Ivorian President Alassane Outtara
The war you barely heard about, in the African nation of Cote d’Ivoire, turns out to have been about more than just the presidency of the world’s biggest cocoa producer. It was also about religion: Christians vs Muslims, and the former colonial power who effectively backed the latter.
France may have banned the headscarf in Paris, but with the backing of a much more activist United Nations under Ban Ki Moon, it also backed a leader connected to his country’s Muslim majority, against a favorite of the secretive, U.S. Christian group known as C Street.
You see, before he was pulled from his burning residence by rebel troops loyal to the duly elected president of Cote d’Ivoire, Alassane Outtara, former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo was the latest in a string of rulers emerging from that country’s former colonial ties to the French. W.E.E. See You provides an excellent historical summation here. A clip:
The backstory to the developments unfolding in Cote d’Ivoire is pertinent to grasping what is going on. At the heart of this dispute lies run-of-the-mill power hunger, exploitation of religious, ethnic & regional differences; and interestingly, citizenship. One of the parties of this saga, Ouattara has had the “citizenship” question looming over his presidential quest for a decade and a half now, because his parents are said to hail from neighboring Burkina Faso. Of course where borders in any African country were drawn are entirely the result of arbitrary colonial borders that had nothing to do with the location and distribution of allied ethnic populations and more to do with European competition for Africa’s resources.
History
Côte d’Ivoire, like many in the West African region, is a scant half century out of subjugation under European colonial rule; France in this case. The colonial and neocolonial legacies distort the form of the political powerplays that Côte d’Ivoire’s leaders have used to entrench themselves in power.
Independent Ivory Coast began its nation-forming journey with Houphouet Boigny who ruled with a strong arm for 33 years (1960 -1993), a rule replete with a cult of personality and brazen use of the country’s wealth to pump his personal ego. He built a brand new political capital in his hometown of Yamoussoukro where he also built the largest basilica in the world (which Pope John Paul II came to bless!).
Having starved all dissent and civil institutions from flourishing , it was certain that Côte d’Ivoire would descend into political chaos after Boigny’s death. Between 1993 and 1995, Bedie who took over and then won elections from 1995 – 1999, governed by dicing and slicing the citizenry on the basis of ethnicity and regional allegiances. He disqualified Ouattara from contesting the Presidency on the claim that Ouattara’s parents were not Ivorian nationals.
Another colorful character, Robert Guei deposed Bedie in a coup d’etat, and then tried to give his rule the veneer of democracy in a rigged election the following year. Popular protests forced him out and Laurent Gbagbo was elected to his first term, but by then the schisms were already fracturing the country, and so only two years after taking over the presidency, civil war broke out in Cote d’Ivoire while Gbagbo was out of the country.
The counterattack on his political opponents was swift and brutal; a situation not very much helped by France’s botched interference in the events unfolding in the country. In the end the UN with the right noises form the African Union (AU), had to step in to keep some semblance of forced peace, and rescheduled 2004 Presidential elections. It was a joke, as the conditions never became right for those elections to be held, thus prolonging Gbagbo’s first term until the November elections in 2010. This time Ouattara was not disqualified and Gbagbo did not like the results.
Outtara, meanwhile, appears to be a reluctant ruler, an economist and former prime minister drawn back into politics after having spent many of his adult years abroad, studying at the University of Pennsylvania, and working for Western corporations and the International Monetary Fund. But his loyalists, who formed the base of the rebel forces who fought a bloody civil war in Cote d’Ivoire, essentially compelled his return. Per the Guardian:
It has long been fashionable to speculate about whether Ouattara really wanted to be president. After the death of the country’s founding president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who had preached inclusion, tougher times meant the southern cocoa belt was less welcoming to migrant farmers from the north. As prime minister at the time of Houphouët’s death, Ouattara drew his political support from Muslim northerners and southern intellectuals, and was excluded from the 1995 presidential elections by a law that appeared to have been drafted specifically by his opponent Henri Konan Bédié to prevent him taking part. He went off for an international career at the IMF, but his supporters founded a political party, placing him under a moral obligation to return.
