Rukmini Callimachi
Associated Press

Citation
Rukmini Callimachi's relentless reporting has provided readers around the world with gripping accounts of violence in West Africa, where she serves as bureau chief for the Associated Press. Determined to verify rumors of a massacre by soldiers loyal to the newly inaugurated president of the Ivory Coast, Callimachi convinced survivors to take her on a long trek through a jungle to the site of the mass murders. She reported that as many as 47 people had died. She displayed the same fearlessness in her reporting on al-Qaida's growing influence in West Africa, venturi ng deep into dangerous territory in Mali to interview villagers in contact with the terrorist organization. Her coverage exemplifies the very best in foreign reporting.

Excerpt
A Massacre in Peacetime
July 24, 2011

ON THE BANKS OF THE CAVALLY RIVER, Ivory Coast - The inauguration of Ivory Coast's new president played out before a crowd of tens of thousands. Women wore dresses printed with his portrait. World leaders flew in for the day in a show of international support. The massacre by the president's men started the day after, at dinnertime. The soldiers burst into a clearing on the banks of the river here, opening fire with a machine gun mounted on a wheelbarrow. The dozens of families that had sought refuge in this distant spot dropped their plates of food and kicked over pots as they ran. By the time the soldiers were finished, it was morning and as many as 47 people were dead. The lucky ones drowned in the river.
President Alassane Ouattara's inauguration after a violent, four-month-long standoff with the country's former ruler was supposed to mark the turning of a page in this deeply fractured nation. It represented the triumph of democracy, for Ouattara had won Ivory Coast's first free and fair election in a decade, only to be barred from office by the outgoing president who didn't want to cede power.
Ouattara was only able to remove ex-president Laurent Gbagbo after he enlisted the help of a rebel army which swept across this nation on Africa's western coast, seizing control of every town in its path. The question now is whether Ouattara is able to control the men who control his country, and without whom he wouldn't have been able to take office.
Ouattara has pledged to investigate the killings of thousands of people during the war on both sides. Even after the war, however, Ouattara's forces have killed at least 500 people, according to human rights groups. And he seems powerless to stop them, or even acknowledge what they are doing.
"You make all these deals with the devil and then what? In so many ways it's now out of Ouattara's hands," said Yale anthropologist Mike McGovern, author of a book on Ivory Coast's political crisis. "He needs to go after these guys. But if he does the right thing, he could pay with his life."
The story of the massacre, reported here for the first time, gives a window into the growing disconnect between Ouattara's promises and the reality on the ground. It also shows how far this French-speaking nation of 21 million people has fallen from its days of prosperity, when it boasted skyscrapers, multiplexes, jet ski competitions and the only ice rink in sub-Saharan Africa.
It's not easy to reach the banks of this river, a ribbon of opaque water that marks the border with neighboring Liberia. It's a one- to two-day walk from Blolequin, the nearest town on the Ivorian side, on trails that slice through a jungle so thick you can't see more than a few yards in either direction.
This is Gbagbo land. And as the Ouattara rebels approached in March, tens of thousands of Gbagbo supporters fled across the river in dugout canoes to Liberia. Nearly all of them were Guere, an ethnic group so closely associated with the former president that just being able to speak the language is synonymous with having voted for him. Most were civilians but mixed with them were also people who had killed for Gbagbo, including members of his feared militia.


Biography
Rukmini Callimachi

Rukmini Callimachi oversees two dozen countries in West Africa from AP's bureau in Dakar, Senegal. Callimachi began her journalism career in 2001 as a freelance reporter in New Delhi, India. She joined the AP in Portland, Ore. in 2003. When Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans in 2005, she relocated to Louisiana and spent a year chronicling the aftermath of the storm. She was a finalist for the 2007 Michael Kelly Award for her coverage. Callimachi was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting in 2009. She received an undergraduate degree in English literature from Dartmouth College and a master's degree in linguistics from Exeter College, University of Oxford. A native of Bucharest, she speaks English, French and Romanian.


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