The crisis in Cote d’Ivoire continues to accelerate. Laurent Gbagbo has dug in his heels, insisting he is the rightful president despite all indications being that the election results clearly favored his opponent Alassane Ouattara. Well more than 10,000 Ivorians have fled the country. As a result the presidents of three nearby countries — Benin, Sierra Leone, and Cape Verde — arrived in Cote d’Ivoire today to try to persuade Gbagbo to yield and to accept some form of political asylum or face the very real threat of being removed by force. Gbagbo appears to have rebuffed these demands. This brings us closer to the nightmare scenario for regional stability as the use of force would almost certainly lead not only to civil war in Cote d’Ivoire but also to a regional war that would engulf an already fragile region.
Within the country Ivorians are filled with trepidation. Ouattara recently called for a general strike but it has gone largely unheeded, presumably because most people simply want to keep their heads down and avoid the trouble brewing around them. Ouattara may have won the recent election, not to mention the fight for global public opinion, but that victory quite obviously has not come with enough of a mandate to compel people to sacrifice their fragile well being on his cause.
In classic stalemate fashion neither side as of yet is powerful enough to win but both are strong enough to hold out and wage a war of (so far largely metaphorical) attrition. From the outset one man, Gbagbo, has had the power to end this. With each passing day, however, the possibility of a peaceful (and face-saving) solution fades. Violence from within and violence from without seem increasingly likely, and in that scenario Ouattara may emerge victorious, but no one wins.