ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — As he watched children and teenagers play soccer in the courtyard of apartment buildings with faded facades, Moussa Damiba recalled better days here. Lots of white people lived in these buildings before the crisis, the 32-year-old said. “The crisis” is the catch-all term used to describe the years of instability, defined by a coup d’etat, a country-dividing civil war and political violence. But Damiba worries about the future too after last month’s attempted assassination of Guillaume Soro, the leader of the rebel New Forces who is now Ivory Coast’s prime minister. When Soro’s plane landed in [...]
The “Color Revolutions” that swept through Eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2004-2005 have mostly faded out. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution has given way to political clan warfare and hopes for reform have been put on hold. The Tulip Revolution brought little more than a change of personnel to Kyrgyzstan. Only Georgia’s Rose Revolution has maintained its hue. Why has Georgia been able to maintain its revolutionary spirit despite several setbacks over the past three years? One reason seems to be the talented, young technocrats the revolution placed in Georgian ministries. Just as the “Chicago Boys” famously helped right Chile’s economy [...]
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Not long ago, the thought of President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel New Forces leader Guillaume Soro serving in the same government seemed absurd. In 2002, Soro’s rebels attempted to overthrow Gbagbo’s regime, which they called discriminatory because it viewed northerners, including those who served in the army, as non-Ivorians. A civil war then erupted in what was once West Africa’s most stable and prosperous country. Gbagbo deployed military force to crush the rebels — his loyalists sneered they were armed bandits controlled by France — who seized Bouake, the country’s second-largest city. When the fighting subsided, [...]
