THE FRENCH VAMPIRE IN IVORY COAST

Busch Dec 2010 France & The Ivory Coast – The Empire Strikes Back

France And The Ivory Coast-The Empire Strikes Back

 

France And The Ivory Coast-The Empire Strikes Back

Posted: December 16, 2010 - 01:11

Posted by siteadmin

By Dr. Gary K. Busch

http://www.saharareporters.com/article/france-and-ivory-coast-empire-strikes-back

Currently there is an impasse in the runoff of the Presidential elections in the Ivory Coast. The French-linked and funded electoral commission declared that Allasane Outtara won the election while the Constitutional Court declared incumbent President Gbagbo as the victor.

The 'international community' of Western countries, NGOS, UN appeasers, and a variety of Francafrique cowards and bed-wetters support Ouattara even though massive fraud has been demonstrated at the polls in the rebel-held North.

This result should be no surprise to anyone. There has been no effective disarmament of the tinpot rebel warlords of the North and no unification of the country in anticipation of the election. A 'security' dividing line between the North and the South has been maintained by the occupying French forces pretending to be U.N. troops. Even so-called peacemakers like Blaise Campaore of Burkina Faso pretend to be neutral. Campaore, an unindicted war criminal with a track record of subversion, arms smuggling and war profiteering in Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Cost is somehow portrayed as a neutral.

When arms were being shipped to the West African wars by Chirac and Ghadaffi they arrived at their destinations after having passed through the hands of Campaore and Tandja (who both profited on the deliveries), Ouattara, known as the "Father of the Rebellion" in the Ivory Coast was sustained by operating from a safe haven in Burkina Faso when he was not busy maintaining his close personal ties to Sarkozy's first wife in Paris.  There was no mystery about the Ouattara-Campaore joint effort. Several hours of tapes exist which recorded the meetings called by Campaore in Burkina Faso which garnered support for Ouattara among the Northerners and actively plotted with two French military officers sent from Paris to attempt coups against the Gbagbo Government.

Voter fraud and deception was the rule in the North for over seven years. Even when the AU originally appointed Banny as the interim Prime minister ad Thabo Mbeki as the mediator the frauds persisted. President Mbeki visited the Ivory Coast and invited the warring factions to meet with President Gbagbo in Pretoria where two sets of agreements were made. These Pretoria Agreements achieved a resolution of most of the outstanding issues between the two sides, because President Gbagbo made concessions to achieve these ends. The most important point made in Pretoria was that there would be disarmament of the rebels.

This was, indeed, a requisite of the original cease-fire agreement at Linas-Marcoussis , Article 3 (g) "In order to contribute to restoring security of persons and property throughout the national territory, the Government of National Reconciliation will organise the regrouping and subsequent disarming of all forces. It will ensure that no mercenaries remain within the country's borders."

This was agreed at Linas-Marcoussis and at Pretoria. However, no disarmament took place. The rebels agreed to disarmament plans, schedules and procedures but missed every deadline. They rejected President Mbeki as a mediator because he insisted that the rebels fulfil their agreement to disarm. To this day there has been no disarmament, despite calls by the UN Security Council.

The UN issued Resolution 1633 which extended the deadline for the election of a President from October 30, 2005 (as written in the Constitution) for another year on the basis that a free and fair election could not be held under existing conditions and created the post of Prime Minister with elevated powers. It demanded that "all the parties signatories to the Linas-Marcoussis, Accra III and Pretoria Agreements, as well as all the Ivorian parties concerned, implement it fully and without delay". These responsibilities were clearly delineated further on in the Resolution

"14. Demands that the Forces Nouvelles proceed without delay with the DDR programme in order to facilitate the restoration of the authority of the State throughout the national territory, the reunification of the country and the organization of the elections as soon as possible;

"15. Affirms that the identification process must also start without delay;"

Since then there has been no effective progress on disarmament. This is the root of the crisis.

There was a program in place to 'identify' Ivorian citizens in an effort to create a current electoral roll. The question of 'identity' goes to the heart of the rebellion. Without a solution, there could be no elections and no serious hopes of peace between the armed camps.

Since 1993, when Henri Konan Bédié succeeded Félix Houphouët-Boigny as President, Muslim northerners have struggled to get identity papers; officials have accused them of hiding their foreign origins and abuses linked to constant identity checks have mounted. North-south tensions became personalised in the face-off between Bédié, from the south-west, and Houphouët's former Premier, Alassane Dramane Ouattara ('ADO'), who is both northern and Muslim, and a former International Monetary Fund Deputy Managing Director. Konan Bédié promoted the nationalist concept of Ivoirité and changed the constitution to allow only '100 per cent' Ivoirians to stand for the presidency. He claimed that Ouattara's family came from Burkina Faso and that he had faked his identity papers to hide the fact. Security agents carried on tearing up northerners' documents or made it impossible to renew them, effectively depriving them of their nationality. Bédié's first act as President included expelling 12,000 Ivory Coast residents on the grounds that they were really from Burkina Faso. This was Bedie, not Gbagbo!.

