UN stuck between a rock and a hard place in Ivory Coast
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Unfolding events in Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) are troubling. A bloody civil war looms. A lengthy conflict portends. And the United Nations (UN) is caught smack in the middle of it all.
Never mind the contrary judgments of the results, weeks after the November 28, 2010 Presidential elections, the incumbent President has held on to power – and is more defiant than ever.
The UN Peacekeeping Forces assigned there are being accused by one side of supporting the other in the multifaceted tribal, political and electoral dispute. Now they are coming under attack.
Armed rebel groups supporting one side have accused the other of enlisting "mercenaries" from neighboring countries. Several armed clashes have left countless dead in various parts of the country.
The country is tottering on the brink of armed conflict.
Its money line has been closed from outside to force the army to take a position when its soldiers stop getting paid. But, in the circumstances of an unending political standoff between armed, warring factions, many fear another army coup.
The UN Peacekeeping Force in Cote d'Ivoire finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place, in the middle of a possible civil war. But many fear that the country is being pushed to the brink of the very same genocide that Western powers say they fear and want to avoid.
Many outside are advocating a military solution through external intervention, albeit by neighboring African troops. But continental analysts say the armies identified have neither the military capacity, nor the armaments, or the experience, to coordinate joint action in such a vast country, on so many fronts.
With African military intervention a distant possibility, the UN is transforming its peacekeeping unit in Cote d'Ivoire into a much larger, war-ready international military force, with the same political aim as the multi-national forces prepared for Afghanistan and Iraq – to effect preferred "regime change".
