Surrender Monkeys Surrendering

10:31 pm, 12/17/04

Surrender Monkeys Surrendering
The latest from Ivory Coast: Government lawmakers approve key elements of peace process (election candidacy reform) which will likely chill the rebels out until they lose the election again, the UN says the rebel north is out of food, Ivory Coast wants US arbitration, calling us "the only country that can serve as an honest broker", and UN peacekeepers will now be patrolling Abidjan in conjunction with Ivorian troops, and say they need reinforcements, as they can no longer "depend" on French troops.

Know why?

The French are bugging out of the city.

Meanwhile, French troops serving in a peacekeeping force in the divided west African country, pressed on with their withdrawal from volatile southern parts of the economic capital, where they had deployed in the wake of the violence.

Charles Ble Goude, firebrand leader of the Young Patriots movement of hardline Gbagbo partisans, had announced a rally for Saturday in the central Plateau district to demand "the immediate withdrawal" of all French troops from Ivory Coast.

Major Jacques Combarieu, a spokesman for France's Operation Unicorn, which is serving in Ivory Coast alongside African soldiers operating under a UN peacekeeping mandate, said troops who had moved into southern Abidjan after the unrest of November 6-10 were disengaging.

"There's still a squad of legionnaires at Marcory, who will pull out gradually. Everybody will be out by December 15," Combarieu said. In all, slightly under 5,000 French troops are in Ivory Coast after reinforcements went in last month. About 1,000 of the extra soldiers have already left the country.

A major grievance expressed by the Ivorian government was that French troops killed several people when they opened fire on a crowd during the troubles, but the colonel in charge of those soldiers, Patrick Destremeau, denied this in an interview published Friday in France's Liberation daily. Authorities issued photographs showing at least one person allegedly decapitated by heavy weapons' fire.

"Had we shot into the crowd with heavy weapons, it would have been a massacre," Destremeau said, adding that his troops had collected spent Kalashnikov cartridges showing that "people in the crowd had shot at them."

Here's the footage of Destremeau's massacre, which some suggested had killed as many as 60, and which from the behavior of the French does not appear to be in any way provoked. This new denial is just one in a string of schizophrenic contradictions on the incident from the French government. (Interesting the way he responds there... "We didn't do it, but here's some easily forged evidence that we were provoked, in case anyone figures out that we did do it!")

About 60 Young Patriots on Thursday afternoon took up position in front of the French embassy where they spent a quiet night. About a dozen of them were still there early Friday afternoon, an AFP correspondent reported.

Presumably, they'll go back to manning bases in tandem with their rebel friends. The French have essentially been forced to abandon their advances in the country, hopefully this is the beginning of a long-term nationwide bailout and replacement with actual peacekeepers, but who knows. France has promised to "cooperate" with investigations of their behavior there, which will go nowhere. This, though, is something. Way to go, guys.

Also, congratulations to the media for all but ignoring these stories.