The French in Ivory Coast

Just read an article on the CNN web site entitled "8 French Killed in Ivory Coast". Did you know there was still a U.N. "peacekeeping " mission going on there? I'd forgotten all about it. So after all this time, how's it going over there? Well, it turns out that the headline only mentions the French casualties, but there was an American killed as well. No need to mention that in the headline. On the American death, there were no details provided, but the guess is it could have been a missionary. I guess we get enough ink in Iraq and Afghanistan. Incredibly,

The violence threatened to drag French and U.N. peacekeepers into the civil war that hard-line military commanders re-launched on Thursday, breaking a more than one-year-old ceasefire with surprise bombing attacks on rebel-held positions in the north.

No doubt there will be investigations into that "surprise" business. What's wrong with French Intelligence (oxymoron) that they didn't know about all this beforehand? Can't wait for the outcome of that investigation. Also:

The U.N. Security Council called an emergency session Saturday to deal with the clashes. The United States, which currently holds the council presidency, and France were drafting a presidential statement warning Ivory Coast's government to stop attacks immediately or face "serious consequences," council diplomats said.

If I could only make this stuff up, I'd be giving Clive Cussler a run for his money. Let's see... "serious consequences"... I've heard that expression somewhere before. Oh well, I'm sure it will come to me eventually. I hope we all get to find out definitively just what France has in mind when it says something "serious" like that. Could be "serious", but that would be just a guess.

France sent three Mirage fighter jets to West Africa in response, and French President Jacques Chirac said he ordered the deployment of two more military companies to Ivory Coast.

Uh-oh. Trouble ahead. Looks like the US will have to bail them out again pretty soon. The only question is, should we jump in now or wait until after Ivory Coast troops march through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris?

Chirac said in a statement that he ordered the strike on the jets that violated the cease-fire and said France was acting within the terms of a U.N. mandate for French forces overseeing a cease-fire in the country.
"Our forces responded in a situation of legitimate defense," Bureau, the spokesman, said. "Now the priority is the immediate end of combat."

Of course. That's always a French priority. However, it's encouraging that they haven't surrendered yet.

Ivory Coast military commanders have vowed to retake the north, controlled by rebels since the September 2002 start of the war in the world's top cocoa producer.

So let me try to understand something here. Winter's coming and the French don't want to be without their hot chocolate yet again this year, so there will be some kind of retaking? It's all very confusing to me. If it isn't "Oil for Food", it's "Anything for Hot Chocolate".

In the end, we really have to remember that the U.N. and the French have been in Ivory Coast doing "peacekeeping" stuff only just a little over two years. You have to remember that the Ivory Coast is about the area of California. Oh no, wait. That's Iraq. Cote d'Ivoire (that's French) is about the size of New Mexico. Pretty big anyway, and I bet Cote d'Ivoire has a lot more cocoa nuts than California and New Mexico put together.