On Monday 24 January 2022, a military coup removed Burkina Faso’s president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré and his government. It was the fourth coup d’état in the region within 18 months, following two coups in Mali on 18 August 2020 and 24 May 2021, and one in Guinea on 5 September 2021. On 1 February 2022 another coup attempt occurred in Guinea Bissau. The recent one in Burkina Faso was rather unspectacular. Early on the Monday morning, before sunrise, shootings were heard at the president’s residence and at some military garrisons in the capital, Ouagadougou. A couple of hours later, the president was reported to have been detained. Later the same day, a military junta led by one of the highest military ranked officers in the country, Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandogo Damiba, announced on television that the army had ‘decided to put an end to the power of Roch Marc Christian Kaboré’ in order to ‘enable the country to get back on track’, to restore its ‘territorial integrity’ and its ‘sovereignty’ (BF1 2022). Effectively Kaboré had been removed from the presidential office and the parliament and government dissolved, and the constitution suspended (Africa24 2022). Kaboré resigned in a hand-written note. The putschists call themselves Mouvement patriotique pour la sauvegarde et la restauration (MPSR, the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration). Two people are reported to have been killed in relation to the coup and a dozen civilians injured (Lefaso.net 2022a). This was probably during the early morning shootings on 24 January between the military putschists and the members of the gendarmerie who secured the president’s residence. The airport and the national borders were closed, but only for one day. A night curfew was imposed but removed after two weeks. ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, suspended Burkina Faso’s membership as a consequence of the coup.
On 3 February, the MPSR installed a 15-person commission (of 14 men and 1 woman) to work on a schedule and programme for the ‘transition phase’. The commission included journalists, academics and civil society representatives (Lefaso.net 2022b) but excluded political parties, and all members were selected and appointed by the MPSR. The commission submitted its report to Lieutenant Colonel Damiba on 23 February (BF24 2022). On 1 March, Damiba signed the charter of transition. On 3 March, he appointed Albert Ouédraogo as the new transitional prime minister. Ouédraogo, an economist and expert in public and private management, is close to the former president of the West African Development Bank, Pierre Claver Damiba, an uncle of Paul-Henri Damiba (Coulibaly 2022). On 5 March, the transitional government was announced. There were 25 members (19 men and six women), including a couple of ministers who had been office holders before the putsch, one of these the minister of defence, General Barthélemy Simporé. The transition period is scheduled to last 36 months; after that, the constitutional order is due to be reinstalled and free elections organised. Damiba stated that he would not himself stand as a candidate.
A coup to ‘fight against terrorism’?
The putschists’ justification for the coup d’état was the inability of the previous government to deal with increasing security threats by various armed groups that Burkina Faso has witnessed for a couple of years. The armed groups have had a severe impact on social, cultural and economic rights, civil liberties and political participation (see Engels 2021). Since 2017, more than 120 attacks on schools have been reported, half of these in 2019, and 2500 schools have been closed due to the security situation, with catastrophic consequences for access to education. Between one and 1.5 million people have been internally displaced. Thousands are seeking refuge in neighbouring Mali, itself a crisis-ridden country. Most of the attacks have been aimed at institutions of the Burkinabé state, but increasingly schools, churches and religious leaders are targeted. More than 2200 people were killed over the period 2019 to 2020 in relation to the conflicts, including civilians and members of state security forces and non-state armed groups – a terrifying increase compared to the figure of 300 in 2018. Reported fatalities in 2021–2022 to date amount to more than 2800 people (ACLED 2022). The vast majority of incidents occurred in the Northern Sahel region, but the attacks have gradually spread to other regions, especially in the east of the country and the Centre North region.
