Twenty years on: the inside story of France's bloody military intervention in Ivory Coast
Two decades ago the French army repeatedly opened fire on civilians in France's former West African colony Ivory Coast. According to the authorities in the capital Abidjan this resulted in the death of 90 people; it was “around 20” according to Paris. Whatever the true figure, this type of event had not occurred since the colonial era. But was the episode an attempted coup d'état, or was it “merely” the result of catastrophic political and military mismanagement? In this report – part of a wider series on the events of November 2004 - Fanny Pigeaud examines how one of the most troubled and bloody chapters in contemporary Franco-Ivorian relations began.
OnOn Saturday, November 6th 2004 Laurent Gbagbo, the president of Ivory Coast, was in his office at the presidential residence in Abidjan where he was drafting a speech he intended to deliver to the nation on television that evening.
