Juline Garnier 11:59 a.m., October 06, 2022

While tension reigns in Burkina Faso, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, at the head of a junta since January, finally agreed to resign on Sunday, in favor of Captain Traoré.

How can this succession of coups d'etat be explained?

Why are tensions so high in the country?

Europe 1 takes stock.

DECRYPTION

After a democratic period of nearly seven years, Burkina Faso falls back under the military junta.

Between exacerbated anti-French sentiment, growing Russian influence and a territory plagued by jihadism, this strategic country in the Sahel is subject to enormous tensions.

The result of several years of failures in the fight against terrorism and an internal political crisis with no immediate solution.

In any case, this is the assessment of Niagalé Bagayoko, doctor of political science and specialist in security issues in sub-Saharan Africa.

Political instability for decades

To understand, a quick step back is necessary.

Since Burkina Faso's independence in 1960, the country has experienced eight coups, interspersed with democratic periods with several elected presidents.

Among these heads of state, President Blaise Compaoré remained in power for 27 years before being ousted by a popular uprising.

In 2014, he was replaced by Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, democratically elected.

As he began his second term, it was the latter who was overthrown last January by the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration (MPSR), headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba.

"Since independence, all the mandates of the various authorities have ended in coups d'état in the country. We must therefore not consider current events as an unprecedented phenomenon", specifies Niagalé Bagayoko.

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A total inability of power to manage its armed forces

Surprisingly, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, responsible for Friday's putsch, is also from the MPSR.

He had even supported Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba when he took power. 

"The reason given by the MPSR for its coup in January was the inability of President-elect Roch Marc Christian Kaboré to deal with endemic insecurity. The trigger was the Inata massacre, where Burkinabe gendarmes were massacred by jihadists, while they had been left without weapons or food for two weeks," she explains.

"The scandal was so big, the total inability of the authorities to manage the crisis appeared so crude that there was great popular support for the January coup," adds the researcher.

Why did Captain Traoré, from the same political movement as his predecessor, take power?

Captain Traoré's coup, moreover, originated from the same type of event: the attack on Gaskindé, where again there were at least 18 soldiers killed, around fifty people missing and a lack of arms and logistics supplies.

Yet Damiba has taken several steps to try to reorganize the deployment of the armed forces. 

"He created what he called areas of military interest. He tried to create toll-free numbers, for example to fight against abuses committed by the defense and security forces themselves. But above all, he taken measures aimed at consolidating his political power, including by promoting the scandalous return of ousted President Blaise Compaoré, who had been convicted during a trial for the murder of Thomas Sankara", details Niagale Bagayoko.

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If Damiba had been carried by the popular fervor, we observe the opposite phenomenon for the putsch of Traoré.

It was the military who sought to mobilize the population to support the internal struggle within the army, through the manipulation of information.

“Traoré and those who support him have spread the rumor that Damiba was supported by France, that he took refuge in the base of the special forces in Cameroon. This inflamed the population, which mobilized afterwards”, says the researcher.

An exacerbated anti-French sentiment

Note that this support from France to Damiba is completely false but was enough for Captain Traoré to take power, officially becoming Thursday, at 34, the youngest head of state in the world.

This political maneuver therefore explains the anti-French demonstrations that took place last weekend in Ouagadougou, where dozens of demonstrators threw stones and set fire to the protective barriers of the French embassy present in the capital.

"That's the difficulty. Today the anti-French feeling is extremely deep and very easy to activate for any cause. And there we see how immediate the mobilization is. Because in fact, France and especially its foreign policy are the object of a rejection and an absolutely visceral hostility which developed quietly and which one would be wrong, in my opinion, to perceive as being only manipulated by external powers. "It's not the case. Russia exploits this feeling of rejection of France but it comes from elsewhere at the origin", she concludes.