Monday, April 16, 2007

Ivory Coast to scrap Buffer Zone


Not only have the President of Cote d'Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo and New Forces rebel leader, Guillaume Soro, signed a peace accord, but the president has appointed Guillaume Soro as the new Prime Minister. Now today, the buffer zone has begun to be bulldozed by UN forces. WHAT IS GOING ON?! All of a sudden, Cote d'Ivoire has managed to ink out a 10 month plan to reunite the armies, the country and hold peaceful elections. This was all supported by the President of Burkina Faso. Since the civil war began, the country has been split in two, the north being controlled by the rebel forces and the south by the government. the buffer zone between them resembles that between North and South Korea. The 600km-long zone had previously been patrolled by 11,000 French and UN peacekeepers. Now, government trucks freely roll through the space to the sounds of cheers and hoorahs. Could the Ivory Coast become the next Ghana? Are they taking a hint from their neighbors? The political community holds its breath while the ivory coast takes another stab at democracy.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I believe that Africa is making huge strides. I base that opinion on the extraordinary people that I work with through NGOabroad.

I believe that if you look at what governments are doing, almost anywhere, it looks bleak. In response, citizen initiatives have taken off everywhere in the world, Africa included.

I believe that Africa is growing a new crop of leaders that have the people's needs in mind.

I also believe that the press reports the bad news. I read Christian Science Monitor because it reports a more hopeful perspective.

The following is from CSMonitor:
"With a decade of sustained economic growth, increasing demand for African minerals and oil, and a falling number of conflicts, the trend lines for some countries in sub-Saharan Africa are finally starting to look pretty good.
A new World Bank report, issued last week, has gone as far as to say that 2005 may be the year when Africa "turned the corner" from poverty and debt to prosperity and wealth. In a continent that was once almost entirely dependent on foreign aid, there are now 16 countries that have achieved annual growth rates in excess of 4.5 percent for more than a decade.

The number of conflicts in Africa has dropped to just five in 2005, from a peak of 16 in 2002."

Allie Noll said...

I like your optimism ann, and I have some of it too. It is great to see a country like Cote d'Ivoire, which was once a success story and then fell into revolution, pull itself up. The are political economists in the country including the former prime minister Banny, who believe that both leaders have hidden agendas. Also, there is a tract record with peace accords being broken...six, I believe, in the last 10 years. However, there is hope. And maybe the world bank is right, maybe the ticket out of economic ruin is to band together. The president did choose his "enemy", his counter-part to jointly run the country. This is a promising move away from Leonard and Strauss's theory of "clientalism". The UN could even be doing something right for a change.

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