Paris sent the ship Foudre to Ivory Coast’s main city, Abidjan, loaded with hundreds of paratroopers, 30 armored vehicles, 20 trucks, and 5 helicopters.

The deployment is French imperialism’s largest military intervention in Africa since it sent 3,000 soldiers to Chad in the 1980s. Indicating that the occupation may be long-term, the French army chief of staff, Gen. Henri Bentegeat, said during a late December visit to Abidjan that Paris "can leave 2,500 men in Ivory Coast for some years if need be."

The main antigovernment group, the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement (MPCI), controls the northern half of the country, where the population is mostly Muslim. The government controls the south, which is majority Christian. The rebel group signed a truce in mid-October, but negotiations have not advanced.

In November two new opposition groups, not bound by the truce, emerged in the west--the Popular Movement of Ivory Coast’s Far West (MPIGO) and the Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP). They accuse the government of discriminating against oppressed national groups in that region.

The three opposition groups demand that president Laurent Gbagbo resign and hold new elections. Gbagbo had barred a popular leader from the north, Alassane Ouattara, from the September 2000 elections.

The civil conflict erupted in September after a failed coup by soldiers from the north, who protested repression and discrimination against Muslims and immigrants by the increasingly unpopular president.

The French government intervened militarily a week after the coup to provide "logistical support" to the government. Constant references in the big-business media to the country’s cocoa wealth leave no doubt as to the interests Paris is protecting there.

French troops have attacked antigovernment soldiers several times, including a battle on January 6 near the western town of Duékoué, in which Paris unleashed its superior firepower, killing 30. Duékoué, a key town along a route leading to the country’s two main ports in the south, is a gateway to the country’s cocoa belt.

The following day, French president Jacques Chirac declared, "In the Balkans, in Afghanistan, in the Ivory Coast, our forces act to reestablish and maintain peace," referring to Paris’s participation in imperialist occupation forces around the world.

On January 9 the two western opposition groups signed a truce with the French government, while continuing to fight government forces. They agreed to attend "peace" talks in Paris.

The next day the insurgents declared they had been attacked by progovernment forces in the far west, near the Liberian border, and accused Paris of aiding them. MPIGO leader Guilliame Gbatto said they had "been betrayed by France."

Gbatto said Liberian mercenaries were backing the regime’s forces. Gbagbo has promised to send all foreign mercenaries home. Liberian combatants are also reportedly backing antigovernment forces in the west.  
 
Imperialist interests
In the decades since Ivory Coast won its independence from direct colonial rule, Paris has maintained its economic and political domination of the country. French capitalists control key sectors of the country’s infrastructure, including electricity, water, telecommunications, port services, and construction.

The West African country buys 26 percent of its imports from France and sells France 15 percent of all exports. The debt of the Ivorian government to imperialist banks is $13.9 billion.

The world’s largest producer of cocoa beans, Ivory Coast has the second-largest economy in the region behind Nigeria.

U.S. and other imperialist investors have been eyeing potentially large oil and gas reserves off the country’s coast.

Both during and since the end of colonial rule, the French rulers have fostered religious and social divisions between Christians and Muslims as well as between native-born and immigrants. About 30 percent of the country’s 16.5 million people are immigrants from neighboring countries, mostly from Burkina Faso.  
 
 
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