But Truth can be painful and uncomfortable. In this case, the truth is that Abidjan is needlessly looking for scapegoats when it is responsible for its own political and soon to be enormous economic problems. Laurent Gbagbo will preoccupy himself with remaining President, being the slave of the military he relies on for survival, with no time for conceiving socioeconomic programs. Sub-Sahara Africa's third largest economy could end up like its neighbors'. Such is far easier in a society plagued with bandits hijacking cars and robbing banks in broad daylight even when stability was not in question.
Precedents are already underway in the persistent looting of shops belonging to foreigners.
The arms seized from the dissidents after the coup may indeed be Russian, but they are in fact Ivorian, for it was the Ivory Coast that helped transformed West Africa into an armory, infesting a region now in chaos and beyond help without international involvement. Abidjan is slowly but surely harvesting what it planted. And since one cannot plant beans and harvest corn, the anarchy that Abidjan conceived for its neighbors is lowly reaching its doors. Without the blessings of Abidjan's political establishment at the time, it would have been significantly impossible for Taylor and Sankoh to implement their programs of destabilization now taking roots in West Africa. Blaise Compaore and Col.