This cannot be the most encouraging of prospects. Many of the former elite disappeared after the 1999 coup. Tidjane Thiam, the former minister of planning and development, suffered death threats after the coup and then left the country to pursue a successful career with Aviva and Prudential.
As he draws most of his support from the mainly Muslim north, Ouattara can expect to be blamed for every problem arising in the formerly rebel-held areas. Recent reports of atrocities in the west have blamed Ouattara supporters, but while conflicts over land pit northerners against southerners, it is cruel but convenient to blame Ouattara for the latest flare-up of conflicts that have existed for a generation. It is land conflict coupled with a breakdown in state security – not urban Abidjan politics – that are behind reports of killings in the west. Clashes like these are vile, but nothing new.
The north has been controlled by rebels loosely allied to Ouattara since 2002. Bringing it under the control of central government will not be easy. The south distrusts the north, so initiatives to sort out the region’s problems will be deeply unpopular. It is hard to see how a politician who has not been especially engaged with the Ivorian people can suddenly bring the country together. The coming months will be hard on stalwarts of Ouattara’s RDR such as Henriette Diabaté, who stuck it out in Abidjan throughout the civil war and must now, in government, take the blame once again for the country’s problems.
While the UN endorsed Ouattara’s election win, subsequent events will make his situation more difficult. To Gbagbo loyalists sceptical about his ethnicity, he is a foreign puppet. And his supporters will be looking just as hard for a transformation of their lives.
So this turns out to be a fight between Muslims and Christians? Really? Really. And to the chagrin of some American Christian rightists, the U.N. and France decisively backed the Muslims:
(April 5) The current ruler of the Ivory Coast (also known as Cote d’Ivoire) is Laurent Gbagbo, a Christian from the northern region of the country. The international community — including the United States and the United Nations (UN) — however, has rejected the legitimacy of his presidency because he rigged the election.
Indeed, his Muslim opponent Alassane Ouattara was initially declared the winner in the 2010 Ivory Coast presidential election. However, the Constitutional Council – dominated by Gbagbo supporters –fraudulently removed votes for Ouattara and thus gave the victory to Gbagbo.
Now, the Ivory Coast is embroiled in a civil war between Ouattara and Gbagbo camps. The West has maintained its support for the Muslim Ouattara. France and the UN have even sent troops to fight for him.
The situation in the Ivory Coast is a clear case of Western powers unanimously supporting a Muslim power over his Christian opponent. To the West, it wasn’t about the religious affiliations of Ouattara or Gbagbo; it was simply the fact that Gbagbo took an office that rightly belonged to Ouattara.
Muslims extremists of the world claim that Western countries are waging a holy war again Islam. They claim that all over the world, Western powers are systematically attacking Muslim interests while backing Judeo-Christian opponents.
It is precisely this type of belief that sometimes pushes Islamic extremists to commit acts of terrorism.
But such beliefs are simply not true in reality.
While backing Ouattara in 2011 doesn’t trump decades of Western involvement (and in some cases, mistakes) in the Middle East, it serves as further evidence that Western states are not at war with the religion of Islam.
And per the International Business Times, this:
CIA’s breakdown of Ivory Coast’s religious affiliations:
Muslim 38.6%, Christian 32.8%, indigenous 11.9%, none 16.7% (2008 est.)
note: the majority of foreigners (migratory workers) are Muslim (70%) and Christian (20%)
Which may be why Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Imhofe sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging the Obama administration to call for an election re-do, in the hopes that Gbagbo would reverse his 46%-54% loss.
More from W.E.E. See You:
Republicans: Clueless or devious?
