HOW OUATTARA CREATED HATRED IN IVORYCOAST

To Professor Bangura:
Smearing Laurent Gbagbo is un-Panafrican
At a June 18th 2012, conference, in Rockville, Maryland, organized by The Revival of Panafricanism Forum, you first acknowledged (claimed) that you were an earlier supporter of Laurent Gbagbo for his struggle for democracy in the Ivory Coast. You observed that Laurent Gbagbo was a true Panafricanist in the earlier stage of his political career. Then to justify why you had a change of heart, you repeated unsubstantiated accusations against him previously written in a biased and disingenuous opinion, titled “Laurent Gbagbo’s “One Dozen Major Sins””and posted in the Sunday 20 February 2011 edition of the patriotic Vanguard, a Sierra Leone online news portal.

My main contentions with your analysis and positions are that:
1- Although you are an expert o resolutions of conflicts, which you taught at prestigious peace institutes such as the American University’s International Peace and Conflict Resolution, did beat the drums of war during the 2010-2012 electoral impasse in Ivory Coast by advocating military intervention instead of a recount of votes. Though you rightly condemned the NATO military intervention and bombing of Libya, you curiously call it a double-standard because the West did not intervene in Ivory Coast instead.

We all opposed the bombing of Libya and the Western actions against Khadafy because we all knew that it was only motivated by the attempt to control the oil of Libya. But, Khadafy is no saint. He has formed and supported most of the rebel movements which have caused havoc and destruction in our sub-region included the United Revolutionary Front’s Leadership. Foday Sankoh, who committed War crimes and crimes against humanity in your native country was formed and supported by Khadafy. Yet, you disregarded these facts and look at the greater impact on NATO intervention on Africa as a whole. Why are you failing to see that France and others intervention in Ivory Coast even through proxies like Ouattara’s is no different than the case of Libya? Isn’t it the same Nicolas Sarkozy and the same Obama who lent support to Ouattara and went after Gbagbo?

You also advocated that Nigeria should have bombed Ivory Coast, but since they failed to do so France did nothing wrong by dropping bombs on Africans in Abidjan.
If in the US, as in the case of Bush versus Gore, they did not resolve electoral disputes through war, why does it make any sense to anyone who claim to be for African unity to think it is OK when one side ask for recount , that it is ok to simply go to war to impose the other side?

I was very amused when I read some of your criticism against US based Ghanaian scholar Professor George uncle-Tom Ayitteh’s assertions that slavery and colonization are not to be blamed for the conditions of black and African people. Ironically, you embrace the same attitude of denial of western imperialist interference when it comes to the Ivorian crisis when you know well that France has manufactured the Ivorian crisis and targeted President Gbagbo while promoting Ouattara to serve their colonial interest.
I find it quiet bizarre that, you, a self-professed Pan-Africanist who also claims to be the descendant, of Bai Bureh, (the legendary Temne chief, hero and leader of the indigenous resistance against British colonialism in your native Sierra Leone) shrewdly echoed the same colonialist propaganda spread by Western mainstream media about the Ivory Coast. And you sided with Alassane Ouattara, the agent of French re-colonization of not just Ivory Coast but the entire West African sub-region.

People of Mali who supported him mainly for tribalistic reasons, are now crying and calling him a traitor because of his involvement in the destabilization of their country and his recent threat as the Head of ECOWAS( Economic Community of West African States) to impose medicine and other embargo on that country.
You even admitted at the conference that you supported Ouattara because you had hoped that he would turn things around. Oh really? Those expectations were based on what? You are a scholar on African affairs and you have 4 PH’Ds, you had extensively travelled countless times all over Ivory Coast and acquainted with officials there, therefore you are not an ignorant person on the political history of that country.

So, how come you display such naivety about Mister Ouattara, who you are surely aware, had displayed dictatorial tendencies during his tenure of the Premiership in the last Houphouet Boigny government?

