So when we are going to bomb the Ivory Coast?

[High_Gravity]

Ivory Coast's Gbagbo Handed To Rebels

(Reuters) - French special forces have detained Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo and handed him to leaders of the rebel opposition, after French tanks forced their way into his residence, a Gbagbo adviser in France said.

"Gbagbo has been arrested by French special forces in his residence and has been handed over to the rebel leaders," adviser Toussaint Alain told Reuters.

A French foreign ministry source could not immediately confirm that French forces had detained Gbagbo. "We have no evidence that can confirm that," the source said.

Earlier on Monday a column of more than 30 armored vehicles advanced toward Gbagbo's residence in Abidjan, a witness told Reuters, and Alain said they had penetrated the building.

"It's French forces taking in the rebels," he said. "French special forces are inside the residence."

Ivory Coast's Gbagbo Handed To Rebels

 

[High_Gravity]

Ivory Coast Requires $300 Million for Emergency Aid, UN Says

Ivory Coast requires $300 million for “priority humanitarian needs,” including aid to 800,000 people forced from their homes during four months of deadly post-election conflict, a United Nations official said.

“We need to act now,” Valerie Amos, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, said to a meeting of the Security Council after former President Laurent Gbagbo was captured and his security forces surrendered. “The humanitarian situation remains deeply troubling.”

Amos said a UN crisis assessment team has arrived in Ivory Coast and that agencies including the World Food Program, UN Children’s Fund and World Health Organization are sending supplies to the West African nation, the world’s largest cocoa producer.

Youssoufou Bamba, Ivory Coast’s ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council that the “health alert is high, with the risk of cholera and meningitis.”

Gbagbo had defied international opinion to cling to office while disputing results of a Nov. 28 election. While the UN, the African Union and the U.S. recognized Alassane Ouattara as the winner, Gbagbo refused to cede power, claiming voter fraud in the northern part of the country.

Ouattara will “very soon put together a broad-based unity government, inclusive, one which will integrate the competencies of all political forces,” Bamba said. The new government “will allow our country to enter into an era of peace, stability and prosperity,” he said.

Managing Own Affairs
The UN special representative for Ivory Coast, Choi Young- jin, said via video conference from Abidjan that the end of the conflict marked a “success story of a people managing their own affairs with international support.” He said that, unlike other current crises, this one had been resolved without “massive international intervention.”

Choi said Ouattara should act quickly to nominate people to head 17 of 30 departments that don’t have designated ministers, organize parliamentary elections and extend government authority to the northern part of the county, which had been held by rebels fighting Gbagbo’s government.

Cocoa for July delivery added $9, or 0.3 percent, to $3,065 a metric ton at 10:26 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York, after touching $3,095, the highest since April 4.

In London, cocoa futures for July delivery climbed 2 pounds, or 0.1 percent, to 1,939 pounds ($3,153) a ton on NYSE Liffe.

Ivory Coast Requires $300 Million for Emergency Aid, UN Says - Bloomberg

 

[High_Gravity]

Ivory Coast, Libya highlight growing rift between Africa and the West

Johannesburg, South Africa
If ever there was doubt of a growing rift between African and Western leaders, it was made clear with the recent conflicts of Libya and Ivory Coast.

What the world can do now for Ivory Coast and Ouattara In both countries – where strongmen rulers unleashed their armies and police against opponents – Western leaders quickly called for international intervention to protect civilians, while many African leaders preferred mediation and complained of African sovereignty being trampled.

In Ivory Coast, African Union-led mediation failed miserably as renegade President Laurent Gbagbo plunged his country back into civil war before the United Nations asked French forces to intervene, leading to Mr. Gbagbo's capture on Monday. And while Western allies continued to bomb forces loyal to Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi this week, the AU sent a five-nation team to Tripoli to hash out "road map" for peace that rebels have rejected.


The tensions resulting from the two approaches, though, are not merely between bossy rich Western nations on one side and African nationalists on the other. They exist within every African country, in a debate that poses the question: Can modern African societies be open enough to allow democracy, but strong enough to resist external political or economic domination?

“It is a very interesting conflict going on. The Ivory Coast issue has divided African public opinion quite sharply,” says Achille Mbembe, professor of history and politics at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa.

African anger at the West reached its sharpest point at the beginning of a French-led air attack on heavy weapons belonging to Gbagbo’s forces in Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan on April 4.


African Union chief Teodoro Obiang Nguema – who is also president of Equatorial Guinea – told a gathering of reporters in Geneva, “Africa does not need any external influence. Africa must manage its own affairs.”

Not only was UN action unwanted in Ivory Coast, it was also undermining AU efforts at mediation in Libya, Mr. Obiang said.

"I believe that the problems in Libya should be resolved in an internal fashion and not through an intervention that could appear to resemble an humanitarian intervention," Obiang said. "We have already seen this in Iraq.”

Ivory Coast, Libya highlight growing rift between Africa and the West - CSMonitor.com

 

[Intense]

The United States will never intervene militarily in sub-Saharan Africa unless it is in response to a terrorist action perpetrated from that country.

