alassane Ouatarra, last prime minister of the Old Man, Felix Houphouët-Boigny, who guided the country since independence from France in 1960 until his death in 1993. They thought he deserved the presidency, and the past 10 years in this country have been, from their point of view, a long campaign to reach the presidential palace, evict the usurper, and install Ouatarra. Such a bitter saga, with its columns of refugees trying to escape the fighting (unconfirmed reports suggest the victims of the Duékoué massacres were not locals but people fleeing from elsewhere), was not supposed to happen here.
The Ivory Coast under Houphouët was widely considered a success story. A medical doctor and a prince of the Akoue tribe, a sub-group of the Baoule, he fought for justice in a very practical way, for example by helping organize plantation workers and developing legislation (he served in the French parliament in the 1950s) against forced labor. He promoted a gradual and smooth transition to independence, disapproved of the somewhat dreamy programs of some of his anti-colonial comrades, such as Sékou Touré in nearby Guinea (Guinée). For all France’s faults in the colonial era, he thought, there was no point burning bridges that could be used.
The question asked by Laurent Ggabgo, a history professor a few years younger than Alassane Ouatarra (they are both in their 60s), was this: who is using these bridges, us or the French? Houphouët, while promoting free enterprise and inviting mass immigration from across West Africa in order to turn Côte d’Ivoire into the region’s economic locomotive, was also one of the architects of what soon came to be called neo-colonialism. The old “metropolis” controlled the currency, staffed the government administrations (in the form of advisors behind every ministry and bureau), got its big companies all the major infrastructure and service contracts, dominated or had major parts of retail in the cities, tourism, transportation. There were far more French cadres in Côte d’Ivoire — without even counting the military and security advisors — after 1960 than before. There are about 12,000 today, down from a peak of close to 100,000 in the early 1990s, and President Nicolas Sarkozy has ordered airborne troops to secure the Abidjan airport in case they have to make a quick run for it.
He did not speak of restoring order or protecting French interests, just getting people out — averting a humanitarian catastrophe. He did not ask for U.S. support. However, the U.S. Africa Command, established in 2008, lists among its missions humanitarian intervention in the face of political or natural disasters.
LAURENT GBAGBO WAS JAILED by the Old Man in the 1980s for demanding democratic reforms. The Ivoirian miracle was increasingly turning into a mirage, as the French whispered then. They did not say it out loud because it was so pleasant and profitable for them, whether they were benefitting from overseas salary adjustments and a broad menu of cost-of-living subsidies and tax abatements or, if they were politicians, receiving money from slush funds skimmed off the lucrative government-regulated-and-subsidized vertical French-Ivoirian economy.
There was more trade between France and Côte d’Ivoire than between Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, which is next door. If you wanted to fly there, you had just as well go to London or Paris from Abidjan and then back to Accra, on French-piloted Air Afrique planes. Otherwise you took your chances with a Russian pilot stoned out of his mind on vodka and flying an old Ilyushin that was as likely as not to crash in the jungle and never be seen again. Gbagbo himself ended up in French exile for several years, making friends with members of the Socialist Party (center-left, in power in the '80s) and organizing from afar his own Socialist Party (Front Populaire Ivoirien) as well as university affiliates. The idea was to be ready for the inevitable succession battle.
Because the Old Man did not prepare his succession; the idea was anathema to him. Despite his career, he was a superstitious old tribal chief who ruled like a dictator and killed his opponents when he could not buy them off or get them out of the way, in prison or exile. Côte d’Ivoire was economically dynamic, as West African countries went, and one of the reasons was that Houphouët had understood that letting people do what they wanted, including farming, was much wiser than trying to become a modern industrial country quickly, if ever. Cocoa and coffee were grown on private farms and plantations, with the export system controlled by the state, which also fixed prices. It worked for a while, and not too many people cared whether Houphouët thought of the “Caisse” — the cocoa revenues — as his purse or the state’s.
Then it no longer worked.
About the Author
Roger Kaplan, a Washington-based writer, covers the Middle East and Africa (and tennis) for The American Spectator.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (27) | Leave a comment
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Tina B| 4.5.11 @ 6:59AM
Wow, great history lesson on the Ivory Coast and thank you, Mr. Kaplan.
It comes to mind that in the ancient times, when God's people, those sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, asked God for a king, He discouraged this. He wanted the Levites to run the Temple rites, and He would be their spiritual leader through the prophets. They balked. They wanted a king, like everyone else, they said.