You praise Gbagbo for his struggle for democracy against Houphouet, but who do you think was the Prime-Minister of Houphouet who really was persecuting Gbagbo, the civil society, labor movements, student activists and other branch of the society demanding democratic reform? Ouattara was. Did you not know that Ouattara had then, jailed Laurent Gbagbo, his wife Simone Gbagbo, his son Michel Gbagbo, Union leaders, student activist, opposition leaders, journalists etc while he was Houphouet’s Prime-Minister?

And do you not know why that most of the demands which were not just for political reform but also against the afflictions that the austerity measures of the IMF Structural Adjustment programs implemented by Ouattara caused to the most vulnerable elements of the Ivorian society?
So you a self-proclaimed Panafricanist and a very educated man, who wrote at least 50 books, had hoped that Ouattara who sold most of the Ivory Coast to French corporations through structural adjustment programs’ privatization policies would turn things around? Your wish did come through because he really did turn things around in the negative way though, by ending democracy, the rule of law, human rights and all the freedoms that Ivorian gained as a result of Laurent Gbagbo struggle.
The whole crisis in Ivory Coast which started by a French-backed failed coup attempt against Laurent Gbagbo turned rebellion was only the result of France attempt to recolonize Ivory Coast by removing Gbagbo from power in order to impose , their own stooge, Alassane Ouattara. An African scholar and Panafricanist who failed to understand that is either ignorant of the facts, simply or disingenuous.
2- You gratuitously accused Gbagbo of having killed, Africans, his countrymen and French. You never give any fact of when, where and how. Off course these accusations are false, and part of the smear campaign waged by France and its colonial allies to vilify President Gbagbo. I will discuss the issues of the deaths of pro-Ouattara supporters during the crisis and explain how it is not correct to impute them to Laurent Gbagbo, while on the other end, it is evident that Ouattara and his henchmen purposely massacred pro-Gbagbo supporters are still massacring Ivorians even more today under Ouattara’s rule than before.
I find it quite disturbing that you supported Ouattara against Gbagbo, though the government Ouattara led as Houphouet Boigny Prime-Minister, fully supported and assisted the Revolutionary United Front, the rebellious army led by Foday Sankoh and supported by Charles Taylor, both charged and found guilty of crime against humanity in Sierra Leone, your country of origin.
I refuse to believe that you were not aware that arms that travelled from Burkina Faso, to Sierra Leone via Liberia transited through Danane in Western Ivory Coast to the Liberian border under the escort of Ivorian regular army during Ouattara’s tenure of the Premiership in Ivory Coast? This practice that continued under Konan Bedie and was interrupted or ended should I say under Gbagbo.
Do not tell me Sir, you who were involved in humanitarian work in Bouake, in Central Ivory Coast that you did not know that Commanders were involved with Ouattara’s armed rebellion when it first started. Commandant Mosquito, the famous Sierra Leonean rebel Leader who oversaw the cutting of limbs of your countrymen, wasn’t he based in Bouake?
In case you didn’t know here are few comments on commandant Mosquito, in Wikipedia: “Samuel "Sam" "Mosquito" Bockarie (October 2, 1964 − May 5, 2003) was a leading member of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone. Bockarie was infamous during the Sierra Leone Civil War for his brutal tactics, which included amputation, mutilation, and rape.....
After fleeing Sierra Leone in 2000, Bockarie joined with Taylor's Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU) in Liberia, eventually moving to the Ivory Coast, where he participated in the rebellion led by Guillaume Soro in connection with the Gbatala base headed by Charles Taylor.
......On 3 March 2003, Sam Bockarie was indicted for crimes against humanity, violation of the Geneva Convention and violation of international humanitarian law. During this time, Bockarie commanded his troops to attack civilian populations who he felt were supporting the government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, including the use of mutilation and sexual violence. These attacks brought to the world the horrific images of children with missing arms and legs. He was also accused of recruiting child soldiers and abducting people to fight with him, and of attacking UN peacekeepers working under UNAMSIL.
These horrific acts of savagery perpetrated on your people by the allies of those you supported, makes me wonder why would you support Ouattara and his murderers and have high expectations of them?
It may be a surprise to you to read in the news about the ongoing genocide in Duekoue by Ouattara’ forces, but to us who observed that evil man from the start, it is just a logical continuation of the same destruction these kind of people caused in Liberia, Sierra Leone and now Ivory Coast.
You said that you were in Ouagadougou when the discussion of military intervention in Ivory Coast by ECOWAS was being held. Now, you cannot tell me that you were not aware that Blaise Compaore whose hands are covered of the blood of your people supported militarily the rebel groups of Charles Taylor, Foday Sankoh and Alassane Ouattara , which murdered hundreds of thousands of Africans in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast?
One last word, the Ivoirite issue:
Politically motivated inter-ethnics incidents are common in Africa, as one can currently witness in Nigeria between Muslims and Christians, or in your own country Sierra Leone, between the Mende and the Temne during the recent civil war there, or between the Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda and Burundi, or between the Kikuyu and the Luo in Kenya or between the Malinke and the Soussou in Guinea.