 

[High_Gravity]

The United States will never intervene militarily in sub-Saharan Africa unless it is in response to a terrorist action perpetrated from that country.

You are correct on that point, but that was almost 20 years ago. The US should have skipped Somalia and went into Rwanda instead.

 

[High_Gravity]

Ivory Coast Liberation Forces Turn On Each Other

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Ivory Coast's new army turned its guns on a former ally who helped install the democratically elected president but failed on Thursday to defeat the renegade forces who are dug into a neighborhood of Abidjan, military sources said.

Infighting among forces who recognize President Alassane Ouattara also erupted Wednesday in the southwestern cocoa port of San Pedro, the sources said.

Rockets and mortars were fired in both places, with civilians trying to flee the crossfire.

The violence presents a major setback for the country, which was taking timid steps toward normality following the April 11 arrest of strongman President Laurent Gbagbo.

The shooting in San Pedro started when one group of soldiers tried to stop another from looting, one source said. U.N. peacekeepers intervened to stop the combat after the fighters started launching mortars and rockets in downtown San Pedro, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Residents said heavy machine-gun fire rocked Abidjan's working-class suburb of Abobo about 5 p.m. (1700 GMT) Wednesday near renegade warlord Ibrahim "IB" Coulibaly's headquarters. Residents scattered and ran to lock themselves into their homes. Coulibaly orchestrated two failed coup attempts in 1999 and 2002.

Abobo saw some of the worst fighting during the four-month political standoff created by Gbagbo's refusal to cede power to Ouattara after a November election.

Four military sources from both sides confirmed that the new army of former rebels led by Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, who also is Ivory Coast's defense minister, attacked Coulibaly's headquarters but were met with fierce resistance that lasted more than an hour. Coulibaly and Soro are longtime rivals.

A fighter in Coulibaly's forces who uses the nom-de-guerre Capt. Meyo Aka told The Associated Press that they drove government troops back and they finally left.

Ivory Coast Liberation Forces Turn On Each Other

 

[High_Gravity]

Can Ivory Coast's New President Heal the Nation's Wounds?

Residents of Youpougon affectionately refer to their sprawling district in Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan as "Yop City," after New York City. Not long ago, people used to flock to its outdoor street scene to party all night, every night. The neighborhood, home to 2 million inhabitants, was known for its vibrant pulse.

These days, that pulse is barely there. While life has picked up slowly but determinedly since Abidjan was wracked by four months of ferocious post-electoral fighting, Youpougon still feels like a war zone. A month after former president Laurent Gbagbo was pulled from a bunker in the presidential palace, still refusing to accept his loss in a November poll, the neighborhood is one of Ivory Coast's most visible open sores. It also typifies the hard road to reconciliation ahead for new president Alassane Ouattara.

In Youpougon, lone cars hurry past looted houses and burnt-out fuel stations. In some areas, bloodied corpses still haven't been cleared away. And everywhere, dozens of makeshift roadblocks are manned by soldiers from the Republican Forces, a hastily pulled together assortment of former rebels from the north of the country, as well as hundreds of army deserters.

Yet these soldiers could turn out to be as much a problem as they were a solution to finally dislodging Gbagbo. The balance of power finally tipped in Ouattara's favor only after the United Nations and French battalion, Licorne, entered the fray on April 4, bombing arms and ammunitions caches. Ouattara now faces the twin difficulties of coming to power on the back of a conflict and with international help. That means banishing the lingering ghost of Gbagbo's popular rhetoric against both foreigners — in particular former colonial power France — and northern Ivorians who constitute the bulk of Ouattara's supporters.

Feelings run high on both sides. Kouassi Abouet, 54, a pro-Gbagbo supporter who lost a daughter and brother during the conflict, didn't attend the official ceremony on May 12 to mark three days of national mourning. "The lucky [pro-Gbagbo] fighters are the ones who ran away before Abidjan fell," he says. "If you come out now and say you support Gbagbo, there will be no reconciliation, no forgiveness."

It's hard to disagree. A short walk past the bullet-scarred police station in Youpougon, U.N. officials last week discovered 68 bodies buried in a field used for marriage receptions and football games. "Every day [Gbagbo's men] came here and killed more. The stench was so bad, but people were afraid to leave their homes to identify the bodies," says resident Bakary Idriss, standing next to the burnt-out remains of a goal post. "It's too early to talk about reconciliation," he adds, staring at a single pink high-heel shoe lying between two unmarked graves. The U.N. has confirmed at least 3,000 died in the four months of fighting. The final figure will likely be much higher.

Another pressing task for Ouattara will be to figure out how to deal with an army composed of units that once fought each other — that's if he is able to exert any real control over them. For with the armies came huge caches of guns and ammunition. The government has issued an arms amnesty, with moderate success outside Abidjan. In the country's commercial center, the situation is "complicated," says military spokesman Leon Alla: "People are afraid to come forward." Some 2,000 militia have been transported to the north of the country, he says, without elaborating on their fate.

Read more: Can Ivory Coast's New President Heal the Nation's Wounds? - TIME

 

[Trajan]

hey hwo cares? right?

unreal, they needed a Bush involved, that would have kept this in the new cycle, even half a world away...sad but true bro.

