Our friends near Abidjan had been planning their escape route to Ghana for weeks in readiness for when the time came. In the event, that time came too quickly and their area became a fearful war zone, trapping thousands of civilians. That is the fate of much of southern Côte d’Ivoire this week, as the protagonists lurch towards the endgame after four months of post-election crisis.

The rapid advance of Alassane Ouattara’s Forces Républicaines de Côte d’Ivoire, their seizure of the political capital Yamoussoukro on 30 March and entry the next day into Abidjan, where a contingent laid siege to Laurent Gbagbo’s house, offers a bloody resolution of sorts. Already more than 500 people have been killed and a million have fled their homes, victims of a dispute more personal than political.

Diplomats and politicians, comfortably distant from those personal tragedies, had opined that too much was at stake to allow Gbagbo to hang on to power after losing a United Nations-managed election; it would have set an ugly precedent for the two dozen elections due in Africa this year.

Yet the final resolution in Abidjan – the taking of the country and its presidency by force of arms – sets another ugly precedent: that the use of force, or the credible threat of it, is the only way to oust a really obstinate election loser. Such a conclusion points to fundamental weaknesses in both the UN and the African Union and augurs badly for the growing roster of electoral imbroglios on the continent.