In the case of Ivory Coast, Mister Ouattara and his current ally former President Henry Konan Bedie, introduced such a conflict between the Northerners and the rest of the country’s ethnic populations. Ouattara started injected ethnic hatred in his quest for power by publicly stated that “ It is because I am a Muslim and a Northerner that they don’t want me to run for President”. But the true reason why Ivorians had issue with his interest in the presidency was that he was a citizen of Burkina Faso all his childhood and adult life until Houphouet Boigny publicly gave him the Ivorian nationality in a TV broadcast ceremony.
As in most country in the world, the US included, a citizen of another country is not allowed to run for the highest office in his new country of adoption. This is the case in the US for former government of California, Harold Shwartznegger or even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who were not naturally born citizens of that United States, a constitutional requirement for eligibility for the US Presidency. Northerners, who were already disgruntled by the perception given by Ouattara assertion that he was being discriminated because of his religion and his region of origin, were pushed further to the edge by Henry Konan Bedie, Ivoirite xenophobic propaganda according to which his Akan ethnic group was pure Ivorian and northerners especially were not pure bread Ivorians.
It is very nauseating to attribute to Laurent Gbagbo, Ivoirite, when it is obvious that he opposed it and even show solidarity with Ouattara, by refusing to run for President in support of the rejection of his candidacy by Bedie.
What make such a false claim so sickening is that there has been a deceitful amalgamation of Ivoirite with real genuine immigration, indigenous rights and national sovereignty issues in Ivory Coast, which were raised under Gbagbo’s term.
Ivory Coast being home to a disproportionate number of citizens of neighboring countries, the issue of who has the right to run for president or simply vote in Ivory Coast was raised when citizens of neighboring countries wanted to be able to vote in Ivory Coast. To say that only Ivorians can vote was by no means the same as promoting ivoirite but a question of national sovereignty. The law in the same neighboring country, Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea, were basically the same as far as the requirement of citizenship to be able to vote or that the candidate for President be a citizen of their country who never was a citizen of another country or whose parents were themselves citizens of that country.
So, your claim that Gbagbo engaged in Ivorite is preposterous. Alassane Ouattara as someone in the Q and A brought to your attention was as Prime Minister of Houphouet Boigny the first one to impose a permit of residency in Ivory Coast for none Ivorian citizens of neighboring countries including his own country of origin, Burkina Faso although members of the ECOWAS community were allowed to move and live freely without passport or any other resident permit from one country to another in their Union.
It is true that Alassane Ouattara has nothing to do with “La Charte du Nord”, a document circulated in Mosques during his Premiership, and which asserted that it was time for Northerners to rule Ivory Coast. Ouattara then, sent army troops in Mosques during prayer service to repress proponent of the “ Charte du Nord”. Though today he is the beneficiary of such tribalist and exclusionist concept. Ouattara today has engaged in his own tribalism and exclusion policy with his own concept of RATTRAPAGE.
Contrary to what you said at the conference to a question that was put to you on the issue, RATTRAPAGE is the full implementation of the exclusionist and tribalist idea that it is the time for the Northerners to rule Ivory Coast as Ouattara clearly expressed during an interview with a French TV station during a recent visit to France.
Today 90 percent of Ouattara nominations in his government, administration and army are northerners and Muslims in a country where leaders were always careful not to exclude others in nominations in cabinet positions, the administration and the Army.
Today ethnic cleansing, ethnic based killings and exclusions are the common plight of ethnic groups accused of being supporters of Laurent Gbagbo. The Guéré are paying a heavy price. Ouattara is bringing in everyday, truckloads of Burkinabe citizens from Burkina Faso to the Western part of the Ivory Coast to occupy the land, farms and villages of the Guéré People. One of Ouattara’s Burkinabe Warlord, Amade Oueremi, who Matt Wells of Human Rights cited in his presentation at the Rockville conference, is still ruling supreme on Mt Peko, in the Duekoue area where he and his Burkinabe kin are mass murdering the Guere people and chasing them off their ancestral land. The UN , France and Ouattara’s government who have armed forces in the area are not oblivious to what is occurring in the West of Ivory Coast.
We Panafricans know what is going on in Ivory Coast, the same that is going on in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and other parts of Africa where imperialists who seek to recolonize our continent and have our nations and ancestral lands run and owned by western corporations are creating these conflicts to impose their proxies like Ouattara. It is sad that African scholars like you are pretending not to understand what is going on.
We support Gbagbo because he dared say no to France and in him we see an African Leader who standing to imperialism while his adversary, Alassane Ouattara is willing to be the boy of the colonizers. In one the rare interview Laurent Gbagbo gave to an French journalist of African descent, he said that he knew the day he say no to Chirac invitation to all former French colonies o send troops to parade to French Independence day, that was his end.
Leo Gnawa, Ivorian Patriot and organizer for the Ivorian non-violent Resistance

