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What’s Behind
the Calls for
Military
Intervention
in the Ivory Coast
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor,
Pan-African News Wire
A dispute over a
recent national election in the West African state of
Ivory Coast has prompted calls by the United Nations
Secretary General
Ban
Ki-moon for the incumbent
President Laurent Gbagbo to step down.
According to the UN head, the electoral commission
has determined without a doubt that opposition leader
Alassane Ouattara had won the elections.
This position has been echoed by the United States State
Department which has also taken the position that the
Gbagbo administration must resign and that
Alassane Ouattara is the legitimate leader. The
regional organization, the
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),
has been reported to have
threatened military intervention in Ivory Coast if
Gbagbo does not leave office.
These pronouncements and other actions such as leveling
sanctions against the Gbagbo administration by
freezing credit and bank accounts through the
international banking system, has emboldened the
supporters of
Ouattara inside the country. Earlier in December a
group of Ouattara supporters attempted to
seize control of the television station in Abidjan,
an action that was repelled by the security forces of
the government leaving at least 18 people dead.
Why has the
UN Secretary General [Ban
Ki-moon] and the Obama administration taken
such an interest in developments in Ivory Coast, a
former French colony of 30 million people which
underwent civil unrest, a military coup, and a civil war
over the last decade or more? Why should the
Ivory Coast be viewed as a test case for Africa, the
African Union and ECOWAS and not similar developments
that have occurred in Mauritania, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,
Niger, Madagascar and Kenya over the last several years?
These economic sanctions, public vilifications, and
threats of military invasion are taking place absent of
any serious efforts by the U.S. and France to reach a
diplomatic solution to the crisis. What is happening in
Ivory Coast cannot be viewed in isolation from the
overall U.S. and French policy of increasing military
involvement in West Africa under the guise of the
so-called "war on terrorism."
The Ivorian crisis and the breakdown of neo-colonial
rule
During the period of French colonialism and the first
three decades of independence (1960-1990),
Ivory Coast was promoted to the public as a model
for imperialist rule that worked. Even under colonialism
where there was militant mass organizing by the
Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA) and its trade
union counterpart, in 1958 the [Charles]
de
Gaulle regime in Paris offered its colonies in West
Africa to either formally accept a subservient political
role under France or to strike out independently.
Only Guinea under the leadership of the Democratic Party
headed by
Ahmed Sekou Toure voted overwhelmingly to become an
independent state. Guinea would pay a severe price for
its challenge to French imperialism and the Ivory Coast
under
Felix Houphouet-Boigny was rewarded with capitalist
investment and tourism.
Ivory Coast continued as an outpost of France albeit
with a facade of independence in 1960. The RDA and the
Union Generale des Travailleurs de l'Afrique Noire (UGTAN)
split into pro-French and militant factions that were
aligned with the PDG in Guinea under
Sekou Toure.
Guy De Lusignan in his book entitled
French-Speaking Africa Since Independence, said
in reference to the 1960s, that "The Ivory Coast could
not be what it is today without the presence of a large
body of Frenchmen, both in administration and in private
business. Houphouet-Boigny and his team have been
policymakers of undeniable worth" (De Lusignan, 1969, p.
142)
The author continues by noting that "They staked their
all on big business and foreign capital. The brilliant
potentialities of the country are a challenge and their
answer to that challenge is undoubtedly
'neo-colonialist' in spirit" (De Lusignan, p. 142).
During the first decade of independence the
Ivory Coast by 1964 "was the largest African
producer of bananas (114,000 tons), of raw timber
(1,450,000 tons), and of coffee (261,000), making it the
third largest producer of coffee in the world; in that
year its output of cocoa reached 98,000 tons, making it
the fourth largest cocoa producer in the world. Between
1960 and 1964, the credit margin of its trade balance
doubled" (De Lusignan, p. 142).
Yet in 1965 there was a sharp decline in cocoa prices
and other agricultural commodities on the western
markets. The country shifted to a more diversified
economy with production projects in palm oil, rubber,
cotton, tropical timber (that could be transshipped in
much larger quantities through the-then new
harbor at San Pedro in the west of the country),
tropical fruit and fisheries" (De Lusignan, p. 144).
