Côte d'Ivoire: French troops out!
8 November 2004

Helicopter gunships shooting at civilians, tanks blocking the main crossroads, foreign troops patrolling the streets. Is this Baghdad, Falloujah, Ramallah? No, it happened on 6 November in Abidjan, the largest town of Côte d'Ivoire. After two years of a precarious truce, the country is threatened by a renewed civil war compounded by a brutal colonial intervention by the French army.

In the first days of November the troops of prime minister Laurent Gbagbo began an offensive against the rebel in the north. During an airplane attack on 6 November, eight French soldiers, (present since July 2003 to "maintain the peace"), were killed. Immediately President Jacques Chirac of France retaliated by destroying the country's entire air force (a mere two planes and six helicopters), Several civilians were killed.

French troops now occupy the airport in Abidjan and other key positions, Six hundred French soldiers arrived at the weekend to reinforce the 4,000-strong contingent already there. The possibility of a full scale French intervention is real, even though it would probably happen under a UN flag and labelled as a new "peace mission".

In 2002, a large section of the army mutinied against the central state power and found some support in the northern provinces. Only French intervention in 2003 stopped them from taking Abidjan. While it is not clear who is behind this current mutiny nor what their aim is apart from taking power, the fact is that both factions would like to get rid of the French grip on the country.

Côte d'Ivoire is the world largest producer of cocoa. Other agricultural products include coffee and cotton. Independent since 1960, this former French colony has since remained under the influence – economic and political of French imperialism. Houphouët-Boigny governed the country for 43 years and was one of the richest men in the whole of Africa. When he died in 1993 France's semi-colonial empire started to crumble.

The country was strangled by the foreign debt repayments, while the price of the agricultural products plummeted. The imperialist masters decided to force a brutal policy of structural adjustment. The main resources of the country (railroads, public services, refineries) were sold to French state companies and other multinational corporations.

Daily life for the mass of people became much harsher and this provoked enormous social tension. The various unstable rulers of the country (Bédié, then general Guei after a coup d'état in 1999, then Gbagbo after a general election in 2000) have all played the card of interethnic hatred and promoted the "ivoirité", a fictitious national character whose only purpose is to divide the masses and channel the class struggle in a racist direction.

The concept of a unique national character has no sense in a country made up of a mosaic of different ethnic groups, languages and religions. This same policy, pursued with the help of French advisers and instructors, was applied in Rwanda and resulted in the genocide of one million Tutsis in 1994.

While neither Gbagbo nor the rebels offer any prospect of a better living for the suffering masses, the task of the day for the working class of Côte d'Ivoire is to free themselves from all form of imperialist domination.

•French troops out of Côte d'Ivoire and the other African countries !
• No to imperialist intervention under the cover of a "UN peace mission".
• Cancel the debt!
• Build self-defence militias against the ethnic pogroms.