OUATTARA, ASSASSIN

 Adobi Grégoire, et sa femme ont été tués, dans la matinée de mardi, a son domicile, par les forces gouvernementales. Selon l’information reçue de source crédible, l’épouse d’Adobi Grégoire s’apprêtait à se rendre au travail quand des militaires lourdement armés ont fait irruption dans la cour. La femme a poussé des cris de détresse. Son époux, Adobi Grégoire, qui était dans la maison, accourt. C’est ainsi qu’il est abattu froidement par les malfrats. Son épouse a subi le même sort. Tous deux sont donc tués sur le coup sous les yeux de leurs enfants.


A BODY GUARD OF AN OPPOSITION LEADER, AND HIS WIFE, WERE GUNNED DOWN BY GOVERNMENT FORCES IN FRONT OF THEIR CHILDREN. ADOBI GREGOIRE AND HIS WIFE WERE KILLED ON THE MORNING OF TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014 IN THEIR HOME BY PRESIDENT OUATTARA'S TRIBAL MILITIAS. ACCORDING TO INFORMATION RECEIVED FROM CREDIBLE SOURCE, HIS WIFE WAS PREPARING TO GO TO WORK WHEN HEAVILY ARMED MEN STORMED THE HOUSE. SHE SCREAMED FOR HELP. WHEN HER HUSBAND, ADOBI GREGOIRE CAME OUT OF THE BEDROOM, HE WAS  SHOT IN COLD BLOOD BY THE ARMED MEN. THE WIFE SUFFERED THE SAME FATE. BOTH ARE KILLED ON THE SPOT IN FRONT OF THEIR CHILDREN. THE ARMED MEN IN MILITARY UNFORM FLED THE CRIME SCENE IN THE COUPLE'S CAR. 
OUATTARA'S DEATH SQUADS ARE BACK AND WELL IN BUSINESS. FEAR (AGAIN) IS SPREADING RAPIDLY ALL OVER IVORYCOAST (COTE D'IVOIRE ).




 Adobi Grégoire, and his wife were killed on the morning of Tuesday, March 4th in his home by government forces. According to information received from credible source, his wife  was preparing to go to work when heavily armed soldiers stormed the court. The woman screamed for help. Her husband, Adobi Gregory, who was in the house, ran outside. Thus it is shot in cold blood by the thugs. His wife suffered the same fate. Both are killed on the spot in front of their children.

