[LINK] Ethnic nationalism is stupid
Nov. 10th, 2005 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldallAfrica.com carries the IRIN article "Profiting From War in the Wild West At the Expense of Immigrants", which explores the cost of the violence of ivoirité for the Ivoirien economy.
Without the immigrants who once worked there, it's questionable whether the formerly prosperous south of Côte d'Ivoire will ever regain its previous prosperity.This doesn't mean that the north will do well. It turns out that everyone in Côte d'Ivoire, has been mangled by ivoirité, even ivoirité's supposed benefactors. But then, they're planning ahead for greater and better things.
Issues of nationality and identity are at the heart of the conflict that has divided this West African country, once the regional beacon of prosperity, for the last three years.
In the government-controlled southwest, immigrants from Burkina Faso and their children have become the main targets in a complex and potent mix of ill-defined land tenure systems, rising poverty and an abundance of guns.
"It's jealousy," said Alidou El-Hadji Sawadogo, a spokesman at Nicla camp, home to thousands of displaced people including Souliman and his adoptive father.
"We lived together for many years but they wanted to profit from the war," he explained. "It was a premeditated attack - they chose their opportunity to get us off the land."
Without the immigrants who once worked there, it's questionable whether the formerly prosperous south of Côte d'Ivoire will ever regain its previous prosperity.This doesn't mean that the north will do well. It turns out that everyone in Côte d'Ivoire, has been mangled by ivoirité, even ivoirité's supposed benefactors. But then, they're planning ahead for greater and better things.
