Gamal Nkrumah is taking on the roots of a tragic milestone in Ivory Coast's post-colonial history If incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo is West Africa's enfant terrible then his arch-rival Al-Hassan Ouattara is its comeback kid. As a former prime minister, Ouattara is no newcomer to the Ivorian political scene. The United Nations rejected Gbagbo's latest call for the international body to withdraw its 10,000 peacekeeping troops in the country. The international community has toppled unsuspectingly into the elephant trap of perilous Ivorian political terrain. The European Union imposed a travel ban on Gbagbo, his immediate family and close associates and henchmen over the disputed Ivorian election in which Ouattara was declared winner garnering 54 per cent of the vote. Gbagbo declared the election results null and void, much to the consternation of Ouattara's supporters, the international community, Ivory Coast's West African neighbours and the African Union. The key to the crisis is that some of the resource-rich country's richest men, with their well-connected vested interests, are staunch defenders of the Gbagbo clique. Just as war is too important to be left to the generals and politicians of the Ivory Coast, so the results of the elections are critical and must not be ignored because of the whims of the country. The mood in both the south where Gbagbo proponents predominate and in the north and central parts of the country where Ouattara supporters preponderate is decidedly bellicose. This nationalistic obstinacy may until recently have seemed to be an arcane anomaly. Gbagbo's intransigence cut deeply into the very nature of the Ivorian state. The Ivory Coast certainly has a governance problem. The current crisis has split the nation into two warring groups locked in combat over the political future of the country. The crisis has uncovered the tribal and religious fissures of a terribly fractured nation. Gbagabo's decision not to step down from office looks dangerous for several reasons. It might, for instance, blur the current clear separation of powers between the executive and the military establishment. The army has emerged as the major stumbling block to lasting peace and political stability in Ivory Coast. If the institution is to be effective, exclusively southern Christian generals cannot staff it. The political crisis in the country has exposed brutally the fallibility of the military and police establishment. Northern Muslims are relegated to the lower ranks and even so they are regarded with suspicion by the high- ranking southern generals. The army must answer to parliament and the democratically-elected president of the country and not to tribal chieftains with their own political agenda. The election of Ouattara as president of the Ivory Coast is an ironic epilogue and must be seen as a wigwag of hard truths. Even if Ouattara assumes office the army might be reluctant to obey his orders. That would be a grave mistake. The more the Ivorian generals enmesh themselves into the country's political fray, the stronger their claim to be the king-makers. That is primarily because the allegiance of most generals is to Gbagbo who is widely viewed as the champion of the rights of the non-Muslim people of the southern part of the country who regard themselves as autochthonous, rightful sons of the soil. What the southerners conveniently overlook is that the northerners, be they local Ivorian or immigrants from neighbouring countries, these impoverished farm labourers who have settled in the country for generations, are precisely the workers who tilled the land that turned Ivory Coast into the world's largest producer of cocoa and one of the most important exporters of coffee, cotton and rubber. They deserve the accolade of supposedly more blue-blood Ivorians since they built the country and made it the economic powerhouse of West Africa. Most of them were born in Ivory Coast even if their parents hail from the predominantly Muslim nations to the north. The political instability threatens social cohesion and economic development. Foreign interference, African and European, is inevitable since the economic stakes are high. Ousting Westerners is not an option in the Ivorian case. But by mucking in to instill a degree of democracy, the West might unintentionally strengthen the hand of the xenophobes in Ivory Coast. French President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened economic sanctions and grave retribution if Gbagbo does not step down immediately. Gbagbo retorted by saying that the former colonial power, France, is meddling in domestic Ivorian affairs. "Laurant Gbagbo must choose now if he wants to go down in history as a man of peace or be considered a criminal," Sarkozy warned. "The Ivorian people have spoken. And, the international community has spoken. Gbagbo must go," the French president said in a strongly worded statement. The United States was equally acrimonious. "The US is prepared to impose targeted sanctions individually and with our partners on Gbagbo, his immediate family, and his inner circle, should he continue to illegitimately cling to power," US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters in Washington. This of course stinks to high Heaven of hypocrisy. These colonialists and neocolonialists operate according to the age-old device: create the problem, provide the solution. Christian Ivorians are the creation of European missionaries who now pretend to be more Catholic than the Pope. Ominously, Gbagbo appointed Charles Ble Goude as youth minister. This particular man was quite frankly a gangster of ill repute. As leader of the dreaded Young Patriots, a paramilitary group, his henchmen were accused of ushering in a reign of terror, killing, raping and assaulting opposition supporters and anyone suspected of not being native Ivorian -- that is to say Muslims from the north, be they Ivorian by birth or more recent immigrants. This bears more than passing resemblance to the situation in Sudan. The north-south divide, the Muslim-Christian chasm, has emerged as an intractable political challenge in numerous African nations, not least in Sudan. If Sudan splits, then Ivory Coast may be next. The fissure, it is feared, in both cases will be along the religious faultline. There are those Pan-Africanists who make a good case for a United States of Africa. Gbagbo is not one of them. His Mafiosi are battling to rid the country of Africans who differ culturally from the predominant Christian and animist traditions of the southern half of the country. Ivory Coast's economic success has come at a cost. The indispensable contribution of the Muslim northerners to that success is long overdue. Ouattara's election as president signals an acceptance of the Muslim northerners' integration in Ivorian social, political and economic life. That is undeniably a positive change. Claims of historical inevitability are dangerous, but Sudan might set a dangerous precedent in Africa. If Gbagbo means business, it is the best chance to forestall a fate as fracturous as that of Sudan. There are paradoxes to the Ivorian economic boom. Tribalism has reared its ugly head as the gap between the haves and the have-nots widens. This is despite a dramatic fall in poverty. Who knows where history is headed? We hope that Ivory Coast will remain a united, democratic country. Ivorians will have to work especially hard at maintaining unity. As things now stand, the country is on a verge of disintegration. This is due to ambitious army generals in a chaotic political system. International outrage at Gbagbo's intransigence may backfire. But a true Pan-Africanist spirit might just be the only antidote for the hardened attitudes of the Ivorian powers that be.