We now know why God's plan was better. But He never forced Israel to obey. He gave them their kings. And, according to Scripture, only three kings were not corrupt, only three followed God and His wisdom through His prophets. Power surely corrupts, and absolute power. . . .
Are you listening America? How dare we give this President more and more power, via healthcare, czars, more gun control, and who knows what else is coming.
I don't know if the current POTUS was always corrupt, but I suspect he was groomed to be thus. He grows more deceptive as he grows more powerful. He may win in 2012 just because we can't find the right person to counter the growing narcolep0sy in the voting public. God help us. Maranatha Lord.
Teaghan| 4.5.11 @ 7:48AM
Tina, I don't think we GIVE this president the power to do these things. He takes it. But I suppose by not stopping his actions of disrespect for the constitution, we are giving him the lattitude to do as he wants.
Seek| 4.5.11 @ 11:03AM
This article is about Ivory Coast, not America. The ongoing mass murders in the former are the result of a badly dysfunctional political culture in the black African world, not an absence of Bibles.
Sandra| 4.5.11 @ 12:15PM
Several key things EVERYONE is forgetting or ignoring... The MUSLIM, Alassane Ouatarra, who is being supported by Obama's uncle, Kenyan Prime Minster Raila Odinga (also a Muslim), was disqualified from the country’s 2000 presidential election because he did not meet the Constitutional requirement of his birth. He cannot PROVE that he is a citizen of the Ivory Coast. (Gee, sound familiar?)
Alassane Ouatarra, ran again in 2010 anyway, claiming to win. Amid voter fraud claims, however, the nation’s Constitutional Council, which officially validates the elections, said 500,000 of Ouattara’s votes were disqualified; the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, won.
So the Roman Catholic Laurent Gbagbo has remained president despite tremendous pressure from the UN and the US to step down. He says its a matter of national sovereignty.
Over a 100,000 Roman Catholics have been murdered in recent fighting. But there is NOT a word in the MSM. Why? It's just Catholics being murdered once more in Africa, Black Catholics at that being massacred by Black Muslims... no story here, nothing to see...
So OF COURSE, the UN and the "Muslim born and raised" Obama will be pushing the legitimate President of the Ivory Coast out!
Evanston2| 4.5.11 @ 2:27PM
'Sandra' mostly got it right. And it's sad that even an AmSpec article buries the fact that Islam is a factor in this conflict.
'Seek' sees no connection between "a badly dysfunctional political culture" and the lack of Bibles. Sure, here in the U.S. you have inherited a political culture that does not require Bibles. But the foundations of that culture were created by Bible-toters. And it is arguable that authentic Christians have maintained and expanded that culture (end of slavery, women's rights, public education, hospitals, etc.). The lesson of the Ivory Coast should be to not take the culture you have inherited out of pure Providence for granted. At least you should recognize that your separation of political and religious cultures is false.
Seek| 4.5.11 @ 4:26PM
Notice how you omitted my words "black African." Race has a lot more to do with this than one might admit. And there are plenty of Christians around the world -- including Africa -- who are capable of murderous violence (the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda). Political culture is related to race and national experience.
JimH| 4.5.11 @ 12:20PM
Kipling's plea to America. Somewhat ironic with our current president: Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
mames| 4.5.11 @ 12:38PM
Who gives a damn about these tribal cultures. Until they are vital to our interest it is only a curiosity to me.
We have enough to deal with here where our C constitution is violated daily with impunity and NO ONE has the guts to declare it so on the floor of either house. IF you are not part of the solution you are the problem.
Arizona Bob| 4.5.11 @ 12:49PM
Yes, but Kipling wrote this with regard to the Philippines. And although he and TR, to whom he wrote this, were both aware that white did not refer to color. The question here is why the French allowed this to happen. Granted, the French took advantage of Ivory Coast, but they were better in the big picture than the Belgians in Congo or Rwanda (though the French helped precipitate the genocide there, according to their own parliamentary investigations). The French were supposed to be the supervisors, but they got increasingly reluctant, especially after the Rwanda disaster, and kept saying they were outta there, then going back, then outta there again, etc. In this place, they let the situation deteriorate for ten years and now this happens and at the last minute they throw their forces into the battle to knock off the sitting president, or whatever happened. For us, the white man's burden, if you want to call it that, is being carried by the somewhat ill-defined, or work-in-progress, Africa Command.
