Burkina Faso: Emerging Crisis in West Africa

Robert Cole

Another state in the Sahel finds itself teetering on the brink. Over the last several days, frustration at the government’s handling of the country’s growing Islamist insurgency in the north, particularly among elements of the military, has led to protests and warnings of a potential coup attempt. 

That is how this article originally opened when I began writing on January 24 before those warnings of a coup plot turned into an actual coup during the night. It has been a rapidly evolving affair, moving from a series of barracks mutinies to seizure of civil power in less than a day. To observers of the Sahel and adjacent nations, the story should sound extremely familiar. The coup in Burkina Faso comes on the heels of coups in Guinea, Sudan, and Mali and coup attempts or serious succession crises in Chad, Ethiopia, and Sudan. What is happening? Why are nations like Burkina Faso, long heralded as a pillar of stability in the Sahel, suddenly finding themselves sucked into a vortex of instability? The answer is complex, and the situation likely is derived from multiple sources. 

First, one must consider the modern political history of Burkina Faso, beginning with the overthrow and murder of President Sankara in 1987 by his personal friend and lieutenant Blaise Compaoré, who would go on to rule the country for the next 27 years. This moment and the subsequent Compaoré administration established two critical realities: Burkina Faso would lack a tradition of peaceful power transitions, and the government would maintain close ties to its former colonial overlord France. Indeed, there has long been speculation that the French government was involved in the 1987 coup, though there has been no confirmation of this claim. This first reality, a lack of institutional legitimacy in the country, emerged in 2015 after the ouster of President Compaoré. The transitional government struggled to stay afloat in the face of a military coup, but was restored and President Kabore was elected for his first term. 

However, the damage had clearly already been done. Countries that have previously experienced a coup are statistically far more likely to experience another. A successful coup tells military leaders that they have a decent chance of being able to take over the government whenever they choose, with far less uncertainty about the outcome as compared to countries where there is no precedent. This also helps to explain why coups have proliferated across the Sahel in general. Military leaders in Burkina Faso have almost certainly watched other militaries across the region succeed in taking over their civilian administrations, further increasing the basis for a similar action. The wave of coups across these nations also stems from a shared set of grievances. The soldiers taking part in these coups are poorly paid and equipped by corrupt administrations and are being asked to fight complex wars against terrifying and brutal insurgencies, some of which are better funded than the militaries sent to oppose them. This situation has only worsened since the start of the pandemic, which has only served to place greater strain on civilian governments and caused tremendous damage to national economies, as well as distracting foreign observers and impacting availability of foreign aid. The result is a domino effect, with coups contributing to greater instability, leading to heightened insurgency, which in turn causes waves of migration as civilians are displaced, placing greater strain on neighboring countries that can ill afford the additional burden, prompting their own military to contemplate taking over. As of April, there were over 4.6 million displaced people in the Sahel, with no indication that this number will decrease any time soon.

This series of dominos has also affected foreign military assistance, particularly from France. As I noted in September, French troops have begun to withdraw from the Sahel in a drawdown in some ways reminiscent of the US exodus from Iraq in 2011. While France has historically been part of the problem in Sahel, removing military assistance in the fight against insurgents does nothing to improve regional stability. It removes one of the last constraints on abusive use of force by regional militaries while simultaneously leaving them with fewer alternatives as they seek to prevent terrorist encroachment. Much like Afghanistan after the disastrous 2021 US withdrawal, it would be unsurprising if one or more of the states in the Sahel fell to insurgent forces in the coming years. Regardless of whether or not they succeed, the battles between governments and insurgents will continue to kill thousands and displace millions, fueling an existing international refugee crisis that has existed for almost a decade. 

Moreover, the lack of strong intervention by the democratic world so far has only invited competing powers to become embedded in the region. Earlier this month, reports emerged that Russian forces had arrived in Mali to assist in military training after the French exodus. Given the Russian track record in North Africa and the Levant, this is a grim sign both for humanitarian and geostrategic reasons. China is also seeking to expand its commercial and military presence on the continent and finding success thanks to its willingness to work with forces that have no interest in democracy or human rights. Already, it is deeply involved in Ethiopia’s ongoing conflict and searching for opportunities to become more engaged in West Africa specifically. For western readers, the situation in Burkina Faso may seem very remote. But it is part of a much wider picture that includes tremendous potential for both human suffering and exploitation by international forces seeking to undermine and discredit democracy. America and its allies continue to ignore the Sahel at their own peril.