 Banny's cabinet approved a fresh identification process, together with new identity cards and a new electoral register. Gbagbo and the FPI disagreed with the Banny program because it did not provide for disarmament in advance of the registration. This was insisted on because under the Ivorian Constitution, registration could only legally be conducted by Registrars appointed by the Institut National de la Statistique who would draw up the electoral roll and issue voters' cards. The INS was run by the Planning Minister, former FPI Finance Minister Paul Bohoun Boubre. Banny's scheme was being run by an ad hoc Office National d'Identification, which is not provided for by the Constitution. Without disarmament it was not safe for licensed registrars to visit the rebel-held North to examine the documentation of putative voters and citizens. Banny has said that a 'village council' could meet and make the necessary identification. Since these councils were dominated and controlled by the local rebel bands, this meant that whoever the rebels said is an Ivorian became one on the spot. Fraud becomes the byword.

In fact this type of fraud was widely reported. The National Assembly announced that the police had brought evidence which showed that the RDR (Ouattara's party) was 'selling' registration documents. The President of the National Assembly, Mamadou Koulbaly, held up the purported registration of a man who claimed to be Ivorian and who used the existing documentation of a man, Sanago Aboubacar, to register. The real Sanago Aboubacar is a FPI delegate from Abobo and was very surprised to see someone else's face on his identity document. The police reported that these false identification papers are being sold for the sum of 15 000 FCFA by the RDR village councillors in the North. The whole process is in disrepute because no one trained and licensed to perform the process of identification is able to attend these 'village councils'. Any electoral roll prepared by this process is seriously flawed and incredible as a valid electoral roll.

The nub of the issue is that at least over half of the rebel forces grouped under the rubric "Forces Nouvelles" are not Ivoirians and never were. They were gathered as mercenaries and hired thugs by the French from Burkina Faso, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone and from the assorted other bands of riff-raff engaged in internecine warfare in West Africa. They were transported to the Ivory Coast and armed by the French, with the support and participation of Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso and Toure and Tandja of Mali and Niger.

There has been a peace treaty in place in the Ivory Coast since 2003. During the interval the 'international community' has intervened in the political process of the Ivory Coast. It has wrung concessions from Gbagbo and the FPI Government and made formal agreements with the rebel bands. To date these commitments by the rebel bands have not been implemented or enforced. The international community has been resourceful in pushing Gbagbo but has refused to deal in any meaningful way with the rebels. These rebels have not brought good government to their occupied areas. They have destroyed the infrastructure of the North. They have billeted themselves on a resistant population; stolen their houses, cars, children, jobs and opportunities. All of this has been done in defiance of the law, customary traditions and supposed UN standards. They pay no taxes; they pay no rent; they pay no customs duties. And yet, the UN and the international community has done nothing to stop them or to assist the poor disenfranchised, impoverished and supine citizens of the North

The rebels steal the cocoa, the cotton, the wood and the wool and make small fortunes which they bank in Ouagadougou. The international community, to be fair, has no love for the rebels – they have been led in their deliberations by the French who have a lot at stake in this country.

After 46 years of independence, France still controls most of the infrastructure and holds its foreign currency reserves as part of the 14-nation Franc Zone. The airline, telephone, electricity and water companies, and some major banks, are French-controlled. 'Accords de coopération', signed after Independence by the late President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and France's then Premier, Michel Debré, are still technically applicable. France maintains a stranglehold of Ivorian commerce and currency which vitiates national initiatives towards independence.

This privileged position of France is confirmed by a report from the UN Commission: "The testimony we have assembled has also enabled us to see that the law of 1998 concerning rural property is linked to the dominant position that France and French interests occupy in Cote d'Ivoire

According to these sources, the French own 45% of the land and, curiously, the buildings of the Presidency of the Republic and of the Ivorian National Assembly are subject to leases concluded with the French. French interests are said to control the sectors of water and electricity." The report only superficially touched the dominance of French interests in Cote d'Ivoire, but they are not hard to find. Below are some of leading players of the French business class in Cote d'Ivoire:

Bollore, leader in French maritime transport and principal operator of maritime transport in Cote d'Ivoire along with Saga, SDV (Switched Digital Video) See switched video.  and Delmas, controls the port of Abidjan, the leading transit port in West Africa West Africa. Bollore also controls the Ivorian-Burkinabe railway, Sitarail. Although it has recently withdrawn from the cocoa business, it has maintained its leading position in tobacco and rubber.