Unsurprisingly, the ‘fight against terrorism’ is the first and principal aim declared in the transition charter, together with an ‘effective response to the humanitarian crisis’ in the country, ‘national reconciliation’ and ‘social cohesion’ (Burkina Faso 2022, Article 2). Beyond this, the charter does not say much. It defines the institutions of the transition (the president of the transition, the transitional government, the council of orientation and monitoring of the transition, and the legislative assembly). President Damiba is presented unambiguously as the most important figure. Other than this, it states that gender should be taken into account, and members must not have been convicted of any crime and should be Burkinabé nationals of ‘integrity and good moral standing’. The legislative assembly is to be composed of 50 members in total. Of these, 21 are appointed by the president, 16 are from the state security forces and 13 from civil society organisations (Ibid., Article 24). Of the 21 presidential appointments, 13 members (who must be unaffiliated to any political party) are to represent the country’s regions, and eight are representatives of political parties (two from the previous presidential majority; two from the previous main parliamentary opposition alliance; two from opposition parties not part of the alliance; and two others). Starting with the inauguration of Damiba as president of the transition, the transition period is due to last 36 months, with the MPSR then due to be dissolved, according to the charter (Ibid., Articles 32 and 37), which was signed by Damiba on 1 March 2022.
In contrast to typical military coups in the region, this one was not a ‘coup from below’ (Kandeh 2004) led by non-commissioned officers frustrated by the lack of career options in the military or by factionalisation of the armed forces along ethnic or regional lines, instrumentalised by political, military and economic ‘big men’ and so on. Without a doubt, frustrations are high within the Burkinabé armed forces, as many do feel that the state security forces have been left isolated and that they are ill equipped in the peripheral regions of the country where they are targeted by non-state armed groups. On 14 November 2021, in one of the most severe attacks against the state security forces, at least 50 members of the gendarmerie were killed in Inata in the north of the country.
Lieutenant Colonel Damiba is one of the leading military figures in the country and was promoted less than two months before the coup to commander of the central military region covering the capital, Ouagadougou, and the cities of Manga, Koudougou and Fada N’gourma. He was tasked with leading anti-terrorism operations in the north. His career is similar to many of the military elite in West African states that have been colonised by France. Damiba studied at the Ecole militaire in Paris, together with Mamady Doumbouya who led the coup d’état against Alpha Condé in Guinea on 5 September 2021, and since 1 October 2021 he has been Guinea’s transitional president. Damiba holds an MA degree and military certifications from prestigious French institutions. From 2010 onwards he attended several training programmes in the US. He served in the infamous presidential guard Régiment de sécurité présidentielle (RSP) under former president Blaise Compaoré, who ruled Burkina Faso as a ‘semi-authoritarian regime’ (Hilgers 2010) for 27 years (1987–2014), a regime that was turned over by popular insurrection on 30–31 October 2014 (Chouli 2015). Yet Damiba quit the RSP in 2011 after an army mutiny. In 2015, when members of the RSP led a coup against the then transitional government, Damiba joined the loyalist military forces that opposed the coup.
In recent years, Damiba has become popular for his commitment to combating the security crisis. He called on the government to recruit mercenaries from the controversial Russian private military company Wagner – a suggestion Kaboré and his government firmly opposed. In 2021, Damiba (2021) published the book ‘West African armies and terrorism’ (Armées ouest-africaines et terrorisme : réponses incertaines?) in which he outlines the development of non-state armed groups in the region in the last two decades, covering not only Burkina Faso but also Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Nigeria. He also discusses national, regional (ECOWAS and African Union) and international military initiatives to fight these groups, notably efforts by the French, in their military operations Serval and Barkhane, by the US, and by the EU, namely its civil EU Capacity Building Mission, EUCAP). The book remains widely descriptive, however: any critique of the external military interventions is lacking. For France and its allies, the good news is that the current regime is unlikely to ban the presence of external forces. This is despite many people in Burkina Faso and all over West Africa expressing dissatisfaction in the last year with the French military presence in the region through numerous demonstrations and, for example, by blocking the path of a French military convoy from Côte d’Ivoire through Burkina Faso to Niger (Le Figaro 2021; Le Monde 2021).
