Ivory Coast Primer
Who knew? The A.P. can do good journalism. This is from Ivory Coast: Why the Onetime “Paris of Africa” Is Sliding Into War, and Why It Matters:
In 2002, British, U.N. and West African armies crushed a vicious Liberia-backed insurgency in Sierra Leone. The next year, American, U.N. and West African forces and Liberian rebels routed the chief promulgator of West Africa’s wars, Liberia’s Charles Taylor.
Taylor, a Cold War creation of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s guerrilla camps, had trafficked arms and insurgencies across West Africa’s borders since 1989.
Today, 75 percent of the world’s 62,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops are trying to enforce peace deals across Africa, and $2.9 billion of the world body’s $3.9 billion peacekeepinG budgetq are spent here.
With up to 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves in West Africa, the United States and other nations increasingly are saying they have a strategic interest in Africa – and a stake in keeping it peaceful.
More than half the world’s total peacekeepers – 32,402 – are based in Taylor’s old stomping grounds – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast itself, divided by civil war since 2002.
There’s more.
