Behind the scenes of strong African news this week

Three weeks after seizing power in a coup, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was sworn in as President of Burkina Faso by the Constitutional Council. “I swear before the people of Burkina Faso (…) to preserve, respect, enforce and defend the Constitution, the fundamental act and the laws”. With these words, dressed in military fatigues, he takes an oath before the Council. The ceremony is broadcast by national television.

Claude Guibal, senior reporter for the international editorial staff of Radio France and Gilles Gallinaro, senior reporting technician at Radio France, are returning from Ouagadougou.

Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba, a young forty-year-old seized power on January 24, in Ouagadougou, after two days of mutinies in several barracks in the country. He overthrows the elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. He reproaches him for his powerlessness in the face of the jihadist violence that has struck Burkina for nearly seven years.

Surprisingly, Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba was considered close to the deposed president, who had appointed him head of the military region, responsible for ensuring the security of the capital.

And paradoxically, in this area of ​​Africa where anti-French sentiment is growing, Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba was trained in France. Graduated from the military school of Paris, graduated from the 24and promotion of the school of war, it, moreover, followed the courses of the criminologist Alain Bauer, at the National conservatory of Arts and Trades.

If Barkhane is visible on Malian territory, the Kaboré government camouflaged the French troops who were limited to special commandos. Since the coup, Damiba has openly asked Barkhane to carry out military operations on the Benin border.

In June 2021, he published an essay titled: West African Armies and Terrorism: Uncertain Answers? His observation on the state of the army in the face of the jihadists is then particularly severe. He deplores local armies that are too weak, with “redhibitory flaws”, and Western partners “required” corn “secret”.

Lieutenant-Colonel Damida will have to deal with the anti-French feeling present in Mali, which considers the regiments present for nine years as an army of occupation, but the unease is just as deep in Burkina. How could a highly equipped army, capable of probing the underground depths, not come to the end, after almost 10 years of conflict, of jihadists on motorcycles?

And social networks go there with their conspiratorial refrains: “They arm the jihadists to maintain their security presence and ensure the preservation of raw materials for European interests”.

In the field, Claude Guibal and Gilles Gallinaro have often heard this flood of criticism. But what marked the reporters from Radio France was disenchantment and poverty. Since the first attacks, the tolls have been heavy. More than 2,000 dead and more than a thousand people forced to flee their homes.

The military cemeteries of young soldiers who fell in the fight against terrorism are expanding from year to year. For what result all these fallen bodies? And which terrorists to fight? The Islamists or the criminals, who want to chart a course for drug and human trafficking from the Gulf of Guinea to North Africa?

Burkina Faso has lost its living together. The ethnic groups and communities that shared the daily life of the country look at each other with mistrust, the unity is broken. No one talks to each other anymore and the fault lines are splitting society.