Ivory Coast: Security Forces Are Killing and Torturing Opponents, Group Says

Ivorian soldiers and allied militias are killing and torturing supporters of the ousted president Laurent Gbagbo, and they took part in a deadly attack on a camp housing displaced civilians,Amnesty International said Tuesday. The violence and the government’s failure to prosecute those responsible are derailing efforts to heal the country’s wounds nearly two years after the end of its civil war, the group said. The “army, along with an armed militia of traditional hunters, the Dozos, are carrying out extrajudicial executions, deliberate and arbitrary killings, politically motivated arrests and torture,” Amnesty said in a statement.

IVORYCOAST'S GRIM PAST

Ivory Coast’s grim past

With allies like this....

WEARING green-and-blue pyjama bottoms, Amadé Ouérémi casually bantered with government soldiers and posed for mobile-phone pictures as he entertained them recently at his encampment in the Mount Peko national park, in the west-central part of Ivory Coast. Mr Ouérémi’s personal militia, believed to number at least 100, had occupied the protected forest for more than a decade. A few hours later, government soldiers arrested him, dragging him kicking and screaming into a blue van. “Why am I the only one accused of crimes?” he said. “They want to eat without me.”

Ever since Ivory Coast’s short but murderous crisis after a disputed election in 2010, Mr Ouérémi enjoyed close relations with the rebels who have now become the national army. Alongside bands of traditional hunters, called dozos, he helped to wrest the country’s west from forces loyal to the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, on behalf of Alassane Ouattara, who was internationally recognised to have won the election. In the process, they allegedly slaughtered hundreds in Duékoué, a town near Mount Peko.

Despite allegations that Mr Ouérémi was involved in the

massacre, he looks likely to be tried only for occupying the forest. This will invite yet more accusations of “victors’ justice”. To date, no supporter of Mr Ouattara has been prosecuted in connection with the post-election violence, whereas more than 150 of Mr Gbagbo’s partisans are facing trial.

A government-appointed commission last year concluded that both sides had committed atrocities. Still, the architect of the western offensive, whose forces have also been implicated in the Duékoué massacre, is now one of the army’s chief commanders. Another well-known pro-Ouattara commander who has been accused of overseeing soldiers implicated in extrajudicial killings now heads a department in the south-west. The list goes on.

It reflects the peculiar nature of Mr Ouattara’s ascent to power. Although he was freely and fairly elected in the eyes of the outside world, he entered office on the back of a rebellion led by warlords who ran the country’s north until the election. Most owe their first loyalty to Guillaume Soro, a former chief rebel commander who is now the national assembly’s Speaker. Mr Ouattara has eagerly courted their allegiance. As well as getting plum jobs in the security apparatus, they have held on to the vast smuggling networks and parallel taxation systems they established as rebel leaders. A recent UN report found that smuggling costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Mr Ouattara has emerged as a forceful president. The legislature granted him the power to enact economic policy by decree after he announced GDP growth of nearly 10% in 2012. Yet he often seems in thrall to armed men. After Mr Ouérémi’s arrest, some expressed cautious optimism that the president was at last prepared to remove some of the more unsavoury characters around him. The government did win convictions in May against two ordinary soldiers in the president’s camp for murders committed after the crisis. The big fish, however, have remained untouched.

DEATH SQUADS

Ivorian opposition fears going home

QUIETLY, two vice-presidents of Ivory Coast’s former ruling party went to Ghana last month to ask Ivorian refugees in the country what it would take to get them to come home. Former President Laurent Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) was weakened after his refusal to step down despite losing the 2010 presidential election. Many high-ranking officials of the party fled to neighbouring Ghana in the ensuing crisis that saw President Alassane Ouattara take office by force the following year. The party has since boycotted parliamentary and local elections, and works out of a mansion headquarters in the commercial capital Abidjan that was stripped bare of windows and lights fixtures by occupying rebels. But the FPI still commands some support among Ivorians, particularly those from the country’s south, and President Alassane Ouattara is up for re-election next year. The visit by the two vice-presidents may be the start of a comeback attempt by Mr Gbagbo’s followers, though not the former president himself.

