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   Vol. 70/No. 5           February 6, 2006  
 
 
Protests target UN/French troops in Ivory Coast
 
BY ARRIN HAWKINS  
Protests demanding withdrawal of the 11,000 United Nations and French troops from the Ivory Coast spread throughout the West African country January 16. Thousands of youth marched on the UN headquarters in Abidjan, the commercial center, throwing Molotov cocktails, burning tires, and wrecking building walls. UN troops responded with tear gas grenades and bullets. This recent string of protests erupted after UN “mediators” called for dissolution of the Ivorian parliament. Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo pulled the ruling Ivorian Popular Front out of the transitional government January 18 and called the UN’s proposal a “constitutional coup d’etat.”

Demonstrations targeted UN and French facilities in the country. Schools, businesses, and banks were shut down. Similar actions in the western towns of Daloa and San Pedro reportedly took place, with protesters burning UN offices. UN troops killed four Ivorians in the town of Guiglo and were forced to evacuate some 300 of their soldiers and staff from the region.

“We want the complete liberation of Ivory Coast,” George Kassi, 19, who joined the protests in Abidjan, told the New York Times. “I won’t go home until the UN and France leave my country.” Gbagbo issued a call to end the protests January 19, which thousands of youth defied.

Two weeks earlier, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan had called for an additional 3,900 troops and police to be sent to the Ivory Coast to help impose a “peace” accord drafted in Paris. Currently there are some 7,000 UN troops there, many from other African countries, alongside a French occupation force of more than 4,000.

Under the UN and French plan, the former head of the West African Central Bank, Charles Banny, was to act as the transitional prime minister of a new government. On December 15 the UN Security Council voted to extend by one year the arms embargo it imposed against Ivory Coast in 2004. It prohibited the sale of diamonds and threatened travel and economic sanctions against individuals it considers an obstacle to the imposition of the coalition regime.

Paris, the former colonial ruler, is seeking to end the conflict and restore stable imperialist exploitation of the country. Ivory Coast is the world’s largest cocoa producer, exporting some 40 percent of the world’s cocoa, worth $2.3 billion a year.

France controls most of the country’s electricity, water, telecommunications, and banking. It accounts for some 24 percent of the country’s imports and 33 percent of its foreign investment. Ivory Coast makes payments on a debt of nearly $12 billion owed to banks in imperialist centers, many in Paris.

Washington has been jockeying to displace Paris as the dominant imperialist power in the region. The U.S. presence in the area has steadily increased over the past decade with the discovery of massive oil deposits in the Gulf of Guinea. The Houston-based Vanco Energy Company has contracts with the Ivorian government to drill in extensive areas of the Ivory Coast’s eastern deepwater. Some 200 U.S. Special Forces were deployed briefly in the country at the beginning of the civil war.
 
 
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