Burkina Faso’s Coup
Burkina Faso’s President Roch Kaboré was detained and his government dissolved on Monday in a military coup, the latest in a string of takeovers including those in Guinea, Chad, Mali, and Sudan.
The coup was announced by military leaders on live television, putting an end to a period of confusion. As late as Sunday night, government authorities claimed they were still in power following an army mutiny and reports of gunfire at several military bases.
That the move has been largely welcomed on the streets speaks to how exasperated the Burkinabé people have become with Kaboré’s leadership as the country has endured years of deteriorating security amid a region-wide Islamist insurgency. One million people have been displaced as a result, and 2,000 civilians killed in this year alone.
Public anger last spiked in November after Islamist militants killed 49 members of the country’s security forces and news emerged that those troops had gone two weeks without food rations.
Ironically, the policies of Kaboré, reelected to a second term in 2020 with a pledge to fight back against the insurgency, may have helped embolden coup leaders; the country’s military expenditures have more than doubled under Kaboré—from roughly $150 million when he first took office in 2015 to $382 million in 2020—according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The country has also been an active recipient of U.S. military equipment and training, with a total of $100 million in security aid committed in 2018 and 2019.
The African Union and regional bloc ECOWAS have already condemned the coup, although it remains to be seen whether the country will go the way of Mali, another military-ruled country recently sanctioned by ECOWAS and the European Union over its leader’s decision to postpone elections.
The response outside the country is likely to remain regional for now, as Richard Gowan and Ashish Pradhan explain in an International Crisis Group commentary, the politics of the United Nations Security Council make any wider action to reverse coups difficult.