In addition, the exploitation of
manganese deposits began in earnest during this
period when production grew from 105,000 tons in 1964 to
171,000 in 1965. By the late 1960s, industrial
production in the
Ivory Coast expanded with the establishment of light
electrical plants, chemicals and oils, timber, textiles,
building materials and shoe factories.
This state of affairs continued through the 1970s and
1980s and served as an ideological challenge to
revolutionary armed struggles in other parts of Africa
as well as the
socialist experiments that occurred in
Guinea,
Ethiopia,
Somalia,
Tanzania,
Angola,
Mozambique,
Congo-Brazzaville and other states. The western
imperialist states maintain that
capitalism was the best model for development in
post-independence Africa.
However, during the early 1990s, severe problems arose
within the French
CFA
currency zones and these developments had a
tremendous impact on the Ivory Coast as well as other
states aligned with Paris on the continent. Unrest arose
again after it was thought to have been crushed in early
1960s.
In 1993
Houphouet-Boigny died and
Konan Bedie took over as the leader of the
Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast. Bedie was
overthrown in a military coup at the end of 1999,
bringing
Gen.
Robert Guei to power.
By the end of the 1990s, the economic crisis in Ivory
Coast had contributed to the political instability and
to a coup as well as the division of the country
politically between the north and the south. An election
in 2000 led to the presidency of
Laurent Gbagbo while the northern politician
Alassane Ouattara was
disqualified over claims that he was not of Ivorian
origin.
The increasing regional divisions in Ivory Coast became
a factor under the rule of
Konan Bedie during the mid-1990s where the presence
of a large immigrant population as well as the country's
national diversity were deliberately politicized. Such
divisions helped to create the conditions for a civil
war which erupted in 2002.
The civil war further enhanced national divisions in
Ivory Coast. France, which deployed its military forces
during the civil war was accused of supporting both
sides in the conflict. In 1995, under
Gbagbo, Ivorian military forces bombed areas in the
rebel stronghold city of Bouake and killed nine French
troops.
France claimed that the attacks were deliberate and has
held the deaths of their soldiers against
Gbagbo over the years.
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
did intervene in the Ivory Coast in 2002 but were later
replaced by forces under United Nations control.
UN forces still remain in Ivory Coast but claim that
their role is strictly to monitor the movement of
military units of both the central government and the
rebel troops in the north. The threat of the resumption
of military conflict could lead to greater involvement
of France and the United States in the internal affairs
of Ivory Coast.
Military conflict and the role of imperialism
The United States, stung by the revelations emanating
from classified military documents and diplomatic cables
released by WikiLeaks, has taken up the Ivorian crisis
as a major focus of its foreign policy in Africa. This
conflict provides an avenue for the State Department to
re-emerge as a "legitimate force" in purportedly
resolving an African political crisis.
However, the role of the U.S. in Africa has been growing
through the greater reliance on the export of oil from
the continent and the increasing presence of the
Pentagon's military forces in the region. In West
Africa, the U.S. has developed partnerships with Mali,
Ghana, Morocco and other states in the so-called "war on
terrorism."
What the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables revealed was that
through successive U.S. administrations, including
Barack Obama, the same imperialist aims and objectives
determine the character of its foreign policy toward
Africa. Obama has increased funding to U.S. military
operations in Africa and is seeking to influence
developments in Nigeria, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Somalia
among other states.
Therefore, the motivations of U.S. imperialism is
strictly designed to further penetrate the economic,
political, and military affairs of the continent. The
threatened intervention by
ECOWAS would
inevitably translate into large-scale deployments of
both Nigerian and Ghanaians troops into Ivory Coast.
Such an operation that would place thousands of
ECOWAS troops in
Ivory Coast would require the logistical support of the
U.S. and France. This would place the imperialists in a
position to monitor events in Nigeria, with its own
political problems of regional and intra-religious
conflict, as well as other states including Mali and
Sudan.
