State Department: Ivory Coast and Libya call for different methods of intervention
As Washington focuses its attention on the international military intervention in Libya, a top State Department official emphasized that the tragedy unfolding in the Ivory Coast has not been forgotten. But an armed intervention similar to the Libya war is not called for, he said. "The international community has intervened in the Ivory Coast, ...
As Washington focuses its attention on the international military intervention in Libya, a top State Department official emphasized that the tragedy unfolding in the Ivory Coast has not been forgotten. But an armed intervention similar to the Libya war is not called for, he said.
"The international community has intervened in the Ivory Coast, and that intervention is showing results," Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson told reporters at the State Department on Thursday. "Let me just say that there are some 11,000 U.N. peacekeepers on the ground in the Ivory Coast. They are supplemented by French military units that are a part of that U.N. peacekeeping force."
But unlike Libya, the forces controlled by Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to step down from power after he lost the November 2010 presidential election, "[do] not have helicopter gunships, jet aviation, or tanks in the numbers that we have seen" in Libya, Carson said.
"This is not to say that there is not a humanitarian crisis in the Ivory Coast; there is," said Carson. "We’re concerned about this. We’re concerned about the hundred thousand Ivoirians that have already left and gone to Liberia. But there is a difference between the two countries."
Carson also highlighted Wednesday’s U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Gbagbo, his wife, and his children.
Carson rejected the criticism that the Obama administration hasn’t been active in the Ivory Coast issue.
"President Obama has been directly involved, Secretary Clinton has been directly involved, Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg has been involved, I have been involved and our Ambassador in the region," he said. "Sometimes our political influence is as significant as what we put on the ground with respect to military might."
Carson also said that the forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara, who is widely recognized by the international community as the winner of the election, had made substantial gains throughout the southern part of the country. Ouattara’s forces have captured the city of San Pedro and the capital of the country, Yamoussoukro. Today, they reached the outskirts of Abidjan, the country’s largest city.
"There is a clear indication that the military forces of Gbagbo have, in fact, started to disintegrate. The rapid pace at which Alassane Ouattara’s forces have been able to move across the country from east to west and up to Abidjan suggest that there have been widespread desertions in the Gbagbo forces," Carson said.
Gbagbo can still do the right thing and hand over power before defeated, Carson emphasized. "He does have an opportunity, but that opportunity is slipping away."
Obama made a video for the people of the Ivory Coast last week, where he said, "They eyes of the world are on Cote D’Ivoire…It’s time for democracy in Cote D’Ivoire, and those who choose that path will find a friend and a partner in the United States of America."
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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