The world continues to focus on events in the Maghreb and beyond. And while I don’t want to get into any unnecessary hierarchy-of-suffering debates, I will maintain that what is going on in Cote d’Ivoire is every bit as important and more potentially destabilizing than what is going on in Libya.
Violence continues to spread in Abidjan and beyond. Four people were killed by unidentified gunmen yesterday in the country’s commercial capital and administrative center where a grenade also went off, killing one and wounding a score or more.
And it seems increasingly as if Laurent Gbagbo, who insists on holding on to power despite clearly losing November’s election to Alassane Ouattara. Ouattara, meanwhile, has made a series of gestures in hopes of achieving a workable solution, which is to say Ouattara is operating from the back foot. As so often happens in these situations, the presumptive loser has the recognized winner right where he wants him. Ouattara is probably doing the right thing, but he has few options. Meanwhile Gbagbo inexplicably has even garnered some support from other African leaders, including Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
The drumbeat of civil war thus continues to pound unless Ouattara simply concedes, which would establish a precedent that, if not worse than civil war, may not be much better.
