High_Gravity
Belligerent Drunk
People in the Ivory Coast are being killed by a tyrant, so when we are sending our cruise missiles and fighter jets over there? supposedly we are bombing Libya to do the right thing and help people, so we need to get over to the Ivory Coast and help those folks as well.
Civilians Die as Ivory Coast Braces for a Defeated President's Last Stand
Read more: Ivory Coast Braces for Civil War as Violence Escalates - TIME
Civilians Die as Ivory Coast Braces for a Defeated President's Last Stand
At least 52 civilians have been killed in the past week amid escalating violence instigated by an authoritarian President who refuses to heed the will of his people. No, not in Libya, or Yemen, or Bahrain, but in the West African nation of Ivory Coast, which is struggling for media attention amid crises elsewhere.
"Ivory Coast isn't considered strategically important enough on the global stage it is not a Libya, so to speak," one Western diplomat points out. "And that, quite simply, is why it hasn't got the attention it deserves from the international community."
The erstwhile beacon of prosperity and stability in West Africa has been held hostage for five months by incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to cede power after losing a November runoff presidential election. Instead, he has mobilized the state apparatus and a fanatical core of young militants against the citizens who voted for his challenger, Alassane Ouattara. Daily battles rage between a burgeoning pro-Ouattara insurgency in Abidjan known as the "invisible commandos," and the army, which backs Gbagbo. At least 460 deaths have been confirmed since mid-December, according to the U.N. mission there, known as ONUCI.
And the violence threatens to escalate as Gbagbo has urged his young backers to join the army en masse. In the main city of Abidjan, some 15,000 youths, mostly unemployed and illiterate, gathered at the army headquarters on March 22. "I'm prepared to defend my country, which is under attack from foreigners," unemployed 17-year-old Venance Kouakou, who rushed to sign up, told TIME. Foreigners, he added, were all those who "voted against Gbagbo, the true President."
Later, a group of youths marching through Abidjan's once clean, palm-lined streets, chanted loudly, "With our Kalashs, we will target the enemy!" Gbagbo's popularity has long centered on xenophobic rhetoric against migrants from other African countries. Ivorians from the north of the country where Ouattara has popular support are considered foreigners by Gbagbo's supporters because many have migrant roots, giving the threat of violence a distinctly xenophobic character.
Read more: Ivory Coast Braces for Civil War as Violence Escalates - TIME