JimH| 4.5.11 @ 1:50PM
Yes the poem was written regarding the Philippines though it has always been understood to have a wider meaning. And the burden, as you say does not really refer to color but culture and values, I think as regards our president the irony still exists.
ACynic| 4.5.11 @ 3:57PM
Just one more demonstration that representative democracy is an alien concept to much of the world. Africa is a total mess because of their tribal culture, in which the tribe is paramount and the notion of a "country" is simply a political boundary which limits the geographical hegemony of the ruling tribe.
S.Africa will degenerate into tribal warfare too within 10 years.
Representative democracy is a western european concept that gained traction as a result of the renaissance and the growth of protestantism. Without the protestant reformation, this form of govt. never would have taken hold.
Arizona Bob| 4.5.11 @ 5:07PM
Quite so, you are right about the irony of the situation. The president has a world view which mechanically places virtue on the side of all manners of "Third World revolutionaries" who over and over did their countries and peoples lots of harm. Yet in the Ivory Coast situation, he follows the line of the classic colonial and neo-colonial power, too befuddled or distracted to think for himself. In fairness, the State dept has done this since the beginning of the Ivory Coast crisis. The French at least know, or used to know, where their interests lay; in the case of the Obama administration, the only ready explanation for this kow-towing is that their view of the "third world" is based on stereotypes and thus is, in a sense, not only flawed but condescending to the point of racial bigotry. Maybe it isn't -- you don't want to impugn people on such a level without asking them, but the practical effect is nearly the same.
Tina B| 4.5.11 @ 5:56PM
Teaghan, thanks and I do agree, he has stolen and tried to steal more power than any President in my lifetime.
Yes, to Arizona Bob.
And to you Seek: You may call the Ugandan "Lord's Resistance Army" Christian, but I was speaking of Christ followers. The planet has millions of people who may just call themselves Christians. And in Africa this is true as well as in America. However when "the roll is called up yonder" (quaint but true) they may hear : "Depart from me, I never knew you" and it will be Christ who says it to them.
Everyone who calls Him Lord, Lord, isn't necessarily His child. Murderous rampages have NEVER been led by Christ's true children. The Crusades and the Inquisition are two situations that everyone calls rampages of murderous Christians. I would agree they are rampages, and the leaders are murderous, but while they are murdering in His name, He is disowning them as children. They said (the church leaders at that time is the they) they did it in His name, I say they did it for power and glory and blood and. . . . not for Him.
We sin, yes, all have fallen short. And members of tribes who once murdered, raped and pillaged can find forgiveness in Christ before they die, if they truly repent and ask Him to forgive.
In fact , in Rwanda, there are wonderful stories of Tutsis forgiving the Hutus who murdered their kinfolk in the slaughter years ago. It is only through Christ's love and forgiveness that this has happened.
In Christ we live, and love, and have our being. We follow Him out of mad, passionate love. Not a desire for money, power, glory or lust, blood lust or otherwise.
We do NOT kill in His name. If someone came into my house to murder my son or my two grandkids, I would try to kill them before they killed my loved ones. That isn't murder. Killing but not murder. I don't know if I would kill to save myself. The older I get, the more I think I'd take a bullet before I'd kill another. But I don't know for sure. Who does until they're in that situation?
Sorry for the sermon, Seek. Oh well. ;-)
c. j. acworth| 4.5.11 @ 6:02PM
Another inter-tribal conflict in a place of little interest? Quick, another no-fly zone, prefferably "kinetic"!
Tina B| 4.5.11 @ 6:18PM
So, who is my neighbor, c.j.?
PJ| 4.5.11 @ 8:30PM
Tina B,
It's interesting you should mention Rwanda & the Tutsis forgiving the Hutus. According to National Review Online, Rwanda today has a thriving economy. Any connection between a thriving economy & internal peace?
Tina B| 4.5.11 @ 8:58PM
Any connection between a nation full of people forgiving in love, and being forgiven in love, yes.