If the principal justification for the putsch is the ongoing security crisis, two questions emerge. First, why does the military seize state power if it is not to strive for any political and economic change but just for what it is supposed to do anyway (‘fighting terrorism’, restoring the country’s ‘territorial integrity’ and ‘sovereignty’)? The coup was not a coup against the military leadership but was only to remove the president; the minister of defence was even reinstated. And nor was the coup a result of factions within the military fighting each other – otherwise more people would probably have lost their lives. Previous ‘coups from below’ in the region that evolved from faction-riven armies resulted in intra-state wars such as that in Côte d’Ivoire from 2002 to 2003. Second, how likely is it that the same army and the same military leader will be more successful in fighting the non-state armed groups and re-establishing security now that Damiba is not only commander of the most important military region in the country but also president? Did the previous government hinder military commanders from carrying out any strategy or action that would have been effective in combating insecurity in the peripheral regions? Otherwise, and if they succeed in doing so, one may ask why? Rumours abound on whether members of the military collaborated with the non-state armed groups, for example by selling information on positions and strategies or movement of the state security forces to them. That said, people in Burkina Faso are watching the new leaders with caution.
A history of strikes, military coups and changing governments
The coup in January 2022 was not a surprise. Frustration and anger within the state security forces and within organised civil society and the population in general have steadily increased since Kaboré was re-elected for his second term as president in late 2020. The coup d’état is inscribed in the history of Upper Volta (renamed Burkina Faso in 1984). Since its formal independence in 1960, the history of the country has been characterised by the recurring alternation of strikes, military coups and constitutional referendums (Englebert 1996). The first president of Upper Volta, Maurice Yaméogo, was ousted in 1966 following mass demonstrations by the trade unions against the limitation of workers’ rights, particularly the ban on strikes proclaimed in 1964. A general strike in January 1967 was followed by a military coup and Captain Sangoulé Lamizana took over the office of president.
A constitutional referendum in 1970 established the Second Republic. A further wave of strikes was followed by the dissolution of Lamizara’s government and a further referendum at the beginning of 1976. The Third Republic only existed for two years until teachers throughout the country went on strike in 1980. This was followed by a military coup, the suspension of the constitution and the formation of a military junta (the ‘Military Committee for Recovery for National Progress’, CMRPN) under Saye Zerbo. Zerbo was replaced by Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo following a further coup in November 1982. Ouédraogo appointed Captain Thomas Sankara as prime minister.
When Sankara was arrested a few months after taking office due to, among other things, his criticism of Ouédraogo’s regime, strikes by students and trade unions forced his release (Hagberg 2002, 228–229). In the following year Sankara himself led a coup; he was supported by, among others, Blaise Compaoré, who at the time was also an army captain. Thomas Sankara was a glamorous and charismatic person. After his death he became an icon – comparable to Che Guevara – not only in Burkina Faso, but in all of Africa, in Europe and in the Americas (Murrey 2018b; Murrey 2018a). Sankara’s popularity was and is, among other things, based on his achievements in the fight against corruption, in health policy and in the promotion of women – in spite of all the criticism of his ‘revolutionary regime’ and its institutions, which were often repressive (Harsch 2013). His early death is fundamental to the myth surrounding Sankara: he was killed in a military coup in October 1987, and his previous companion Blaise Compaoré became president. Not only is the organisation of the coup attributed to Compaoré, but he is also accused of being directly responsible for Sankara’s death, the circumstances of which have still not been fully explained or legally pursued.
The coup against Sankara was the last for 27 years and Compaoré remained in office until 31 October 2014. Compaoré’s term ended in a similar way to that of most of his predecessors. Trade unions and students again played an important role in the mass protests, though political opposition parties too were major players in these protests. And it was the military that drove the president out of office. On 31 October 2014, Compaoré was forced to announce his resignation. This had been preceded by spontaneous riots and demonstrations throughout the country, triggered by a proposed amendment to the constitution that would have enabled Blaise Compaoré to stand for re-election as president and thus run for a fifth term of office in 2015. While initially he refused to resign from office, the military forced him to do so. For two weeks the role of head of state was exercised by a senior military officer, Lieutenant Colonel Yacouba Isaac Zida, vice commander of the presidential guard, the RSP, the most influential elite unit within the army. On the basis of a transitional charter signed by representatives of the military, political parties, traditional authorities and civil society, former diplomat Michel Kafando was appointed transitional president on 17 November 2014. He immediately appointed Zida as prime minister (Chouli 2015; Frère and Englebert 2015). Many activists were disappointed. They felt that the military had ‘stolen’ the revolution (Engels 2019b). Chrysogone Zougmoré, chairman of the Burkinabé human rights movement (Mouvement burkinabé des droits de l’homme et de peuple, MBDHP), at a press conference on 2 November 2014, declared that the army had conducted a coup d’état. This ‘paves the way for antidemocratic endeavours, as the history of our country has taught us’ (Sawadogo 2014). The most recent events prove him right.