It’s part of their undermine-Pres.-Obama’s-foreign-policy stance alright, but there is more to it. Inhofe as a card carrying member of C-Street House, the political congressional spear of the American conservative evangelical movement that has been super active on the continent of Africa backing those leaders they consider to be a bulwark against Islam, traditional African religions, homosexuality, and any resistance to American style evangelical Christian dogma. C-Street has been particularly interested in Côte d’Ivoire because of what they see as its potential as a powerbase in West Africa. “Ivory Coast has long been one of a handful of African countries that is “of special interest” to the Fellowship” (last year, C-street appeared in the news for their links to the Ugandan government’s death penalty for gays law). This has been a 3o year “crusade” in both Africa and Latin America in the wake of Billy Graham’s, Oral Robert’s, Reinhadt Bonke, and when your congresscritters travel at taxpayer expense, largess and access, something is smellingly wrong. Inhofe euphemistically said “I’m a Jesus guy, and I have a heart for Africa.””
And Imhofe is not alone:
The evangelical media led by Pat Robertson, has steadfastly supported Gbagbo, because he “is a Christian and a nice person… U.N. is ‘controlled so much by Muslim countries’” (I kid you not!), and sent their broadcast network reporters to Cote d’Ivoire to investigate the “truth” about the elections as they oppose Ouattara because “he is a Muslim”. This is how American cultural cleavages get exported and transposed onto other countries’ internal conflicts. And your legislators are carrying this smelly water fully paid for with your tax dollars when they go on congressional delegation jaunts (codel)
And here’s the take from Christian News Today:
Fortunately for Ouattara, numerous foreign powers covet access to IC’s immense agricultural (coffee, cocoa) and mineral (diamonds, oil) wealth. Because he is prepared to sell out IC’s sovereignty and wealth in exchange for power, Ouattara has the backing of these resource-hungry foreign powers, es pecially neo-colonialist France. Bolstered by the support of the ‘international community’, Ouattara has moved to take power by force.
As noted in last week’s RLPB, IC as a former French colony is obliged to hand over 85 percent of all its foreign currency reserves to the French treasury. This poverty-perpetuating neo-colonialism is exactly what President Laurent Gbagbo, a staunch nationalist, has been fighting against. This is why France is so keen for regime change in IC that it has sent attack helicopters against the Presidential Palace and Ivorian military barracks (in the name of ‘humanitarianism’!) ignoring the fact that these facilities not only house whole families but also abut residential areas.
And in addition to characterizing Outtara as a neocolonial puppet, Christian News Today adds this bit of history:
In 1913 William Wade Harris of Liberia crossed into Ivory Coast preaching the power of Christ over spirits. Dressed in white and carrying a cross, a Bible and a bowl, he baptised thousands and according to E Isichei (1995) ‘permanently rewrote the religious geography of the Ivory Coast’. But permanence can never be assumed. Good must be treasured and preserved. What Harris achieved, greed and mass Muslim immigration have undone. Once the most free and prosperous country in all West Africa, IC may never recover. Religious liberty and Christian security, once ‘guaranteed’, will be tenuous now.
So who’s right? It does seem there is colonialism at work in Cote d’Ivoire, and while there is also evidence that the U.N. under Ban Ki Moon is finally asserting itself on the side of free elections over dictatorial strongmen on the African continent (something that should bring shame to former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan), it’s also doubtful that France’s interest in its former colony is benign. Nor are the interests of American agribusinesses like ConAgra and Archer Daniels Midland, who profit from the exploitation of Ivorian cocoa and of the subsistance farmers, many of whom have never tasted a bar of chocolate.
Sadly, for Africa, it’s likely that all of the bad things are true at once: that France has neocolonial designs on the country, that Outtara will permit the IMF to come in and do what it does to third world economies, that corporations will continue their reign as the new colonial powers on the continent, and that the continued tension between Christians and Muslims, both inside Cote d’Ivoire and between that country’s Muslim majority and Christian extremists in the U.S., will remain a problem for a long time to come.
