Quagmire in Africa

Ladies and gentlemen, I pose one simple question: is there anything in Africa that's not 'in crisis'?

UPDATE: But wait! There's more!

Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbago met Monday with his army chief as tensions remained high in the west African nation following a call to depose the government, a military source said.

Gbagbo met at 1100 (local and GMT) for an hour with general Philippe Manguou in the main city Abidjan to "assess the current situation, the source said.

It was the first meeting between the two men since former army leader General Mathias Doue, who was sacked in November 2004, vowed to remove the president Gbagbo, in an interview on Friday with Radio France International.

According to an unauthenticated open letter published on the Internet, Doue said he would return to the Ivory Coast "in several days."

So, let's review. We've got AIDS and poverty throughout the continent, a recent coup in Mauritania, a mad dictator stealing land and destroying low-income housing in Zimbabwe, ethnic civil war in and around Rwanda, a low-level civil war and genocide in Sudan, unrest in Liberia and Cote D'Ivoire, no functioning national government in Somalia, civil war in Nigeria, and I think there's some more.

Sheesh. I hate to admit it, but I'm going to have to go out on a limb and say that North Africa (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and to a lesser extent Algeria) is actually fairly stable, compared to sub-Saharran Africa. Imagine that.