How Many Slaughered?

It is a sad reality repeated endlessly that Africa does not appear to be capable of transcending its primitive past. The continent experiences great ongoing difficulties in hauling itself out of humanity's dark beginnings when tribes and clans viewed one another with violent, jealous, antipathy. The need to secure territory, food and security over-rode all other existential values; they were the only imperatives.

That primal inheritance claims too large a portion of modern Africa's ambivalence toward rationality and civility. One country after another succumbs to the human blight of reinstating their original antipathies toward others not of their territory, their clan, their tribal inheritance. The fall-back position in oppositional events are clarified by violent riots, by massacres, by removing the irritants through death and destruction.

One element claims the high ground, that through an orderly democratic process, their candidate has won fairly. And the other candidate, often enough a sitting president, refuses to recognize the outcome of the vote, and will not step away from office making room for his successor. There is Zimbabwe, there is Kenya, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sierra Leone and there are many others who have taken this route.

And latterly there has been Ivory Coast. Where President Lawrence Gbagbo refused to leave his comfortable post, and where his rival insists he must,and where supporters of each have waged a civil war against one another. Alassane Ouattara's supporters and militias now have the upper hand, marching on to Gbagbo's residence, where he will be removed forcibly and he and his family dispatched.

Mr. Ouattara, a civilized man with a Western-style education and business background, has given firm orders that Mr. Gbagbo is to be taken alive. If at all possible. For he must stand trial for his adamant refusal to step aside for Mr. Ouattara to take power, occasioning in the process the bloody civil war that has taken far too many lives. This is the high ground.

And it is a pity, and a grave concern indeed that Mr. Ouattara's militias have been busy wreaking their vengeance on their rivals, with the discovery by aid workers of a mass grave in a town that fell to troops loyal to Alassane Ouattara. A massacre of civilians that took place expeditiously with the taking of the town where people were shot, hacked with machetes, buried.

This was one of many massacres. It was also a massacre that need not have taken place. For it occurred with the presence of United Nations troops. The International Committee of the Red Cross announced its staff were informed by locals of the inter-communal violence. That violence commenced immediately Ouattara's forces took control of the town.

Usually, when the United Nations sends troops and peacekeepers in Africa, it is African volunteers from other African countries who are dispatched. They know all about inter- communal violence.