Approximately 8,900 Ivorian refugees live in Ghana, according to United Nations High Commission of Refugees statistics from last August. Many occupy camps in the countryside, but others live in or near the capital, Accra. Damana Adia Pickass, an FPI representative on Ivory Coast’s electoral commission during the crisis who famously tore up election results in front of journalists, was seen in Accra last July, and Justin Kone Katinan, Mr Gbagbo’s former spokesman, calls the capital home. Though Ghana is generally safe and welcoming to the former officials, many keep a low profile, and not without good reason. Last January, youth leader Charles Blé Goudé was arrested by Ghanaian and Ivorian police and spirited to Abidjan on a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The United Nations in a report released last year revealed that the Ghanaian government had intercepted two hit squads sent from Ivory Coast, and that at least one pro-Gbagbo Ivorian who had returned home from Ghana had disappeared.

Gbagbo supporters in Ghana are aware of all this, and made it clear that if the FPI wants them home, they’re going to need to protect them. A member of a refugee group, the Coalition of Ivorian Patriots, told Baobab that the only way the group’s members would come back is if they received a written agreement from Mr Ouattara that they would be safe from retribution in Ivory Coast and if Mr Gbagbo was released from jail in The Hague, where he is awaiting trial at the ICC. While seen as a savvy economic manager, Mr Ouattara has been criticized for failing to bring the country together again. Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t have complete control of the myriad militias and rebel groups that backed his rise to power. Even a written agreement may not be able to protect former Gbagbo officials who return home. 

FRANCAFRIQUE

Françafrique

Houphouet-Boigny used the word in a positive sense, but it didn't remain that way. In the current French media, the word evokes a shadowy network of personal friendships and money transfers that influence policy on both sides of the Atlantic. "I give you your budget; I can do what I want," former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing apparently told Jean-Bédel Bokassa. D'Estaing had helped finance Bokassa's grandiose wedding ceremony—worth one-fourth of the annual budget of the country—before growing exasperated with his protegé's wasteful spending and flirtation with Muammar Gaddafi—and throwing French military support behind a 1979 student uprising that brought down the Bokassa regime. In France, political campaigns were financed by oil and even aid money that African leaders—particularly longtime Gabonese President Omar Bongo—skim off and send back to Paris, therefore manipulating French policy in their own way.
Since François Mitterand in 1990, French presidents have tried to distance themselves from the "old boys' club" of "occult networks" of Françafrique. However, it was on Mitterrand's watch that the biggest disaster of Françafrique occurred: a bungled military intervention in Rwanda—a former Belgian colony whose president had worked closely with France— that allowed some perpetrators of the 1994 genocide to escape across the Congolese border.

Pyromaniac

Sarkozy "is a pyromaniac," says Chaibou Boubacar, editor-in-chief of Alternative Espaces Citoyens magazine. "Based on a survey I did yesterday in the capital [Niamey, Niger], we're glad to be rid of him." The fires to which Boubacar alludes are the French interventions in Cote d'Ivoire and Libya.

"Our president [Mahamadou Issoufou] has traveled to Paris 14 times in a little more than a year," adds a resident of Niamey interviewed by Jeune Afrique. "What does he need to go there so often for? France needs to give us our independence back."

After a close, disputed election in Cote d'Ivoire in fall 2010, socialist incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo was widely believed to have won therefore refused to give up power. After several months of slow-burning civil conflict, a French military intervention resulted in Gbagbo's arrest and installed his opponent, Alassane Ouattara, as president. Ouattara, a former IMF economist, is a friend and ideological ally of Sarkozy. His party, Rassemblement des Republicains, even signed a collaboration accord with Sarkozy's Unis pour un Mouvement Populaire shortly before the election.

"It's true that Hollande is a socialist, like Gbagbo, but people here are just happy to see Ouattara's puppet-master gone," says Goué.

France's support of NATO intervention in Libya also left a bad taste in the mouths of many Africans. Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had invested millions in schools, mosques and infrastructure across Africa, in the name of Islam and his dream of a "United States of Africa."

France ruled, really essentially by pitting one ethnicity against the other.  So there is a legacy of colonial powers extracting resources and really making sure that those resources go for the interests of the external actors, particularly multinational corporations that are active in mining, have been active in mining in Africa for decades, and really rendering the people on the land invisible.