Nigeria, which has undergone an
escalation in violence in Jos, several northern
states and the oil-rich Niger Delta, is under severe
U.S. pressure. Just recently the U.S. forced the
government to abandon a civil suit against Pfizer
pharmaceutical company and a criminal complaint against
former
Vice-President Dick Cheney and his former firm
Halliburton/KBR.
Consequently, anti-war and peace movements inside the
United States must oppose any effort by the U.S. to
bolster its military presence in Africa by utilizing the
Ivorian crisis as an excuse to indirectly invade the
country through funding, coordinating, and transporting
ECOWAS troops in an
invasion into the Ivory Coast. Such a course of action
could spark even more bloodshed in the West Africa
region.
The mediation efforts of former South African President
Thabo Mbeki provides some hope of resurrecting a
political solution to the crisis. Why should there be an
ultimatum given to Gbagbo while the other states in the
region have been able to work out internal problems
through political intervention and negotiations?
The United States
Africa Command (AFRICOM)
over the last year has conducted large-scale military
maneuvers on the continent. In West Africa, war games
have been conducted under the guise of enhancing the
security capacity of African states.
In the
Horn of Africa it is U.S. imperialism that is
propping-up the fragile and corrupt
Transitional Federal Government in Somalia. Off the
coast of Somalia in the
Gulf
of Aden and the
Indian Ocean, the U.S. and the
European Union (EU) are leading flotillas of
warships under the guise of fighting piracy.
Also in the Horn of Africa, both the U.S. and France
have military bases in the nation of
Djibouti.
The U.S. presence in the region, WikiLeaks has revealed,
is at the root of the destabilization of the region that
has created one of the worse humanitarian crises in the
current period. In Somalia over 200,000 people have died
in the last four years and more than two million have
been displaced as a direct result of the intervention of
both the Bush and Obama administrations.
There is fundamentally no difference in U.S. imperialist
policy under Obama. The Obama administration has not
only escalated U.S. military involvement in Africa but
has expanded the war in
Afghanistan and spread it into neighboring
Pakistan.
It is the Obama administration that has shielded the
Bush administration from civil suits and criminal
prosecution by both domestic and international elements,
which have fallen victim to U.S. war policy as well as
corporate and official state corruption.
The Obama administration is now targeting anti-war
organizations with illegal searches and seizures as well
as subpoenas to appear before federal grand juries under
threat of prosecution and long-term prison sentences.
The only "crimes" carried out by these activists is that
they have spoken out against U.S. foreign policy in
Colombia
and
Palestine.
Therefore, anti-war and peace activists must look beyond
the claims of the U.S. government that it is concerned
about "good governance" in Africa when there are crimes
being committed by leading officials who are shielded
from civil liability and criminal prosecution by the
Obama administration.
Source:
PanAfricanNews
posted 28 December 2010
* * * * *
At an emergency meeting Friday, West African leaders warned they will not hesitate to use "legitimate force" if necessary to defuse an escalating crisis in Ivory Coast sparked by incumbent
President Laurent Gbagbo's refusal to cede power.
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"In the event that Mr. Gbagbo fails to heed this immutable demand of ECOWAS, the Community would be left with no alternative but to take other measures, including the use of legitimate force, to achieve the goals of the Ivorian people," said a statement issued Friday by the 15-member Economic Community of West African States.—CNN
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An Ivorian miracle?—Cote
d'Ivoire was once a bastion of peace in a turbulent region, but
political instability now prevails.—8 December 2010—"After
independence, Cote d'Ivoire was richer than the other countries so a lot
of people came again from Burkina Faso, from Mali, from Togo, from Ghana
to work in the cocoa plantations, coffee plantations and they stayed
here," Venance says.
Cocoa and coffee are both labour
intensive industries and the Ivorian population struggled to cope with
the global demand for its crops. So like the French before him, Boigny
encouraged immigration from neighbouring countries. In return he gave
the incoming immigrants Ivorian nationality.
When times were good, this policy
of integration paid dividends, as the Ivorian GDP reached a peak growth
of 360 per cent in the 1970s. But by the end of the decade global cocoa
prices collapsed and the Ivorian economy began to suffer. The World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed austerity measures on
the country in the 1980s and discontent started to take hold.
