The Arabs’ turmoil must not deflect attention from other equally bloody crises

WHILE the eyes of the world have been riveted on events in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, a post-election stalemate in Côte d’Ivoire, once the jewel of west Africa but now a byword for bloody chaos and division, has been getting nastier by the day (see article). More than 400,000 Ivorians have fled their homes, three-quarters of them from Abidjan, the country’s once shinily prosperous commercial capital, most of them in the past few weeks. Hundreds have been killed, mainly by the forces of Laurent Gbagbo, the former president who has refused to step down after being roundly defeated by his challenger, Alassane Ouattara, at the polls in November.

On March 3rd Mr Gbagbo’s men gunned down seven unarmed women in Abidjan, who had been peacefully protesting against him. That atrocity incurred worldwide opprobrium. But too few people in such bodies as the UN Security Council seem to care—or be minded to get rid of him. Events in Libya must not be allowed to let Mr Gbagbo stay in power by getting away with murder.

Moreover, the longer he lasts, the bigger the risk that other countries in the region will get sucked into the mayhem, as has happened in the past when civil strife has spread contagiously back and forth through nearby Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and several million destitute. It is vital, for the sake of the whole continent, that all international bodies, especially African ones, keep up the pressure against Mr Gbagbo to make sure that he goes.

As The Economist went to press, the African Union (AU), which is supposed to prevent such horrors from occurring among its own members, was pondering its next move. Three types of pressure can be applied: economic, diplomatic and military. At present the most effective is economic. The seven other countries of the west African franc zone have suspended Côte d’Ivoire from participation, so Mr Gbagbo is running out of cash. The European Union and the United States have imposed economic sanctions. He has lost his biggest trading partners, since it is virtually impossible for him to export the country’s cocoa or coffee, its economic mainstays.

But, alas, he is not yet friendless. Some misguided members of Africa’s self-regarding club of “big men”, such as Angola’s oil-rich José Eduardo dos Santos, dislike the idea of their peers being ejected peacefully at the polls after many years in office. They are thought to be quietly helping him. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has, by one account, been sending him arms.

Losers must not be allowed to hang on

This year nearly a score of presidential or parliamentary elections or referendums have been scheduled among the 53 members of the AU; some have already been held, with mixed results. Most of them are in sub-Saharan Africa, where, despite many setbacks, a record of competitive and pluralistic politics has been notably better than in the Arab world, especially in the past two decades.

Yet the AU must resist its tendency to allow bad losers to stay on by endorsing governments of bogus national unity. In recent years it has let that happen in Kenya and Zimbabwe, where the winning side was prevented from properly taking power. It is essential that Africa as a whole gets used to the idea that ruling parties bow out when they are rejected at the ballot box. So-called unity governments, installed with the apparently good intention of preventing further chaos after blood has already been shed, are as likely to lead to paralysis and patronage as to creative compromise. It would be a shockingly bad omen if Mr Gbagbo somehow hung on in any guise whatsoever in Côte d’Ivoire.