News | Social Movements / Organizing - West Africa Coups, Imperialism, and Instability in Burkina Faso

The latest military junta is an expression of the wider breakdown in the country

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Bettina Engels,

Coup supporters rally in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on 2 October 2022 Photo: picture alliance / AA | Stringer

On Friday, 30 September, gunfire could be heard at the presidential palace in Ouagadougou early in the morning. Soldiers blocked some of the principal roads in Burkina Faso’s capital. The national broadcasting station, Radiodiffusion-Télévision du Burkina (RTB), was temporarily cut off.

Bettina Engels teaches political science at the Freie Universität Berlin and is an editor at the Review of African Political Economy.

There was a sense of déjà vu — a very similar situation occurred not even nine months before, on 24 January. Then, a coup led by one of the country’s highest military ranks, lieutenant colonel Paul-Henri Sandogo Damiba, toppled the previous civilian president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. In January, many people principally agreed to the coup, or at least they did not oppose it.

Since the second half of the 2010s, and clearly increasingly during the last three years, non-state armed groups, mostly jihadist ones with linkages to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, have committed attacks in Burkina Faso. Around 2 million people are internally displaced, almost 10 percent of the population. Between late October 2021 and late October 2022, more than 4,000 people were killed in attacks and counter-attacks by the military. Damiba and his Mouvement patriotique pour la sauvegarde et la restauration (MPSR), the military junta that took over in January, justified their coup by pointing to the government’s failure to effectively fight the armed groups.

Another Coup to “Fight Terrorism”?

Eight months later, at the end of September this year, lower ranks in the army led by captain Ibrahim Traoré staged a coup against Damiba. The number of attacks have increased within the past six months, despite the announcement of the transitional government appointed in March, headed by Damiba as president, to make the “fight against terrorism” its top priority. The recent sequence of armed attacks temporarily peaked in late September with two consecutive attacks near the town of Djibo.

According to official figures, 37 persons, including 27 members of the armed forces, were killed in an attack of a convoy in Gaskindé, 180 kilometres North of Ouagadougou, on 26 September. The convoy of more than 200 trucks was accompanied by the state security forces and was supposed to deliver foodstuff to Djibo, currently home of around 300,000 people, most of them internally displaced. Earlier in September, 35 civilians were killed in a mine explosion on the same road. Meanwhile, foodstuff and medicines are now only transported to Djibo by helicopters.

The military coup, four days after the Gaskindé attack, did not come as a surprise. Frustration within the army about the lack of success in the fight against the armed jihadist groups is ever-present. Lower ranks have long been feeling ignored by the military leadership. In late September, Ibrahim Traoré ineffectively demanded a meeting with Damiba to present the claims of the lower ranks, notably those within the MPSR, to him. In contrast to the January coup, the one on 30 September was a typical “coup from below” carried out by junior officers who do not see any chance to prevail within the army.

Captain Ibrahim Traoré began his military career as a “rank-and-file” soldier, successively rising up the ranks to chief of the “Cobra” special forces in the region around the town of Kaya in the North of the country. In 2018, he was deployed as a blue helmet in the UN mission MINUSMA (Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali) in Mali. Traoré supported Damiba’s coup in January and was a member of the MPSR from the beginning. At age 34, he is said to be the world’s youngest head of a state.

Traoré’s appearance on television on 30 September in the evening was remarkably similar to Damiba’s in January. Surrounded by armed and mostly masked soldiers, Traoré read a declaration that the government was dissolved, the constitution suspended and the state borders closed. A curfew was imposed from 21:00 to 6:00.

France’s Problematic Role

At first it was unclear where Damiba would stay. There were rumours that the French army had helped him by flying him to Dakar, or that he was staying in the French military base of Kamboisin close to Ouagadougou, where he was preparing a counteroffensive against the recent coup. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied this immediately and clearly: France would not be involved, claimed the official statement. It was obvious that the rumour would reinforce the critique and rejection of France, the former colonial power that still has an enormous influence in the region.

On 1 October, furious demonstrators attacked French cultural institutions in Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second-largest city, along with the French embassy. It might have been strategic, in order to put pressure on Damiba, that Traoré publicly blamed France for protecting Damiba and announced that Burkina was “open to all partners in the fight against terrorism”.

