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来源：百度文库编辑：九乡新闻网时间：2024/04/28 22:50:20

Ivory Coast battle: Showdown moment

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Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo's fate hangs in the balance as gunmen supporting his rival swarm through the country's biggest city, attempting to force the sitting president from power four months after he refused to accept defeat in an election.

Even as internationally recognized president Alassane Ouattara closed the country's borders and imposed a city-wide curfew across Abidjan, it remained unclear on Thursday night whether Mr. Gbagbo would step down to avoid further bloodshed or dig in and fight to the last man.

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While world leaders have spoken with one voice calling on Mr. Gbagbo to cede power peacefully, the country Mr. Ouattara would inherit is defeated, divided and not easily repairable.

“Even in the best-case scenario where Gbagbo rides off into the sunset, Ouattara will have a very difficult task,” said West Africa analyst Peter Pham.

“Having come into power on the heels of what is effectively an invasion of the south, he has dealt a blow to the national psyche of the southerners, and will have serious challenges to bring about reconciliation in this country,” said Mr. Pham, who directs the Africa Center at the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council.

While the international consensus is that Mr. Ouattara won the election, the 46 per cent of people who voted for Mr. Gbagbo may not be willing to accept his rule.

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“[Mr. Gbagbo] will not resign in the wake of this attack. He is not going to abdicate. He is not going to lay down his arms,” said Gbagbo adviser Alain Toussaint. “He will stay in power to lead the resistance to this attack against Ivory Coast.”

After having steadfastly refused offers of exile and immunity since last November's election, Mr. Gbagbo paints himself a victim of a European conspiracy to control the country via propaganda films broadcast on state television every evening.

He recruited some 10,000 young men, many unemployed and uneducated, into the army and called up the first wave for service, issuing them weapons but no training on Wednesday.

Mr. Ouattara's fighters – rebels rebaptized as the “Republican Forces” – entered Ivory Coast's biggest city on Thursday and struck at key targets, laying siege to military bases and police stations across Abidjan.

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Residents cowered in their houses as the sound of automatic gunfire rang out across the lagoon of this once-prosperous city.

The streets were empty except for the occasional speeding white pickup truck with fighters taking turns manning the mounted machine gun crowded in the bed.

In less than a week, Mr. Ouattara's rebels swept across the country in a lightning offensive that met almost no resistance.

After an initial bloody battle in the western town of Duékoué on Monday, the rebels took a dozen other cities, including a major seaport and the country's political capital, advancing hundreds of kilometres to the edges of the country's seat of power.

Mr. Ouattara came into the battle with a key acquisition: Mr. Gbagbo's army chief, Philippe Mangou, sought refuge at the South African ambassador's residence the previous night along with his wife and five children.

Without a head, Mr. Gbagbo's army could be more dangerous, giving free rein to the notorious Republican Guard, accused of machine-gunning women and firing mortars on a crowded market.

In a midday address, Mr. Ouattara gave Mr. Gbagbo one last chance to step down and encouraged army officers to defect to his side.

“To put an end to the escalating violence in our country and in line with their mission to protect the population ... the Republican Forces have decided to re-establish democracy and enforce the people's vote,” he said.

Two United Nations helicopters hovered over the empty office towers of the Plateau business district and French armoured personnel carriers, also operating under a UN peacekeeping mandate, took up positions in the south of the city.

As night fell, the gunshots were joined by the occasional thundering boom of mortar fire, and any hope of taking the city easily seemed to have been lost.

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Over the course of the day, Mr. Ouattara's advisers repeatedly reported having seized this or that neighbourhood, only to be immediately contradicted by residents reporting continued gunfire.

The state television station cancelled the nightly news, then went black just before 11 p.m.

Mr. Pham says that while Mr. Ouattara's forces have advanced rapidly across the country, he doesn't believe that they have the overwhelming force necessary to take Abidjan without a fight.

“There are three million people caught between two armies,” he said. “If there's a serious battle, it will bring about a humanitarian catastrophe with political repercussions that will ripple across the sub-region.”(Global and Mail)

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