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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Mar-2011
7-Mar-11 News -- Escalating violence in Ivory Coast leads to enlarged U.N. peacekeeping force

Web Log - March, 2011

7-Mar-11 News -- Escalating violence in Ivory Coast leads to enlarged U.N. peacekeeping force

Police fire on hundreds of women protesters in Abidjan

Escalating violence in Ivory Coast leads to enlarged U.N. peacekeeping force

While the world has been transfixed by the drama in Libya, a violent massacre took place in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) last week.

Laurent Gbagbo, right, and Alassane Ouattara in 2000, before they became bloody enemies. (Reuters)

Laurent Gbagbo, right, and Alassane Ouattara in 2000, before they became bloody enemies. (Reuters)

A group of hundreds of women were gathering and preparing to start a demonstration, thinking that no one would shoot at a crowd of women. But shoot they did, killing six women and injuring others, according to Angola Press.

If it weren't for the horrors of so much blood being spilled, what's happening in Ivory Coast might be the plot of a situation comedy.

Like other countries in that region of Africa, Ivory Coast's population is split into a number of ethnic groups, and those are split by religious divisions, with the population in the north largely Muslim, and the population in the south largely Christian (Catholic).

Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) <font size=-2>(Source: CIA Fact Book)</font>

Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) (Source: CIA Fact Book)

Dating back to French colonial days and the beliefs of French cultural superiority, the France-allied southern population has been market dominant and government dominant. There was an election last year on November 28, and that's when things turned ugly, according to CS Monitor.

Laurent Gbagbo, a Catholic, had been president since 2000. The November election was close, but the winner was declared to be Alassane Ouattara, a Muslim. However, Gbagbo refused to step down, and instead empowered his police force to use whatever violence was necessary to keep him in power. It was Gbagbo's police supporters that massacred the women protesters last week.

There is widespread fear that the Ivory Coast conflict could spiral into a full-fledged civil war, and that's certainly a possibility, as Ivory Coast is in a generational Crisis era. As a result, the United Nations plans to deploy an additional 2,000 soldiers to its peacekeeping mission in the country, according to CNN.

Some 800 peacekeepers are already there, and many of them are stationed around the hotel in Abidjan where Ouattara is barricaded, to keep him safe from Gbago's police, according to Reuters.

Ivory Coast officially became a French colony in 1893, as part of French West Africa. In that generational Crisis period, the crisis climaxed in the north in 1881, with the conquest of numerous tribes by Samori Touré, the founder of the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic state. The crisis climaxed in the south by 1898, with the French conquest of Touré and the collapse of the last of his empire.

France ruled with an assumption that French culture is superior to all others, an assumption that the population largely accepted. However, the illusion was destroyed by World War II, when France was quickly defeated by Germany. Like France itself, the colony was split between supporters of the Nazi-linked Vichy government, and the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle. Although the government élites supported the Vichy government, it appears that most Ivorians favored the Free French, especially after they experienced the harsh realities of living under Nazi rule.

Ivory Coast followed a pattern that's typical of many countries during a generational cycle, following the end of a crisis war. The country gained independence in 1960.

Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a Catholic, became President and virtual dictator, but maintained an even-handed, non-discriminatory policy toward Muslims from the north. This kind of balance is typical of the recovery period that follows a crisis war, as the survivors do everything possible to prevent any such war from occurring again.

However, on Houphouët-Boigny's death in 1993, old divisions began to reappear, and those divisions have magnified into today's crisis.

Henri Konan Bédié became president after a brief power struggle with Alassane Ouattara, the Muslim who is internationally considered the winner of the November 2010 election.

Bedié developed the concept of "Ivority" (Ivoirité in French), and arranged for laws that required political candidates to have a sufficient amount of Ivority to be qualified for office. The major criterion for Ivority was that both the candidate's parents had to have been born in Ivory Coast. Since many northerners, including Ouattara, had parents who were born in Burkina-Faso, many Muslims were automatically excluded. Thus, Ouattara, who had been the country's Prime Minister under Houphouët-Boigny, was no longer qualified to hold office.

Laurent Gbagbo supported the "Ivority" policy, and won the election in 2000. However, bitter divisions had developed, and by 2002, the civil war officially began. The rebels quickly took control of the northern half of the country.

The civil war has followed a familiar generational pattern of periods of low-level violence alternating with periods of less violence after a "peace agreement" has been signed. Each period of violence is more violent than the previous one.

Probably the only thing worse than an Ivory Coast civil war would be an Ivory Coast civil war with thousands of United Nations peacekeepers caught in the middle. A full scale generational crisis civil war is an elemental force of nature, and if it comes to that, then there's nothing that the peacekeepers or anyone else can do to stop it, until it's run its course.

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Mar-11 News -- Escalating violence in Ivory Coast leads to enlarged U.N. peacekeeping force thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (7-Mar-2011) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Mar-2011 7-Mar-11 News -- Escalating violence in Ivory Coast leads to enlarged U.N. peacekeeping force

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Mar-2011
7-Mar-11 News -- Escalating violence in Ivory Coast leads to enlarged U.N. peacekeeping force