Presidential elections were initially scheduled for 11 October 2015. When revising the electoral law, the transitional government decided that candidates who had previously come out in support of the controversial proposed amendment to the constitution should not be allowed to run for election. As a consequence, several confidantes of former president Compaoré were excluded from announcing their candidature. On 16 September 2015, this resulted in a coup d’état by the RSP, led by its commander, General Gilbert Diendéré. The RSP entered a cabinet meeting of the transitional government and took President Kafando, Prime Minister Zida and two ministers hostage. The news spread quickly, and protesters mobilised immediately, burning barricades in Ouagadougou and attempting to enter the presidential palace. The following day, Diendéré declared the transitional government dissolved and himself president (interview with French-state-owned news network France24, 17 September 2015). Immediately, the trade unions declared a general strike and virtually all civil society groups mobilised to resist the putsch. In Ouagadougou, the RSP responded with brute force against the protesters. Between 16 and 23 September 2015, 14 protesters were killed and more than 250 were injured. National and international media were intimidated with threats of violence. The RSP destroyed the national phone company’s technical station in Ouagadougou so that phone and internet access was temporarily unavailable in the capital city. This did not stop the protests and, after some initial hesitation, the national army prepared to intervene. Finally, six days after the coup, on 23 September, Diendéré gave up and handed himself in (Zeilig 2017).
Presidential elections were held seven weeks after they were announced, on 29 November 2015. Roch Marc Christian Kaboré succeeded in the first ballot. He was the chairman of the Mouvement du peuple pour le progrès (MPP), a broadly social-democratic political party founded in January 2014 by core politicians who quit Compaoré’s Congrès pour la démocratie et le progrès (CDP) over the conflict regarding the fifth presidential term. More or less all influential MPP politicians have previously been affiliated to the CDP, and Kaboré himself and almost all key figures of his government had previously held high political office in the Compaoré regime. According to the civil society groups that had hoped for fundamental change after Compaoré’s fall, the transition ultimately amounted to one faction within the CDP succeeding against another. Among the licensed political parties, there is virtually no serious opposition to the MPP and its allies.
Nothing to defend
During the insurrection of 30–31 October 2014 and the resistance against the RSP coup in September 2015, the popular classes in Burkina Faso demonstrated that they are able to overturn a regime and oppose the armed forces if the latter is defending the interests of a small elite rather than the population. The lack of active resistance against the recent putsch does not mean that people were unable to do so. Without any doubt, the trade unions and the organisations of the human rights and youth movements, of university and high school students, are capable of successful mass mobilisation at short notice. For now, it is difficult to say whether most people in Burkina Faso, and which classes, are against the coup or in favour of it, or whether they simply do not care. The trade unions and mass organisations, at least the radical ones, oppose the coup. On 26 January, the trade union alliance, the Unité d’action syndical (UAS), published a declaration condemning the coup signed by all the secretary generals of the whole trade union federation: the UAS ‘invites its activists and supporters, all workers to stay vigilant towards … any attempt to call into question the democratic and social gains. In consequence, they have to reinforce their organisations to mobilise for the fight to defend their rights and gains in line with those of the population in general’ (UAS 2022, author’s translation).
