Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré: conservative anti-democratic despot or anti-imperialist hero?

First published at Amandla!.

Amandla! sent a series of questions to Rahmane Idrissa. Here are the questions and his answers.

Ibrahim Traoré came to power in a coup in 2022. What was the situation in the country that led to the coup?

Traoré came to power by toppling another coup maker, Lt.-Col. Paul-Henri Damiba, who, himself, had overthrown the elected ruler, Roch March Christian Kaboré, in January 2022. It is impossible to understand these two coups without considering the dominant fact in the Sahel at that point: the Jihadist war that has been raging in Mali since 2012, and has engulfed Burkina from 2016-18 onwards. Neither Mali nor Burkina were equipped to fight the Jihadist guerrillas. There was a plan, set up in partnership with France and other Western states, to end the problem, but it was itself riddled with problems. The greatest of them was that it divided public opinion into nationalists, who considered cooperation with the West as tainted by imperialism, and pragmatists who wanted to make the most of that cooperation.

In Mali, the picture was a bit more complicated than this, but when the military took over in 2020, they chose to rely on the nationalists and call on Russia to help. This meant that they rejected Western help.

This conduct galvanised the nationalists of Burkina Faso, who expected Damiba to act the same way. He did not. In fact, despite the nationalist narrative, Damiba knew that French help was efficient, both in terms of killing off the Jihadist leadership and providing operational intelligence and support for ground expeditions, cost-free. The founder of Burkina’s Jihadist vehicle, Ansarul Dine, died within a year of the creation of this vehicle, following a French helicopter attack. So did the leaders of MUJAW, a Jihadist group that organised bomb and gun attacks in Ouagadougou and Grand Bassam, in Côte d’Ivoire, in 2016. The nationalists, however, had decided that France, not the Jihadists, was the enemy. They believe, or pretend to believe, that the Jihadists are minions of the French. Thus, they were very happy when Traoré overthrew Damiba nine months later.

When he took power, Traoré promised to end the Jihadist war within twelve months and then retire. He said he did not make a coup for the sake of power and would respect ‘human values.’ The first person who congratulated him was Russian Yevgeny Prigozhin, the now-deceased head of the mercenary outfit Wagner. Prigozhin touted him as an anti-colonial fighter.

Traoré has betrayed the three promises he made:

• The Jihadists are today more powerful than ever, having taken control of the rural areas in at least 50 percent of the territory and being able to freely act everywhere else;
• He has given himself a tenure of five years of absolute power (Damiba wanted ‘only’ three years); and
• His war is by far the most brutal waged in the three countries of the Sahel.

You’ve described Traoré’s leadership as presenting itself as a ‘revolution’. Is this a genuinely revolutionary process, or is it simply a consolidation of authoritarian rule?

It is an authoritarian revolution, the opposite of a democratic one. In October 2014, the Burkinabès revolted against the despot Blaise Compaoré. A year later, a military loyalist made a coup against the interim democratic government in an attempt to restore Compaoré. The population rose up again and stopped him. In none of these episodes did the army play a role. So the people called it a revolution. The term is excessive, since the political conditions were not changed, but it was understandable. When the leaders of that popular movement wanted to commemorate its anniversary in October 2023 (as they had done before), the machete-wielding supporters of Traoré, known as Wayiyan (‘Get Out!’), threatened to attack anyone who organised such a ceremony. Needless to say, it did not happen. Since then, all of the leaders have been either arrested — with no known charge — or fled the country. In Traoré’s Burkina, one is either behind him, and thus a patriot, or against him, and hence an apatride (French for ‘without a fatherland’, or a stateless person).

Understanding the difficult economic and political situation facing Burkina Faso, what is Traoré doing differently from the corrupt and compradorist leadership of the past? What are the ordinary people of Burkina Faso experiencing on the ground? What concrete policies is he advancing to overcome underdevelopment and the extreme poverty facing the majority?

RI: It is a bit surreal to speak of development in a country, half of which is basically an ungoverned war zone. Traoré is prodigal in symbolic decisions, but many of these are in fact old projects that he takes up and tries to push to an extreme that would garner the plaudits of the hero-worshippers. One example is to make education free from primary school to university. Free education was legislated some years ago, though implementation is difficult, given the puny state budgets. Traoré extends it to the university. This is a decision that was not preceded by any debates about how to fund it and make it work, what good it would do, etc., especially since the fundamental problem is the quality of the education, not its cost. In any case, free debate is verboten in Traoré’s Burkina. The sensible types who, for some reason, support him are a bit schizophrenic for that reason. I have mentored a Burkinabè think tank whose members want to believe in Traoré, but who find it extremely difficult to do their work — which is about development — because everyone is keeping their head down. No one wants to speak or share any information. There is neither law nor political patronage, only one man’s rule.

Traoré’s government claims to be fighting Islamist insurgents. Has his regime made any meaningful progress with this? How is his legitimacy being maintained among ordinary Burkinabè?

