Arrested Development

French intelligence services thwarted a plot last week to assassinate Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, and the plot's aftermath is roiling the strife-torn west African nation. Scores of Ivorians — including senior members of the country's military and police forces — were arrested last week in the commercial capital, Abidjan, after France said it had apprehended a group preparing to leave Paris to stage a coup against Gbagbo. The band of eight French and Ivorian nationals was led by Ibrahim Coulibaly — a renegade Ivory Coast army soldier who spearheaded a successful 1999 putsch, and was involved in a rebellion last September that plunged the country into civil war.

Since January, a French-brokered peace accord has left the nation divided between government and rebel-controlled zones. A would-be reconciliation government composed of members from both factions has become bogged down in mutual hostility and distrust. Ironically, Gbagbo supporters who have long suspected France of colluding with rebels applauded the Paris arrests, while government members drawn from insurgents' ranks denounced the French as Gbagbo "puppets" who framed Coulibaly.

The increased tension comes just two weeks after the resignation of President Charles Taylor in neighboring Liberia quelled civil war there — and raised hopes that calm and stability might return to the entire violence-stricken region. Along with Coulibaly's arrest and the wave of Abidjan detentions, passions were inflamed when Ivorian rebels killed two soldiers in France's 4,000-strong peacekeeping force imposing a cease-fire. "The French arrests prevented the murder of Ivory Coast's democratically elected President, but the bloodshed continues," says Gbagbo adviser Toussaint Marie. "Alas, Ivorians are no closer to peace, as long as half the nation is controlled and plundered by rebels. French law was enforced in France; international law awaits enforcement here."