Johannesburg — Seven straight days after the start of a military revolt in Cote dIvoire, French troops have moved to rescue 200 foreign schoolchildren and staff trapped at the International Christian Academy, an American Baptist mission school, in the central city of Bouake.
The French rescue mission in Bouake came as 200 American troops first flew into neighbouring Ghana overnight. On Wednesday afternoon, two US military C-130 transport planes touched down across the border in the Ivorian capital, Yamoussoukro. The U.S. Defense Department said the move was to ensure the security of Americans in Cote dIvoire.
Britain has also sent a small military reconnaissance team to assess the safety of its citizens. No mention has been made by the foreign troops or their governments about rescuing local people also caught in the crossfire.
The French soldiers, who Monday set up a base in Yamoussoukro, 40 miles south of Bouake, arrived at the school in force at about midday Wednesday local time. The French broke through rebel front lines in the city of half a million residents. Mutineers have been in control of Bouake, and northern city of Korhogo, since last Thursday in what the Ivorian government has called a failed coup d'etat. A French unit was said to be heading further north.
Once secured, there were no immediate plans to evacuate the Bouake mission schoolchildren or personnel at the academy, which the mutineers reportedly breached at one time. No one was reported injured and the staff and pupils told the French troops they preferred to stay put, as they were reassured by the foreign military presence.
In other developments, Cote d'Ivoire's northern neighbour Burkina Faso rejected any suggestion of involvement in the violent uprising, despite claims by the Ivorian government that unnamed foreign powers 'to the north' played a role.
Cote d'Ivoire has regularly accused Burkina of sheltering dissident soldiers and army deserters, who it says are plotting to destabilize the government of President Laurent Gbagbo. Burkina has consistently denied the claims.
"If any armed men try to infiltrate into Burkina Faso, we will disarm them and hand them over to the Red Cross," Burkina's Territorial Administration Minister, Moumouni Fabre, told the French News Agency. In the first public denial by Ouagadougou, Fabre said they intended to "demonstrate clearly that we have nothing to do with this crisis".
A second denial came from another minister quoted by state television, saying that "Burkina Faso is not involved from either near or far in the unhappy situation that we all deplore in Cote dIvoire".
Burkina, which has already closed its border and reportedly cut telephone links with its southern neighbour, also protested about reprisal attacks against Burkinabe immigrants living and working in Cote d'Ivoire. Hundreds of Burkinabe and other regional expatriate workers came under attack on Saturday. They were left homeless after their shantytowns were set alight and their valuables stolen.
Many are cocoa plantation workers, numbering several million, who helped to build Cote d'Ivoire into an African eldorado and the jewel in the West Africa crown. The country remains the world's number one cocoa producer (supplying 40 percent of the market), as well as the economic lung of the francophone CFA currency zone.
"Given that Cote dIvoire has not been able to assure minimal protection, it is our right to draw its attention to its duty to assure the protection of our expatriates and their belongings," said Jean de Dieu Somda, minister delegate for regional cooperation. The main pro-government newspaper has pointed a finger of blame directly at Burkina's President Blaise Compaore.
Cote d'Ivoire's main opposition leader, Alassane Dramane Ouattara -- who has sought refuge at the French Embassy residence -- has been accused by his critics of being a Burkinabe and not an Ivorian.
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Questions about his rightful citizenship led to Ouattara's disqualification from the contested October 2000 presidential election, which Gbagbo won.
On Wednesday, pro-government protestors organised an anti-Ouattara demonstration outside the French Embassy in Abidjan.
The political amibitions of Ouattara -- a Muslim northerner and one-time prime minister of Cote d'Ivoire under its first leader, President Felix Houphouet Boigny -- becamea catalyst for the tensions in the country.
Increasingly, these splits have taken on worrying, and some say dangerous, ethnic and religious dimensions, fuelling an often vicious debate on 'ivoirite' (Ivorian identity). This has led to a widening north-south divide in Cote d'Ivoire politics, polarising the pro-Gbagbo camp -- that derives much of its support from the Christian south, as well as his home base in the west -- and the opposition stronghold in the north.
