For the last several months, the Ivory Coast has been crawling back to civil war. Now, both sides are actively bulking up their forces in what looks like an alarming calculation that this country's crisis will get worse before it gets better.  The Ivory Coast has been divided between a rebel-controlled north and a government-controlled south for the last decade. The fragile detante that restored peace in 2005 is shattering. Thousands upon thousands are fleeing the capital today in fear of exactly that. 

In the southern city and capital of Abidjan, "thousands" of youth have joined the army, heeding a call from outgoing President Laurent Gbagbo, the man who lost November's presidential election. The drive has been led by Gbagbo's notoriously militant youth minister, Blé Goudé, who is under U.N. sanctions for violating the country's peace agreement and impeding the U.N. peacekeeping missionin the country. He told Reuters, "Our country is under attack, so we're organising ourselves to re-establish order ... The legal way to do it is to put them in the regular army."

Meanwhile in the country's rebel-controlled north, forces loyal to election winner Alassane Ouattara told the BBC that they are waiting for orders to march on the capital, unseating Gbagbo.  Clashes are already ongoing in the countryside, where the two forces are trading territory. 

As I've reported before, the region is scared. Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf told Reuters today, "We are already at war." The crisis has already sent about 100,000 refugees fleeing the Ivory Coast into Liberia. 

Interestingly, the most recent refugee status report from the U.N. Refugee Agency notes that more than 50,000 of those refugees are under the age of 18. Many are surely young children -- but many more are adolescents, afraid of being recruited by one side or another. 

President Obama has pledged that U.S. ground forces will not be deployed in Libya, but other members of the coalition are a bit less adamant. Here's what Canada's foreign minister had to say, shortly after Canadian CF-18's began flying sorties over Libya: 

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon indicated in an interview on CBC Radio's The House that aired Saturday, that Canada is "open to all options" in responding to the Libyan crisis. When asked by host Kathleen Petty if that includes "boots on the ground," Cannon said if that were required to "protect citizens that are being literally murdered by [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi, that's what the resolution calls for."

The Security Council resolution authorizing the intervention prohibits "a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory." But some seem to believe the lack of definition for "occupation force" leaves the allies some wiggle room. Here's British Foreign Secretary William Hague:

"There will be no occupying force and no invasion of Libya. That is what I think would alarm people," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

But Hague said it would be "foolish to exclude all possibilities" of having troops on the ground, pointing to the use of special forces to get British nationals out of the desert three weeks ago. "Circumstances can arise where those sort of things can happen," he added.

As Peter Beinart notes, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair initially pledged to avoid the use of ground forces in Kosovo, and it may have because they reconsidered that the tide was turned in that war. 

If, as many predict, airpower proves insufficient to remove Qaddafi from power or prevent atrocities on the ground, the use of ground troops is by no means out of the question. 

The Russian Prime Minister has made global headlines again this week (not by frolicking with a snow leopard, though he did that too) with some highly-charged comments about the international intervention in Libya:

"The resolution is defective and flawed," said Russia's Putin, whose country did not use its power to veto the resolution at the United Nations. "It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades," Putin added.

President Bush was blasted for using the word 'crusade' in reference to the war on terrorism, so the remark seems like a pretty pointed shot at the Obama administration on the eve of Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to Moscow. President Dmitry Medvedev has distanced himself from Putin with a rare rebuke, calling the comments "unacceptable."

But remarks like these are something of a specialty for Putin, who seems to relish the opportunity to pour cold water on the ambitious initiatives of other world powers, particularly when their senior officials are within earshot. 

For instance, in a 2003 joint press conference with Tony Blair shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Putin mocked the U.S.-British coalition's failure to find WMDs:

“Two weeks later they still have not been found,” he told a press conference. “The question is, where is Saddam Hussein? Where are those weapons of mass destruction, if they were ever in existence? Is Saddam Hussein in a bunker sitting on cases containing weapons of mass destruction, preparing to blow the whole place up?”

In 2007, as more U.S. troops "surged" into Iraq, Putin attacked U.S. foreign policy at a Munich Security Conference audience with both Gates and John McCain in attendance:

In a presumed reference mainly to the war in Iraq, Mr Putin said, “unilateral illegal actions have not resolved any single problem,” emphasising the many more people who had been killed as a result of US military action.He added: “We don’t have enough force to resolve anything comprehensively.” He said that only the United Nations – not Nato or the European Union - could authorise the use of military force around the world, and even then it should be as a last resort.

At the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, he compared western financial rescue packages to Soviet economic planning:

“Interference of the State, the belief in the omnipotence of the State: that is a reaction to market failures,” Mr Putin said in his keynote address at the opening of the four-day meeting. “There is a temptation to expand direct interference of state in economy. In the Soviet Union that became an absolute. We paid a very dear price for that.”

