Coup-on-coup seems to be the name of the game in the West African Republic of Burkina Faso.
Authorities in Burkina Faso say that a coup attempt against the military junta rulers has been thwarted by the country’s intelligence and security services.
This is yet another attempt to seize military power.
Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power in September, 2022 – just eight months after an earlier military coup had overthrown the elected President, Roch Marc Kabore.
Shortly after, in December 2022, there was an attempt to ‘destabilize state institutions’, engendered by civilians and a lieutenant-colonel named Emmanuel Zoungrana.
And earlier this month, three soldiers have been arrested and charged with plotting against the ruling military government.
Burkina Faso reported:
“Burkina Faso’s military rulers said in a statement on Wednesday that army officers and others had planned to seize power and plunge the country into ‘chaos’.
‘Officers and other alleged actors involved in this attempt at destabilization have been arrested and others are actively sought’, a spokesman for the ruling military Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said in a statement without providing details.”
This latest coup attempt occurred on Tuesday (26), according to the statement by the government.
“The military government said it would seek to shed ‘all possible light on this plot’ and that it regretted ‘that officers whose oath is to defend their homeland have strayed into an undertaking of this nature’.
The country’s military prosecutor later said that four people had been arrested and two were on the run. An investigation has been opened based on ‘credible allegations about a plot against state security implicating officers’, the prosecutor said.”
Thousands of pro-government demonstrators took to the streets of Ouagadougou and elsewhere on Tuesday, to show support for the country’s military rulers.
Statement read out on state television had few details.
France24 reported:
“It said the alleged perpetrators ‘had the sinister intention of attacking the institutions of the Republic and plunging the country into chaos’.
[…] It said it ‘regrets that officers whose oath is to defend their homeland have strayed into an undertaking of this nature, which aims to hinder the Burkinabe people’s march for sovereignty and total liberation from the terrorist hordes trying to enslave them’.”
Meanwhile, Jihadist attacks continue unabated despite government claims to have wrested back territory. As much as 50 Burkinabe soldiers and volunteer fighters have been reportedly killed in clashes with rebels in early September.
“More than 17,000 civilians and troops have died in jihadist attacks in Burkina Faso, according to a count by an NGO monitor called the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). Over two million people have also been uprooted, making it one of the worst internal displacement crises in Africa.”
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