Diplomatic quarrel between Paris and Ouagadougou echoes that experienced by France with Mali against a background of political instability and growing jihadist threat.
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In Burkina Faso, the French ambassador is no longer welcome. According to an official French source, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Sahelian country, the scene of two coups since January 2022, asked for the replacement of Luc Hallade, in post since the end of 2019, in a letter addressed at the end of December to the quay of Orsay and who leaked on social networks, Monday, January 2. Information confirmed in the world by a Burkinabé government source.
If the authorities do not detail, in this missive, the reasons which motivated their request, several sources argue that they are partly linked to a letter sent by Luc Hallade to the French nationals of Koudougou on December 12. In this letter which also leaked on the web, the ambassador invited “insistently” people residing in this city, located 100 kilometers west of Ouagadougou, to “relocate” in the capital or to Bobo Dioulasso , in the southwest of the country.
The jihadist threat has continued to progress in Burkina Faso since 2015, to the point that more than 40 % of the territory today escapes control of the State. Koudougou, the third most populous city in the country, “went to the red zone (and therefore formally advised against the French by the Quai d’Orsay) since the coup of September 30, 2022”, said Luc Hallade, before stressing that “Staying in Koudougou represented a significant risk”.
According to our information, after having read this letter, the Burkinabé foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador, as the uses want when a dispute occurs on the diplomatic level, before finally postponing the meeting , evoking agenda problems. The interview will never take place.
At the end of July 2022, a first dispute had broken out between the French ambassador and the junta, then led by Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba. Hargered by representatives of the French Senate on the Burkinabé politico-security crisis on July 5, Luc Hallade had estimated that the “absence of results” of the government in matters of anti-terrorism caused “increasingly strong frustrations in the country” . He had also described the violence that ravages the country as “endogenous conflict” and “civil war”. An “erroneous reading” and “fairly serious” remarks according to a press release from the Burkinabé Foreign Affairs published on July 21, inviting Luc Hallade to “more nuances”.
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