Religious and traditional authorities mediated between Traoré and Damiba. On Sunday, 2 October Damiba agreed to step down on the condition that security for his supporters within the military and himself would be guaranteed and the timetable for a transition of no more than two years would be respected. Traoré agreed. The borders were reopened for air traffic 48 hours after they had been closed, and the night curfew was lifted. As it turned out, Damiba had left the country for neighbouring Togo, as the Togolese government confirmed on 3 October.

On 5 October, a spokesperson for the putschists declared Traoré president and head of the armed forces. On 14 and 15 October a “national assembly” of representatives of the political parties, traditional and religious authorities, trade unions, and civil society was held. A charter of the transition was adopted with a timetable of 21 months, until July 2024. Traoré’s timetable followed the same pattern as Damiba eight months before. In February, Damiba had installed a 15-person commission to work out a timetable for the transition, and in early March he signed the charter of the transition and appointed a transitional government.

The recent transitional government was appointed on 25 October, with Appollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tembela, a lawyer and former director of a think tank for international and strategic studies, as prime minister. The legislative assembly (parliament has been dissolved) is now comprised of 20 persons named by the president, 13 non-partisan representatives of each of the country’s regions, 12 representatives of political parties, 16 military personnel, and ten figures from “civil society” (two each from agriculture, the private sector, youth, women, and people living with handicaps).

Geopolitical Framing

Following the January coup, some hoped that a military head of state would be able to strengthen the army in the fight against the armed groups and to improve the security situation in the country. Given that the situation has deteriorated during the course of 2022, a sense of resignation now predominates.

Russian flags were present during the demonstrations on the weekend following the coup (1–2 October), which can be interpreted in various ways: as indicating that some actually hope that Russian military support — which would probably mean deploying the private military company Wagner — would result in success in the fight against the armed groups. On the other hand, the flags could be considered an expression of the steadily growing opposition to the influence of France, and particularly the French military presence in the region. Alternatively, perhaps some of the flags do not come with any clear intention or political claim.

In any case, the Russian flags attracted more attention in the European media than in Burkina Faso. The framing of “France vs. Russia” reflects the proclivities of European media, their political discourses, and geopolitical interests rather than a serious analysis of the recent conflicts in West Africa.

Actually, Damiba, being one of the highest military officers, already had proposed deploying the Wagner Group to the previous president Kaboré — a suggestion he swiftly rejected. So far, it remains open whether French troops will withdraw in Burkina Faso, as in neighbouring Mali. According to media reports, Traoré has declared that he has no intentions of hiring Wagner mercenaries. Given the reports of severe human rights violations and violence committed by Wagner mercenaries in Mali and the Central African Republic, deploying the private military company to Burkina would simply deepen the instability. The very last thing the people of Burkina Faso need is yet another imperialist actor able to arbitrarily perpetrate violence.

It remains an open question as to who should be Burkina Faso’s “partners” in the fight against terrorism. It would be naive to hope that the armed groups will stop the attacks without being forced to do so by military violence. Therefore, the Burkinabe army needs personnel, equipment, and competencies — including the competency to respect and defend substantial human rights and protect the people in the country instead becoming a threat to security itself.

The former colonial power France has hardly proven itself as the right “partner”, while Operation Barkhane in the Sahel region reinforced the popular opposition to France. Neither has the transnational joint “anti-terror” operation of the G5 Sahel states (Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauretania, Niger, Chad) thus far succeeded in improving the security situation. Serious accusations of human rights violations and massacres against civilians by soldiers of these operations have been raised. Altogether, military interventions have seriously destabilized rather than stabilized the region. The option of an ECOWAS intervention or a UN mission has hardly been discussed.

Little Space for Alternative Visions

Radical organizations and trade unions have opposed both coups. Yet their room for manoeuvre already has been severely curtailed by the previous Kaboré government. Their situation had not improved after the coup in January, and it seems unlikely that this will be the case in the near future.

Most of them follow the process of transition from a critical distance. A new transitional government of 23 ministers (five women and 18 men, three of them from high military ranks) was installed on 25 October. National elections are supposed to be held in 2024. Many citizens of Burkina Faso have serious doubts about the institution of national elections, and calls to boycott elections are not uncommon.

These days, radical political groups are discussing how to position themselves with regard to the elections planned for 2024. The prolonged security crisis, along with the political and military instability are a constant personal strain on activists, who constantly have to react to events. These conditions hardly leave room to reflect on developing progressive visions and strategies.