Ivory Coast

As promised, a short analysis.

I've noted that a few blogs this week that a few Americans are bemoaning the fact that France sent troops to the Ivory Coast, and felt that this was an invasion of said country.

Here are the facts. Ivory Coast, once a beacon of stability in West Africa, has devolved into chaos.

Full scale rebellion broke out in September 2002 when some troops mutinied. Soon, a civil war broke out as long simmering ethnic tensions and Ivorian xenophobia boiled to the top of the pot. Foreign workers from neighboring nations such as Burkina Faso became targets of the Ivorians. You can read more in this article. The Burkanise have told stories of their kindred killed and placed into mass graves. There are three to five million Burkanise workers in the Ivory Coast, and they make up the largest immigrant group.

The Ivorian government appealed to its former colonial parent, France, and France obliged. The rebels and government headed to talks in Paris where they made a deal. Rebels and Government would share power. This, of course, did not go over well in Ivory Coast, which lead to protests.

Foreigners were then attacked by pro-government protesters. France, which already had a military force of about 600 in the country increased that amount to 2500 to evacuate foreigners. It was this action, and the protest where the protest that asked the US to save them, even though the US itself supports the peace deal that France came up with, that invoked the ire of a few conservative bloggers, which caused them to ignore the real facts so they could "fisk" France and feel good about themselves. In fact, many Western powers urged their civillians to evacuate. This Tuesday, the UN voted unanimously to allow peacekeepers to use force, if necessary.

Currently there are 2,500 French soldiers and hundreds of West African peacekeepers monitoring a shaky cease-fire in Ivory Coast. A French military spokesman said Wednesday that an additional six hundred French troops will be sent to the region, bringing the French force there to over 3,000.

Also, this today:

The United States sent a small military team to conflict-torn Ivory Coast on Wednesday, and France announced it was increasing its force to more than 3,000 troops, amid often violent protests against a Paris-brokered peace accord.

Full text here.

I'm not sure what the big deal was for conservative bloggers to even bother with this. I suspect they just saw the pictures of the Ivorian pro-government female protesters holding up signs equating France with Nazism and asking the US to help them and falsely put things together with some specious reasoning.

But had they researched the facts, instead of being all knee-jerk about it, they would have found that the US supports the French peace deal, and probably would have wondered what the heck the women were protesting over.

Next time, do your homework.

You can start here.
and also here.