Burkina Faso: helpless against jihadist attacks, government resigns

The Prime Minister Christophe Joseph Dabiré, awarded his resignation after several days of events in the country. The population denounced the disability of the authorities to fight against jihadism.

Le Monde with AFP

The Government of Burkina Faso resigned, Wednesday, December 8, after several manifestations of the population denouncing its inability to fight against recurring jihadist attacks that bend each week this country from West Africa.

Christophe Joseph Dabiré, Prime Minister of Burkina, awarded Wednesday a letter of resignation to President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré who accepted him. “It’s put to Mr. Dabiré’s Prime Minister’s duties,” said Public Television of the Government Secretary, Stéphane Wenceslas Sanou, reading a presidential decree.

The resignation of the Prime Minister automatically entails that of the government, according to the law in Burkina Faso. In accordance with the texts, “Leaving Government members ensure the expedition of the current affairs of the ministerial departments to the formation of a new government,” said Sanou.

“I invite the Burkinabe, as a whole, to mobilize, to support the President of Faso and the new executive who will be put in place. I remain convinced that it is in a unit of action that we will be able to Meeting the challenges Our country and our people faced, “said Dabiré on his Facebook page.

The Ras-le-Bol of the population

For several weeks, anger has risen against the executive. On November 9, the opposition had required “urgent measures” in the face of the “degradation of the security situation”, within one month.

And on November 27, hundreds of protesters were descended in the capital Ouagadougou to denounce “the inability” of power to counter jihadist violence that strikes the country. Civil society organizations had demanded on this occasion the departure of the Head of State. A dozen people including a child and two journalists had been injured in the dispersion of these steps.

The power in place is confronted with the population of the population in the face of jihadist attacks that hit the country every week. They have made about 2,000 deaths and 1.4 million displaced since 2015.

The attack on 14 November of a gendarmerie detachment in Inata (North), one of the most deadly against the security forces, shocked the country: at least 57 people, including 53 gendarmes, were killed by armed jihadists. Two weeks before the attack, the unata gendarmes had alerted the staff on their precarious situation, saying to lack food and feed through poaching.

Djihadist attacks more and more. Frequent

Burkina Faso has been taken since 2015 in a spiral of violence attributed to jihadist armed groups, affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group. The attacks that target civilians and military are becoming more frequent and mostly concentrated in the north and east of the country.

In late November, President Kaboré announced new measures, highlighting “the need to build, at the government level, a tightened and welded team”. President Burkinabe also announced the launch next week of a “clean hands operation, to empty all records pendants of corruption and clarify all the cases that pollute the daily life of Burkinabees who are experiencing good governance and democracy”.

In position since January 2019, Prime Minister Christophe Dabiré, former Commissioner responsible for commerce, competition and cooperation of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), was renewed in January 2021, after The re-election of Mr. Kaboré for his second and last term.

m. Kaboré was elected in November 2015, one year after his predecessor Blaise Compaore, in power since 1987, was driven out by the street for wanted to change the Constitution in order to stay at his job. But the new president has been confronted as soon as he took office at a gradual degradation of the safe situation in the country that has not been able to be halted.

/Media reports.