A year and a half after the coup that placed Captain Ibrahim Traoré at the head of Burkina Faso, we attempt to take the pulse of the situation in the country. While it’s tempting to celebrate the victory against French neo-colonialism in the region, new alliances (notably with Russia), the co-optation of Thomas Sankara’s legacy, and the kidnappings of voices critical of the junta can unfortunately be neither ignored nor downplayed. Emmanuel Savadogo (pseudonym) takes stock from Ouagadougou, where he lives.
In October 2014, Blaise Compaoré had been ruling Burkina Faso for 27 years. He took over the reins of the country following the coup d’état of October 15, 1987, and the assassination of President Thomas Sankara. Five years later, President Compaoré shed his military uniforms and stripes and, following elections, served two seven-year terms as President of the Republic. During the angry protests against the murder of journalist Norbert Zongo in the 2000s, the Compaoré government agreed to institutional and political reforms. One of the main features of these reforms was the reduction of the presidential term of office from seven to five years, renewable only once. In 2005, the president, who was no longer supposed to be on the list of candidates, ran again. Ten years later, he was planning to remove the presidential term limit by parliamentary means. On the day of the vote in the National Assembly against the clause limiting the presidential term, a large section of the population challenged him, prompting his departure on October 31, 2014. A one-year transition to lead Burkina Faso was set up by the “forces vives,” including the army.
Towards the end of this period, the first attacks by two terrorist groups began. They were the Groupe de Soutien de l’Islam et aux Musulmans (GSIM) and the État Islamique au Grand Sahara (EIGS). After the November 2015 elections, President Roch Marc Christian and his government have been unable to contain the terrorist onslaught in their eight years in power. The army took advantage of this impasse to wrest power from civilian hands. The first coup d’état took place on January 24, 2022, and appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Henri Sandaogo as President. Eight months later, the military who are currently running the country used the lack of results in the fight against terrorism as an excuse to wrest power from their senior officers on September 30, 2022. After a year in power, the new regents are attempting to reorganize the army by creating rapid intervention brigades (BIR). Some ten of these are already operational. The junta is also recruiting a surplus of auxiliaries known as “Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland.” Despite these attempts at reorganization, the insecurity situation remains unchanged, with a daily stream of attacks inside Burkina Faso. Today, the country is under the leadership of 35-year-old Captain Ibrahim Traoré. The new regime brought in by Captain Traoré has decided to crack down on any dissenting voices.
For several months, the army has been kidnapping political figures and civil society activists.
Dozens of those who dared to criticize the government were thus kidnapped and forcibly conscripted into the army. They spent several months at the front, where they were the target of videos and photos posted on social networks.
Thomas Sankara, even absent, continues to mobilize people ///
Since the advent of the captains to power, we’ve been experiencing an exacerbated cleavage in Burkina Faso. Both sides label themselves “patriots” and “traitors.” Organizations that criticize the management of the new regents are called “renegades paid by French imperialism.” Those who applaud and occupy public spaces are called “patriots.” They claim to be keeping watch on traffic circles where the flags of Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and the new ally, Russia, are displayed.
On October 15, 2022, Ibrahim Traoré, who had been in control of the country for a few days, realized that even Thomas Sankara, who had disappeared, was still mobilizing people.
He thus made sure to be endorsed by the Comité International-Mémorial Thomas Sankara, and identified himself with the father of the Burkinabè Revolution. Yet their respective careers are very different. Thomas Sankara, in addition to his achievements as a soldier, had a strong political culture and was firmly rooted in the context of the Voltaic (now Burkinabè) left. He walked the path with his comrades from the highly politicized student movement of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). He then worked for the advent of the Revolution with an underground communist party of the time, the Parti Africain de l’Indépendance. This organization and others accompanied him in the process that led to the triumph of the Revolution. Sankara was disinterested in material things, which is what sets him apart from the current president. In the recent past, the latter continued to use the V8 armored car belonging to civilian President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. On the contrary, when Sankara came to power, he sold all the luxury vehicles that previous regimes had ordered and used only modest Renault 5s. During the People’s Democratic Revolution, the management of public funds was rigorous. The People’s Revolutionary Courts punished those guilty of embezzlement with fines and prison sentences. The population was invited to take part in community projects, notably the construction of water reservoirs, schools and stores, and the slogan of the time, “Let’s rely on our own strength,” was put into practice. Thanks to President Sankara’s audacity and charisma, Burkina Faso was seen as a beacon of light in the world. Sankara had also brought about a paradigm shift in diplomacy. Receiving French President François Mitterrand in Burkina Faso on November 17, 1986, he strongly condemned the French government’s complicity with Apartheid South Africa. He also criticized the relationship between the French authorities and the Angolan UNITA rebels, who were receiving aid from the Pretoria government.
In his time, President Sankara had even refused to promote his wife, who worked for the Conseil Burkinabè des Chargeurs, a government body in charge of transporting goods from the ports of coastal countries. He also refused to allow his sick father to be evacuated abroad, because he was not the only Burkinabè suffering from a pathology requiring evacuation. President Ibrahim Traoré, on the other hand, has almost a dozen relatives in the current spheres of power. Sankara was against aid to Burkina Faso that would create dependency, while the new authorities accepted 25,000 tonnes of Russian wheat. We need to free ourselves from France, but don’t we risk similar effects if we depend on Russia?
French imperialism reviled ///
France’s 1986-88 cohabitation between socialist President Mitterrand and right-wing Prime Minister Jacques Chirac evidently contributed to the downfall of his regime through the neo-colonial network headed by Jacques Foccart. Apart from this precedent, the paternalistic behavior of the French authorities contributed further to the criticism of the French attitude. By way of illustration, French President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation to the heads of state of the G5 Sahel (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) to meet in Pau in 2020 was received as a slap in the face by the populations whose representatives had been told to travel to this French city. French military intervention, deemed ineffective in countries such as Burkina Faso, ended up exacerbating anti-French sentiment. Given the difficult history these former occupied territories had undergone as a result of France’s colonial policies, as soon as the military took power, they capitalized on the population’s legitimate aversion to the former occupier. The decisions to remove the Sabre military unit and to dismiss Luc Hallade, the French ambassador to Burkina Faso, were political decisions that met with the approval of a large part of the population.
But behind the anti-imperialist sentiment of the Ouagadougou authorities, a new link is being forged with the BRICS countries, led by Russia. This relationship between these countries seems to allow them to acquire war logistics, but also to evade political injunctions to respect human rights and the rule of law.
Will they take Burkina Faso’s interests into account, or will we witness the kind of fool’s game the country has already experienced with traditional “partners” such as France?
The paradigm shift ///
In the West African sub-region, three military regimes are ruling Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. They are struggling to manage the war in their respective territories, but recently decided to slam the door on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to create the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). The three juntas believe that ECOWAS is under the sway of the French state, and that the sanctions imposed by this organization emanate from Paris. To free themselves from neo-colonial tutelage, they have decided to abandon the old framework and create a new one, with the aim, they say, of living out their independence to the full. A meeting of finance and economy ministers was held in Mali, and the broad outlines of the integration of this confederal framework were outlined. They range from the creation of an airline to a stabilization and investment fund. A new paradigm seems to be emerging, with a reconsideration of membership of ECOWAS and a clear interest in turning to new partners. Burkina Faso is free from French imperialism, but its future remains fundamentally uncertain. ■