Professional Soldiers ® - View Single Post - Ivory Coast: aid workers find 1,000 bodies in Duekoue

**Pete** · 04-11-2011, 05:03

The next Rwanda? ‘In all districts of Abidjan there is gunfire’

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/w...fire-1.1094251

".......The cocoa economy around the city has collapsed as a result of an embargo imposed by the European Union following Gbagbo’s refusal to accept the presidential election result. According to official figures, Ouattara won with 54% of nearly five million votes cast nationally. But the head of the Constitutional Council alleged vote-rigging in the Ouattara-controlled north and declared Gbagbo the victor with 51% of the votes cast. The country then returned to civil war after enjoying a tenuous peace since 2005.

The inter-ethnic violence around Duekoue that has driven the Gueré tribal people into the mission station mirrors the kind of ethnic tensions that prevail throughout most of Ivory Coast. The Gueré ancestors had possessed the land for centuries before people from the arid north and from neighbouring Burkina Faso and Mali began settling there 40 years ago, seeking work as cocoa prices boomed on world markets. Ivory Coast historically has produced more than 40% of the world’s supply of beans for production of the developed world’s chocolate products.

Ethnic tensions and xenophobic killings began when the world price of cocoa nosedived in the 1990s and some five million immigrant workers were suddenly perceived as a burden. The southern-dominated Government introduced a new xenophobic concept of “Ivorité”, or Ivorianess. Vigilantes began killing “foreigners” – the majority of them Muslims and many of them third-generation immigrants – on plantations and in shanties on the edges of the towns as the country, once the richest in West Africa, descended into civil war................."

04-11-2011, 05:03	#4
Pete Quiet Professional Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Fayetteville Posts: 13,080	The next Rwanda? ‘In all districts of Abidjan there is gunfire’ The next Rwanda? ‘In all districts of Abidjan there is gunfire’ http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/w...fire-1.1094251 ".......The cocoa economy around the city has collapsed as a result of an embargo imposed by the European Union following Gbagbo’s refusal to accept the presidential election result. According to official figures, Ouattara won with 54% of nearly five million votes cast nationally. But the head of the Constitutional Council alleged vote-rigging in the Ouattara-controlled north and declared Gbagbo the victor with 51% of the votes cast. The country then returned to civil war after enjoying a tenuous peace since 2005. The inter-ethnic violence around Duekoue that has driven the Gueré tribal people into the mission station mirrors the kind of ethnic tensions that prevail throughout most of Ivory Coast. The Gueré ancestors had possessed the land for centuries before people from the arid north and from neighbouring Burkina Faso and Mali began settling there 40 years ago, seeking work as cocoa prices boomed on world markets. Ivory Coast historically has produced more than 40% of the world’s supply of beans for production of the developed world’s chocolate products. Ethnic tensions and xenophobic killings began when the world price of cocoa nosedived in the 1990s and some five million immigrant workers were suddenly perceived as a burden. The southern-dominated Government introduced a new xenophobic concept of “Ivorité”, or Ivorianess. Vigilantes began killing “foreigners” – the majority of them Muslims and many of them third-generation immigrants – on plantations and in shanties on the edges of the towns as the country, once the richest in West Africa, descended into civil war................."
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