Middle East & Africa | Not a chance in Sahel

For the second time this year, soldiers stage a coup in Burkina Faso

Jihadists are wreaking havoc. More army infighting will not help

In this image from video broadcast by RTB state television, coup spokesman Capt. Kiswendsida Farouk Azaria Sorgho reads a statement in a studio in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, on Friday evening, Sept. 30, 2022. Members of Burkina Faso's army seized control of state television late Friday, declaring that the country's coup leader-turned-president, Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba, had been overthrown after only nine months in power. The statement announced that Capt. Ibrahim Traore is the new military leader of Burkina Faso, a volatile West African country that is battling a mounting Islamic insurgency. (RTB via AP)

Oct 1st 2022|ABUJA

At first glance the images of soldiers in a television studio on September 30th, some of them masked and bristling with guns, were almost indistinguishable from those broadcast in Burkina Faso in January, when the army overthrew Roch Kaboré, the elected president. Yet this was a different coup. Eight months ago the leader of the first Burkinabé putsch of 2022, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, sought to justify it by saying that the government was failing to defeat jihadists who had overrun much of the country. This time Captain Ibrahim Traoré used much the same reasoning.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Coup upon coup”