The concept of Ivoirite
Following Boigny's death in 1993,
his successor,
Henri Konan Bedie, was quick to capitalise on the growing racial
tension. A new term entered Ivorian politics. Ivoirite, a term that
distinguishes so called 'real' Ivorians from those with a 'mixed'
background. Based on this concept a new law banned anyone whose parents
were not born in the Cote d'Ivoire from standing for the 1995
presidential elections. Thousands were forced into exile and 26 per cent
of the population were suddenly denied the right to vote. Most of those
excluded were from the north of the country and originating from Mali
and Burkina Faso.
"You cannot keep a quarter out of
the political game. That was the main problem. Who, nowadays, who is
Ivorian, who is not Ivorian? We don't know. We don't have the answer,"
Venance says. . . . Gbagbo became the country's fourth president. But
the concept of Ivoirite did not go away. "The population is angry with
the president. People think he is responsible for what happened. He
accentuates the exclusion of the northerners. He may have not been
responsible for Ivoirite but he continued the concept," Kande says.
Northerners had hoped that under
Gbagbo the country would once again be welcoming to the immigrant
population. But they continued to be excluded. And the discontent was
turning into outright revolt. . . .
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Even in this
election the issue of identity persists but as comedian
and somewhat unlikely presidential candidate
Dolo Adama points out Cote d'Ivoire is a nation of
immigrants."We should sit and settle this problem. In
Cote d'Ivoire there are 20 million inhabitants: Two
million Guineans, four million Burkinabe, three million
Malians, that's already nine million; 500,000 Lebanese,
500,000 Mauritanian, there are one million from Niger,
one million Senegalese, 1,000,000 Nigerians, plus
Ghanians, people from Benin, Cameroon etc. If we decide
to count after removing all these people, there would be
maybe five Ivoirians left," Adama says.
[Dolo Adama—born May 10, 1968 in
Adjame, Abidjan—was official candidate for 2010
presidential elections in Côte d'Ivoire.] |
Fifty years on from independence, the Cote d'Ivoire
seems as far away as ever from achieving a political consensus that can
ensure its long-term stability.— Aljazeera
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Ivory Coast president urges calm after Gbagbo is arrested—11 April— Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara called for calm Monday after forces stormed the president's residence and arrested Laurent Gbagbo, whose refusal to accept the results of a presidential election last year plunged the West African nation into civil war."Finally, we have reached the dawn of a new era of hope," Ouattara said in a televised address. "We had hoped this transfer had been different, but we have to focus on today." He urged his countrymen to lay down their weapons and said he has asked the justice minister to start legal proceedings against Gbagbo, his wife and his colleagues. Gbagbo is being held at the Golf Hotel, the headquarters of both Ouattara and the United Nations. Fighting appeared to quickly end after Gbagbo's arrest, said Alain Le Roy, under-secretary-general of the United Nations' Department of Peacekeeping
Operations. "To my knowledge, most of the fighting has stopped," he said, adding that "there are pockets of resistance here and there."—CNN |
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* * * * *
Kamau Daoud
performs Live with The Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra /
Kamau Daoud recites
poem for Horace Tapscott
Kamau Daaood - Liberator Of The Spirit (for John Coltrane)
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” |
We learn how the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar cane have
disrupted and convulsed the planet and will continue
to do so until we are finally living on one
integrated or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of all this
remarkable change will survive the process they
helped to initiate more than five hundred years ago
remains, Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question.
* * * * *
Life on Mars
By Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In its review of the book, Publishers Weekly noted the collection's "lyric brilliance" and "political impulses [that] never falter." A New York Times review stated, "Smith is quick to suggest that the important thing is not to discover whether or not we're alone in the universe; it's to accept—or at least endure—the universe's mystery. . . . Religion, science, art: we turn to them for answers, but the questions persist, especially in times of grief. Smith's pairing of the philosophically minded poems in the book’s first section with the long elegy for her father in the second is brilliant." Life on Mars follows Smith's 2007 collection, Duende, which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the only award for poetry in the United States given to support a poet's second book, and the first Essence Literary Award for poetry, which recognizes the literary achievements of African Americans. The Body’s Question (2003) was her first published collection.
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* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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