The security situation continues to deteriorate. The transitional government in Burkina Faso claimed, this Wednesday, September 27, to have foiled “an attempted coup d’état” the day before, almost a year after Captain Ibrahim Traoré came to power through a putsch.
In a press release read on national television, the government “informs public opinion that a proven coup attempt was foiled on September 26, 2023 by the Burkinabè intelligence and security services”.
“At present, officers and other alleged actors involved in this attempt at destabilization have been arrested and others actively sought,” continues the government, which deplores that the authors of this attempted putsch “fed the dark intended to attack the institutions of the Republic and to throw (the) country into chaos.”
Rumors on social networks
Tuesday evening, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Ouagadougou to call for support for Captain Traoré to “defend” him in the face of rumors of a putsch that were stirring social networks.
Assuring that it wants to shed “all light on this plot”, the government “regrets that officers whose oath is to defend the homeland have erred in an enterprise of such a nature which aims to hinder the march of the Burkinabe people for their sovereignty and its total liberation from the terrorist hordes which attempt to enslave it.
In December, the military prosecutor’s office had already denounced an attempt to destabilize the regime and announced arrests of soldiers.
Jeune Afrique was suspended
The Burkinabè government attacked the media Jeune Afrique earlier this week, which had published two articles evoking tensions within the army. It suspended its broadcast on Monday.
This alleged putsch attempt would occur almost a year to the day after Captain Traoré took power in a coup, on September 30, 2022. It was then the second coup in eight months that Burkina Faso experienced. Faso, undermined for almost ten years by bloody jihadist violence over a large part of its territory. The ineffectiveness of the fight against insecurity was one of the main reasons given to justify this takeover.
The attacks take place in particular in the “three borders” zone, which Burkina shares with Niger and Mali, two countries also led by soldiers who came to power through coups.
These three countries signed a charter earlier this month establishing an alliance of “collective defense and mutual assistance”, creating the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
Violence which has already left at least 17,000 dead
Since 2015, this violence has caused more than 17,000 deaths and more than two million internally displaced people in Burkina alone. The Burkinabe government announced last week that as of August 31, 191,937 displaced people had returned to their respective localities in several regions of Burkina, boasting a reconquest of localities formerly occupied by jihadist groups.
Despite these actions, attacks attributed to jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State continue regularly across almost the entire Burkinabe territory.