West African Trouble

I watched Hotel Rwanda recently and couldn’t help seeing the connection between the movie (and more importantly the facts that the movie is loosely based on) and the current heightened tension in the Ivory Coast. I sense some hypocrisy from my French colleagues when they moan about the global American Empire. I find a striking similarity with French influence in Western Africa.

Much of West Africa was colonized by the French and the Ivory Coast, or Cote d’Ivoire, was one the jewels of those French colonies. After 1960 the Ivory Coast gained independence from their former masters and set themselves on a path of economic and social growth under the leadership Félix Houphouët-Boigny. But the French wouldn’t give up control so easily:

This scene is much like Rwanda where the horrifying genocide in 1994 between Hutus and Tutsis was exacerbated by foreign French troops. To protect their citizens the French paratroopers fought Tutsi rebels that were attempting to oust the government and put an end to the Hutu massacres. This certainly benefitted those carrying out massacres on women and children by the thousands.
(Links used: http://www.economist.com/ , http://www.bbc.co.uk/ )

“Under a benevolent and canny autocrat, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who ran the show after independence from France in 1960 until he died in 1993, Côte d’Ivoire prospered, albeit with a clutch of Frenchmen pulling strings behind the scenes, often on France’s behalf.”

Whether the French are part of the cause of West Africa’s most recent problem in the Ivory Coast is unknown. Nonetheless, they have left a legacy of bloodshed in their former colonies because of their insistence on meddling in foreign affairs long after the colonial era ended. French nationals have been urged to leave the Ivory Coast, and maybe a select few should not return.