He also singled out the U.S. for economic arrogance: 

"I just want to remind you that, just a year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasised the US economy's fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects," he said in his speech.

"Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist. In just twelve months, they have posted losses exceeding the profits they made in the last 25 years. This example alone reflects the real situation better than any criticism," Putin scoffed.

In Oct. 2009, Putin took a parting shot at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, following her Moscow trip, describing efforts to tighten sanctions on Iran as "counterproductive": 

"If we speak about some kind of sanctions now, before we take concrete steps, we will fail to create favorable conditions for negotiations," Putin said. "That is why we consider such talk premature."

If the Libyan engagement does extend into a quagmire, as many fear, Cameron, Sarkozy, and Obama can expect some hearty I-told-you-sos from the Russian prime minister's office. 

Around the time that Barack Obama was assuring U.S. lawmakers that American planes would not be used to enforce the no fly zone in Libya, our neighbor to the north was announcing just the opposite: Canada will deploy fighter jets to the Middle East. Prime Minister Stephen Harper heads to the joint African Union-Arab League summit on Libya tomorrow, where he'll join other Western leaders from France, Britain, Germany, and the United States in discussing next steps. 

This is the perfect international swarming -- nearly every major NATO country is now militarily involved, except the United States. And that's probably intentional -- a means to quell fears -- both in Congress and in the U.S. public -- that Libya could turn out to be yet another expensive and prolonged military adventure in the Middle East, adding to the burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan.

So enter Canada, a country with a long and storied history of supporting U.N. peace operations. This is one time when America is probably ok with its northern neighbor taking the lead.

Believe me, I know: You have no bandwidth for the Ivory Coast today. But that may be exactly why the situation in this West African country -- far from the geopolitics of Libya and the human tragedy of Japan -- is going south so quickly. It looks increasingly like outgoing President Laurent Gbagbo has made a calculation that the world just doesn't have enough free hands to stop him if he pushes the country back into war.

Once upon a time, the world was supposed to intervene -- militarily if necessary -- to ensure democratic transition and prevent conflict in the Ivory Coast. These days, the momentum is gone. And in fact, the closer this country comes to civil war, the less interested anyone is at getting involved. I get it; geopolitically, the Ivory Coast doesn't hold a candle to the Middle East. But how about all of West Africa -- all of which is threatened by the current conflict? 

This is the real thing. In a message on state television last night, Gbagbo -- who has refused to step down after losing an internationally certified election in November -- asked civilians to get involved in the fight to "neutralize" his opponents. That's about as close as you get to saying pick up your machetes and join me. Or forget machetes; Ivory Coast is still heavily armed from its civil war last decade. Gbagbo certainly hasn't been shy about using military force lately; his forces are thought to have been behind a mortar attack on a market yesterday that left 40 people injured. Earlier this week there were reports of his using helicopters and tanks to mow down suspected opposition supporters. 

The optimist watching this situation might argue that Gbagbo is turning to military force because he is running out of other options -- or more specifically, he's running out of cash. He's trying to play every card he can before folding his hand.

That's not my read of Gbagbo, however. This is a man who doesn't know how to fold. Nor do his opponents, for that matter. Opposition supporters of the president-elect, Alassane Ouattara, have the moral high ground for backing the democratic process. But the formal rebel troops who remain loyal Ouattara are already involved in fighting in rural Ivory Coast, where they are taking territory from government troops. 

The more the conflict escalates, the fewer consequences there are -- for Gbagbo and for any rebel forces who also perpetrate atrocities. France today says it wants more sanctions. But that's kid stuff. 

Speaking about Libya's conflict this afternoon, U.S. President Barack Obama warned that the words of the international community would "ring hollow" if we didn't intervene to protect civilians in Libya. These are promises we've made before.

In the spirit of March Madness (as the annual U.S. collegiate basketball tournament is affectionately called, for our international readers) and to find a bit of distraction in an otherwise distressing news month, we are introducing our First Annual World Leader March Madness contest.

The theme this year is "Democrats vs. Dictators." We've selected 32 world leaders who are competing for world domination in the style of the NCAA tournament. You can comment on the page to make your case for who should "win" each matchup. The criteria are up to you. Should Silvio Berlusconi's bunga-bunga prowess get him the win over David Cameron's slash-and-burn governing style? Does Vladimir Putin wear his baldness better than erstwhile ally Aleksandr Lukashenko? It's your call. (And ours, since a panel of FP judges will ultimately decide who wins.)

Fill out your bracket and send it by e-mail to FPMarchMadnes@gmail.com by Monday, March 21 at 12pm EDT. The ten readers with the most accurate brackets will receive a one-year print subscription to Foreign Policy. 

Game on!