A nation of people with a large group allowing Christ to do some awesome healing and a thriving economy, yes. Wow, imagine that happening here. There are pockets of it, I know. Hope it spreads! Doing my best to make it happen, PJ, trying to keep internal peace in the little plot I seem to have been planted in. :->
Dee See| 4.6.11 @ 5:11AM
AS the Fukishima disaster continues to
unfold ---across out west coast with little
notice
AS our sources inform us radiation monitors
are being shut off in California by government
---'for readjustment'
AS Yahoo News just now reports a vast
'mysterious' and very recent disappearance
of a major portion of our ozone layer
(symptomatic of massive HAARP tech
discharge)
AS there's still not been even a single
reference of the other unprecedented
2005 tsunami ---on Mao Tse Tung's
Birthday
AS David Rockefeller just months ago
openly called for MASSIVE depopulation
by ANY means
AS Jeff I-Melt-down of the infamously Globalist,
Fukishima reactor designer, GE strolls about
unquestioned, unreferenced
American Spectator places the Ivory Coast
problem at the top of the agenda?????
"Understand, we are in the middle of
the most awful war the world has ever seen.
As they're finishing off the agenda Americans
at are going to have the rug pulled
out from under them."
-ALAN WATT
(essential online coverage as it happens)
Tina B| 4.6.11 @ 6:33AM
It is important to the dying and their relatives on the Ivory Coast. It is a subject worthy of thought and discussion, at the very least.
The rug is being pulled out from under all of us, it may even be finally unravelling. But I don't worry about it. I have a firm foundation and I don't need a rug. Until the day I die I will concern myself and pray for others in a much worse situation and learn all I can about what is going on, all over this globe.
I'll leave the nuclear problems and the pass GE has always gotten to you Dee See.
Dee See| 4.6.11 @ 8:18AM
"The Globalists are at war with
the REAL cultures and the REAL economy
on every level ----EVERYWHERE."
-Alex Jones
Really ------REALLY ---get with the DEE-program
Evanston2| 4.6.11 @ 3:12PM
'Seek', please excuse my replying to your comment here, but for some reason I could not see "Reply" as an option on my computer screen. Anyway, when I quoted you, I did not purposely omit the word "black." It was much later on in the sentence. Please re-read your first post here. If the main point of your first comment was about race, I honestly believe you failed to highlight it.
Conversely, my response to you used the word "authentic" right next to the word "Christians." You can bring up the Lord's Resistance Army or other groups that call themselves 'Christian' but are they really? I accept your original definition of Christianity -- those groups that possess (and presumably live according to the faith set forth in) Bibles.
In your response to me, you say that "Political culture is related to race and national experience." No kidding, though as you know constructs like 'race' and 'national' can get tricky. But my point was that religious belief is a factor in "Political culture." You appear to have acceded to my point, but accord a much greater weight to race. I believe it would be futile to try and persuade you to the contrary.
Tina B| 4.6.11 @ 7:30PM
Hmmmm, Christians are those who possess (and presumably live according to the faith set forth in the) Bibles.
I think it's quite a stretch to say possess and then presumably live according to. . . the faith set forth in the Bible. . . I don't presume anyone lives according to the way set forth in the Bible. I mean I know a few folks who live the Way Christ taught that we should, or try very hard to walk that road daily. I'm over 60 now and I have probably met over a hundred of these Christ lovers over my adult lifetime. Though many may own a Bible, most of them don't really know what's in it.
The ignorance of many "church goers" or "religious" folk, when it comes to God's Word, His Story, oh I guess that's History, and His will for us, amazes me. Many atheists and agnostics know more about God's claims than most Christians I know. There I go using that oh so common word, Christians.
Evanston2| 4.7.11 @ 7:33PM
'Tina B': for starters, the whole point of Christ's atoning death for sinners is that no one perfectly lives the "Christian" life. However, this does not mean that Bible study and prayer do not change behaviors profoundly. The presumption I make when using the word "presumably" is to contrast this changed life (renewing of the mind and sanctification) with those who like to use the word "Christian" because it is popular. Mormons, for example, have a religion that resembles the Koran and Hadith much more than any Bible teaching, but nonetheless claim to be Christian. The same, as you mention, goes for many church goers or religious folk. They are satisfied in their ritualistic ignorance.
I know many, many authentic Christians. There are many around you and their influence outweighs their proportion in the population.
But the point I was making with 'Seek' is that his contention -- that religious belief and practice have no effect on the "political culture" -- is false, regardless of whether that religion is authentic Christianity or not.
weddingdress | 7.5.11 @ 4:35AM
I doubt that. France is willing to pass a "no fly" zone, provided the USA backs it up with their hardware. SAS and Foreign Legion? Forget it. Screamin' Eagles, some SF groups, or some other assault group is more likely to be the case. The US is putting on a brave face, but underneath its forces are hallowed out from 10 years of war.
Creative Recreation | 8.10.11 @ 10:48PM
is good