However, the trade unions and their allies within the student, youth and human rights movements have not mobilised popular resistance against coups as they did in September 2015. In 2015 they did not defend the transitional government of Kafando and Zida as individuals. A leading activist of the 2015 resistance explained that instead they were defending democracy, liberty and the importance of government institutions. With Kaboré, there was nothing to defend. People do not take to the streets to oppose the coup. Radical activists and organisations in Burkina Faso oppose military coups as a matter of principle. However, many are not convinced that the governments of Compaoré and Kaboré were more legitimate than a coup d’état. Kaboré became president through what are called free and fair elections, though the elections on 22 November 2020 were held under the conditions of massive internal displacement, and a significant number of polling stations (926 out of 19,836) were unable to open due to security risks. Voter turnout was 50.79%. Kaboré succeeded in the first ballot, taking 57.87% of the vote. However, this points less to broad support and people’s satisfaction and more to the perceived lack of alternatives.
The Kaboré government has considerably curtailed liberties and tried to restrict the activities of radical social forces. In relation to the security crisis, basic civil rights – namely, freedom of assembly, of expression and of the press – have been restricted by the state authorities. In June 2019, the country’s criminal code was amended by the adoption of a new law (no. 044-2019) that, through Article 312-11, criminalises any acts that may ‘demoralise’ the state security forces ‘by whatever means’. Human rights groups complain that the law is used frequently to intimidate and persecute human rights activists, journalists and bloggers. On 12–13 November 2019, blogger Naïm Touré was arrested and accused of an ‘attempt to demoralise the state security forces’ (RFI 2019). On 26 December, activist Kémi Seba received a two-month suspended sentence and a fine for ‘public insults’ and ‘contempt towards the president and foreign heads of state’ after a public conference in Ouagadougou (Freedom House 2020, 205). Human rights organisations have noted that according to the reformed criminal code they are not supposed to investigate possible human rights violations by the state security forces or publish reports and photographs referring to it, and so on.
The right of assembly has been restricted by the authorities following the state of emergency declared on 31 December 2018, implemented because of the increase in terrorist attacks. The state of emergency is frequently used to ban, often at short notice, activities by opposition organisations. From the perspective of critical civil society groups, the government uses the terrorist threat as an excuse to curtail civil liberties and to oppress oppositional activities, especially by leftist organisations. Activists of civil society organisations feel that they have been denounced as terrorists and they feel threatened both by terrorist groups and by the state security forces. They thus feel they need to take precautionary measures when planning their activities to ensure their own safety and security. They fear that activists may be killed, and the killing may then be blamed on the terrorist groups. A well-known example is the case of two leading activists from the Democratic Youth Organisation of Burkina Faso (Organisation démocratique de la jeunesse, ODJ) who were killed in the province of Yagha in the north east of the country, bordering Niger, on 31 May 2019. An alliance of trade unions and human rights, student and other civil society organisations immediately condemned the killing and demanded an official investigation and prosecution of the perpetrators and others responsible for the murder (Engels 2019a). As yet, however, the autopsy demanded by the civil society organisations has not been carried out.
On 20 November 2021, the authorities suspended mobile internet provision in the country for one week as a reaction to people in Bobo-Dioulasso, Ouagadougou and Kaya blocking the passage of a French military convoy on its way from Côte d’Ivoire to Niger. The Burkinabé army used tear gas against the demonstrations, the French army fired warning shots. In Kaya, four protesters were injured (Civicus 2022; Reuters 2021). On 27 November 2021, the anti-riot unit of the national police used tear gas to dissolve a demonstration in Ouagadougou against the inability of the Kaboré government to deal with the increasing insecurity and attacks by non-state armed groups. The mayor of the capital had refused permission for the demonstration to go ahead. At least 20 people were injured by the tear gas, according to media reports (Douce 2021). People also took to the streets to march in other major towns of the country, namely in Bobo-Dioulasso, Kaya and Dori. On 10 January 2022, mobile internet provision was cut again, due to ‘security reasons’ (Ouedraogou 2022). The majority of the Burkinabé population does not have access to the Internet anyway, as people do not have smart phones or other internet devices, and there continue to be high levels of illiteracy. International media, NGOs and academics tend to overestimate the importance of social media for mobilisation, at least in Burkina Faso. However, the suspension of mobile internet to hamper protests is a key action taken by the Kaboré government aimed at critical civil society – those organisations that led the insurrection of 30–31 October 2014, enforced the overthrow of Blaise Compaoré and thus paved the way for Kaboré and his companions. In this light, it is hardly surprising that trade unions and mass organisations are not mobilising resistance against the recent coup.