 

[High_Gravity]

hey hwo cares? right?

unreal, they needed a Bush involved, that would have kept this in the new cycle, even half a world away...sad but true bro.

If they had oil you can bet we would have our Military all up in that country giving them democracy.

 

[JBeukema]

Such is Africa.

We've growing weary of the burden.

Africa is hopeless.

 

[High_Gravity]

Such is Africa.

We've growing weary of the burden.

Africa is hopeless.

Africa is the future.

 

[JBeukema]

Such is Africa.

We've growing weary of the burden.

Africa is hopeless.

Africa is the future.

After the nuclear holocaust and the Great AIDS Pandemic, before the world rebuilds itself?

The negroe was forgotten by evolution.

 

[High_Gravity]

Such is Africa.

We've growing weary of the burden.

Africa is hopeless.

Africa is the future.

After the nuclear holocaust and the Great AIDS Pandemic, before the world rebuilds itself?

The negroe was forgotten by evolution.

Whats a negroe?

 

[Baruch Menachem]

From what I have read about how the Norther part was run, soon this place will be a Randian paradise. The place was split for years and the North was libertarian and wealthy and the south was authoritarian and broke.

Of course, wealthy is a relative term. But it looks like with Gbago gone, things might start to look up soon. Look up from a very deep place, but up is a better direction than they were going.

 

[Trajan]

Africa is the future.

After the nuclear holocaust and the Great AIDS Pandemic, before the world rebuilds itself?

The negroe was forgotten by evolution.

Whats a negroe?

well played......

 

[LAfrique]

High_Gravity, Alassane Ouattara did not win the 2010 presidential election of Ivory Coast! The 2010 presidential election was disputed and a recounted demanded. But while recount was underway and Ivoirians in Ivory Coast waiting, France (a major Ouattara supporter) declared Ouattara winner over French media in France and people in Ivory Coast got news of the alleged Ouattara victory from relatives and friends abroad!

Besides, Ouattara is unqualified to be president of Ivory Coast! Alassane Ouattara is Burkina Faso born and Burkina Faso national, and the Constitutional of Ivory Coast mandates that its president be the offspring of an Ivorian father and an Ivorian mother.

Gbagbo and several informed folks opposed the strategy by France (an enemy of Gbagbo because of Gbagbo's determination to amend unfair deal decades ago between France and Ivory Coast - in which France gets about 90% of profit for managing Ivory Coast's resources). The election dispute went to the Supreme Court of Ivory Coast and Supreme Court ruled in favor of Laurent Gbagbo. And this, people, besides other issues is why Laurent Gbagbo refuses to step down.

The forced installation of puppet Ouattara by France and UN is nothing but a perfect display of Neo-colonialism! And what these world bullies forget to realize here is that they have also set the stage for a possible Rwanda Genocide:

Alassane Ouattara = Injustice = No Peace in Ivory Coast! No nation should be governed by a non-national. For detailed info, search "Staging a Rwanda Genocide."

 

[High_Gravity]

High_Gravity, Alassane Ouattara did not win the 2010 presidential election of Ivory Coast! The 2010 presidential election was disputed and a recounted demanded. But while recount was underway and Ivoirians in Ivory Coast waiting, France (a major Ouattara supporter) declared Ouattara winner over French media in France and people in Ivory Coast got news of the alleged Ouattara victory from relatives and friends abroad!

Besides, Ouattara is unqualified to be president of Ivory Coast! Alassane Ouattara is Burkina Faso born and Burkina Faso national, and the Constitutional of Ivory Coast mandates that its president be the offspring of an Ivorian father and an Ivorian mother.

Gbagbo and several informed folks opposed the strategy by France (an enemy of Gbagbo because of Gbagbo's determination to amend unfair deal decades ago between France and Ivory Coast - in which France gets about 90% of profit for managing Ivory Coast's resources). The election dispute went to the Supreme Court of Ivory Coast and Supreme Court ruled in favor of Laurent Gbagbo. And this, people, besides other issues is why Laurent Gbagbo refuses to step down.

The forced installation of puppet Ouattara by France and UN is nothing but a perfect display of Neo-colonialism! And what these world bullies forget to realize here is that they have also set the stage for a possible Rwanda Genocide:

Alassane Ouattara = Injustice = No Peace in Ivory Coast! No nation should be governed by a non-national. For detailed info, search "Staging a Rwanda Genocide."

Thanks for the info I will look into it, I did not know Ouattara was not from the Ivory Coast, but since all of this went down anyways what does the future look like for the Ivory Coast? another civil war?

 

[LAfrique]

A possible Rwanda Genocide is what lurks in Cote d'Ivoire!

 

[Baruch Menachem]

I think the folks in Ivory Coast are tired of this. The place was moderately successful from independence for a long time, and it can be again.
If the place is run rationally, it can be an African Hong Kong.

 

[High_Gravity]

A possible Rwanda Genocide is what lurks in Cote d'Ivoire!

I really hope not, thats not what the folks over there need.