Traoré is failing, like the two other Sahel juntas, though in his own peculiar way. This involves a degree of violence against civilians of Fulani origin that is so great that some call it genocide. It is more of a vendetta. Of course, the Islamists are also very violent. But their violence is increased by the state’s violence. It’s a bloody cycle. In any case, Burkina is where the Jihadists are making the most progress today, and that worries the Nigerians. Without saying it publicly, they resent Traoré’s anti-Fulani animus, since it radicalises the Fulani on their side of the border too.

I find the word legitimacy irrelevant in this context. We basically have two Burkinas: one which worships Traoré and another which hates him. It is hard to say which one is the majority; maybe it’s a third one — the Burkina of those who have resigned themselves and sigh, ‘Allons seulement’. This is a phrase whose words are French but whose meaning is African. It means, ‘let’s carry on since there’s nothing we can do.’ In any case, the Traoré worshippers and followers are the only ones you would hear in Burkina, since the public square has been turned into a platform for them. The others are silenced or in exile.

Burkina Faso has won some anti-imperialist credentials by pulling out of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and forging new alliances with Mali and Niger. What actually lies behind this move, and what is its meaning for the region? And what is the role of Russia?

The exit from ECOWAS is anti-democracy, not anti-imperialist. The idea is not to be bound by the rules of ECOWAS, which prescribe democracy. In any case, ECOWAS never punished Traoré’s transgressions. Unlike Mali, Burkina was not subjected to an embargo, and unlike Niger, it was not threatened with an anti-putsch intervention. You’d note that Burkina is still in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), the organisation of the CFA countries of West Africa, which has some institutional connections with the French Treasury. The rules of WAEMU do not disturb those juntas, because they are more technical than political, i.e., they do not come with political conditions. The juntas also like the fact that they can raise money on their bond markets more easily than elsewhere. Moreover, they take money from the IMF and the World Bank.

So far, ECOWAS is not acting on the exit, which is a relief. The livelihood of most ordinary Sahelians depends on relations with countries in the Gulf of Guinea. The combined diaspora population of Burkina, Mali and Niger in Cote d’Ivoire is higher than its native population. Imagine if Côte d’Ivoire decides that all these people now need a visa and a residence permit to stay in the country! ECOWAS is the security valve of the impoverished and overpopulated Sahel. Only ideological hysteria and the selfishness of privileged elites can explain the actions of the three juntas as regards that organisation.

Russia is the patron of the three juntas. In Burkina and Mali, it offers them protection services. I have lost count of how many times Traoré has announced having defeated a coup plot, and I am pretty sure that a good many of these plots were invented just to purge the army. But this shows that he is fearful. At this point, his bodyguards are Russians, not Burkinabès. They even search his ministers when they come to see him. This is how Françafrique, the obsolete neo-colonial system of the French, began. Traoré’s Burkina has apparently set out to become a pillar of Russiafrique, alongside Mali, the Central African Republic, and perhaps Niger. France was accused of ‘plundering’ the country despite not having any mining company in Burkina. Today, Nordgold, Russia’s gold miner, is like a pig in clover in the country.

To what extent does he draw on the legacy of Thomas Sankara? Would you characterise him as socialist in orientation?

No, the times are not the same. Sankara came of age in the seventies, at a time when socialist literacy was very high in Africa and people actually read, thought/debated, and wrote profusely. I remember reading Marx in secondary school! Traoré is the voice of a more recent mood of sombre Pan-Africanism that is built on historical resentment, identity obsessions, and conservative views of society — patriarchal, religious, and homophobic. (Burkina, like Mali and Niger, has criminalised homosexuality, to the plaudits of the masses). He is persecuting social progressives and relies on the support of religious leaders, customary authorities, and cultural fundamentalists. This does create some disciplinarian rallying in support of things like pride in ‘Burkinabè cultures’ and things like that. But this is closer to the stilted cultural mobilisation in support of the leader, seen under previous military dictatorships, than to the sunny expressiveness that suffused the Maison du Peuple in the time of Sankara.

Is there a popular organisation on the ground and what is it organising around? How has the government responded?

There is no free organisation in Burkina. The era of democracy, even under the despotism of Compaoré, had brought to life a bustling public scene of professional unions, press organisations, and civil and religious associations. Today, these have all been brought to heel. The leaders of the civil associations, who kept Compaoré on his toes, have fled, are in prison, or are silent. For example, there was a pogrom in a Fulani village, where photos and videos were taken by the perpetrators — members of the Burkina military and their auxiliaries, the VDP, i.e., Volunteers for the Defence of the Fatherland. These were leaked in the press and on social media, and the leaders of the press union were all arrested. And then, there are the Wayiyan, the mob militia of the regime.

The real action happens online, opposing the social media warriors of Traoré with those of the exiled civil society and press. But that fight has so far had little political impact. In Burkina itself, the press is tightly controlled, the television is full of propaganda, and the regime’s information bureau presents a rosy picture of the country’s situation. People in the towns of the centre and south, far from the Jihadist war, are ready to accept this, if only in an Allons seulement way.

Abdourahmane (Rahmane) Idrissa is a political scientist at Leiden University’s Africa Studies Centre and at Sharjah’s Africa Institute (UAE).