New driver, car still broken
In the view of many activists, the coup is the result of the failure of Kaboré and his government to deal with the major issues that are facing people. The UAS states that ‘this situation is the consequence of how the country has been managed by the regime of President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré’ (UAS 2022, author's translation). According to the human rights organisation MBDHP,
The management of state power by the MPP … during this last six years, has been characterised notably by: the unprecedent development of insecurity through the increase of terrorist attacks against the state security forces and the civil population, the forced displacement of nearly 1.5 million Burkinabés, the inaccessibility of basic social services (education and health care) in numerous locations, [and] drastic restriction of spaces of liberty. (MBDHP 2022, author’s translation)
For many people in Burkina Faso, it is obvious that the ruling class cares little about whether people have access to food, education and health care. Kaboré is now paying the bill for this, not even 15 months into his second term as president, according to activists. That Kaboré has been replaced by Damiba does not imply any significant political change. If a car is broken, you would not repair it by changing the driver, as one leading activist put it. So it would not make any difference whether a civilian or military person is in the driving seat. What is key to this is that the military leaders, directly after the coup, met with the mining chamber (Chambre des mines), the association of the mining companies in Burkina Faso. The country is one of Africa’s biggest gold producers, and its extractive sector, namely gold mining, has been expanding massively since the late 2000s. Damiba’s military junta guaranteed to the mining companies that they would be able to pursue their activities without any restrictions, and that although the state borders were closed after the coup, this would not apply to the mining industry (Africa Intelligence 2022).
That said, doubts can be raised as to whether the ‘transition phase’ will come with any substantial political-economic change. Thus, the question remains: what does transition actually mean – transition towards what? With regard to the political economy, radical activists in Burkina Faso have quite a clear vision: they call for the (re-)nationalisation of national resources (namely, subsoil resources and land) and of other economic sectors instead of continued privatisation so that the country can become independent of foreign capital and capable of controlling its own value chains and benefiting from them. Furthermore, activists insist that foreign military and security forces, including secret services, should leave the country completely. This claim is increasingly supported by many people in the region, in particular the popular classes, as recent protests against the presence of French and international military in Mali and Burkina Faso have demonstrated.
The core questions remain: what is the character of political authority, how is it to be delivered, and by whom? Elections, at least in the form that they take in many contexts, have so far not succeeded in bringing about substantial change. Despite this – or maybe precisely because of it? – after the insurrection of 2014 the ‘international community’ urged elections. Most civil society activists in Burkina Faso, in contrast, were more concerned with the investigation of the political and economic crimes of the Blaise Compaoré regime than with elections. Many people in Burkina Faso have little confidence in the institutions of liberal representative democracy. So, does this mean that military coups ‘are more legitimate than elections’ (Serunkuma 2022)? If not, then what are legitimate forms of regime change? One lesson learnt from the popular insurrection in Burkina Faso in 2014 is that even if a regime is overturned by massive collective action by a broad alliance of social forces, this will not lead far if a vision and strategy of what should come next is lacking. The euphoria of the insurrection lasted three days; what followed was a hangover, with the revolution ‘stolen’ by the military and the bourgeois political opposition, the latter being just the second string of the previous regime. There is no euphoria regarding the end of the Kaboré government – though it is no less urgent to think about how radical political-economic transformation can be realised, legitimate, and sustainable. How will institutions of political authority be reformed, and what would they look like when created and sustained by the broad masses of people to effectively guarantee decent livelihoods for the popular classes, rather than appearing to them to serve the interests of a small, rich and powerful elite?