|
The killing of seven U.N. peacekeepers, eight villagers and anunspecified number of soldiers in western Ivory Coast highlightshow, a year after this small West African country was plunged intoa brief, bloody civil war, a violent power struggle still dividesit. The attack occurred on Friday near the villages of Tai and Para on the Liberian border. It isthe latest and most lethal in a series of assaults in the same areain the past year in which close to 60 people have died. There is almost no doubt that the attacks are being carried out byforces loyal to the government of former Ivorian President LaurentGbagbo. Last week, Human Right Watch published a detailed repor t on those forces and accused Liberia of refusing to take actionagainst well-armed militia commanders and hundreds of fightershiding in jungle camps on its side of the border. The rebels hadcommitted war crimes in the months of violence that followed the contested November2010 election which Gbagbo refused to hold for five years, thenlost to his rival Alassane Ouattara, and then tried to nullify andare now perpetrating more by conscripting Liberian children andattacking civilians in cross-border raids, Human Rights Watch says. ( MORE: A Year After the War, Promise and Peril in Ivory Coast ) For well over a year, the Liberian government has had its head inthe sand in responding to the flood of war criminals who crossedinto the country at the end of the Ivorian crisis, said MattWells, the group's West Africa researcher. Rather than uphold its responsibility to prosecuteor extradite those involved in international crimes, Liberianauthorities have stood by as many of these same people recruitchild soldiers and carry out deadly cross-border attacks. Liberia is not the only country being accused of inaction. Gbagbo, physically dragged from power in April 2011 by an aggressive U.N. assault on his hideout in thebusiness capital, Abidjan, is now awaiting trial for war crimes atthe International Criminal Court in The Hague. Ouattara, thecountry's new president and a former official at the International Monetary Fund , is making good progress in restoring Ivory Coast's economy,which contracted by 4.7% in 2011 but should grow by 8% this year,according to the IMF. ( VIDEO: Ivory Coast: Human Rights Watch Documents Massacres of Civilians) But there has been little effort by the president to address thestubborn, bitter enmity at the heart of Ivory Coast's divide,which pits mostly Christian southerners against northerners who areoften Muslim and descended from immigrants from neighboringcountries. The make-up of Ouattara's administration displaysa marked northern bias and though both sides were guilty ofatrocities in the post-election violence, not one ofOuattara's supporters has been prosecuted. Meanwhile,neighboring Liberia and Ghana, where many Gbagbo supporters fled,have prevaricated over the presence inside their borders of militialeaders and their funders who are wanted in Ivory Coast and whocontinue to plot to overthrow the Ivorian government. At a time when Africans elsewhere notably in Somalia andSenegal are increasingly living up to the mantra of"Africans solving African problems," Ivory Coastremains an example of the opposite. As one pro-Gbagbo militiafighter in Liberia told Human Rights Watch: "There are twopossibilities: either we will kill them, or they will killus." It is the signal failing of the governments of Ivory Coast, Liberiaand Ghana that they have been unable or unwilling so far to offer athird, more peaceful option. MORE: The ICC is Scrutinized Even as Ivory Coast's ex-PresidentGoes on Trial. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Sublimated Cycling Wear Manufacturer , China Tracksuits Sportswear, and more. For more , please visit Sublimated Sportswear today!
Related Articles -
Sublimated Cycling Wear Manufacturer, China Tracksuits Sportswear,
|
