What Burkina Faso’s Tragic History Teaches Us

Ten years after the country’s revolution, the lessons for protecting a budding democracy and guarding against violent extremism are clear.  

By John Chin, Haleigh Bartos, and Aleksaundra Handrinos

October 2024

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the Burkinabé Revolution. On 31 October 2014, a mass uprising ousted longtime dictator Blaise Compaoré, who had ruled Burkina Faso since 1987 after orchestrating the assassination of Thomas Sankara and seizing power in a coup. Initial hopes for the country to follow a path to democracy and development after the revolution would be dashed. In the decade since, Burkina Faso has instead suffered a worsening jihadist insurgency, government delegitimation, and two coups in 2022 that entrenched a repressive, populist military junta which has turned its back on the West and courted Russia.

What lessons can we learn from Burkina Faso’s tragic experience? As important, what can the United States and the West do to ensure that nearby countries in West Africa do not suffer the same fate as Burkina Faso? We propose a strategy of containing Burkina Faso–style unrest by bolstering West Africa’s littoral states (Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo) with democracy aid, more support for border security, and the establishment of a new joint intelligence-analysis operation.

Burkina Faso’s Short-Lived Democracy

Compaoré’s 2014 ouster enabled Burkina Faso’s first experiment with democracy, but under inauspicious conditions. From independence in 1960 through 2014, the former French colony known as Upper Volta until 1984 had experienced only military rule or personalist dictatorship without a single peaceful transition of power. Every one of its leaders had been ousted in a military coup. By 2014, nearly 44 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty.

Burkina Faso’s democratic transition was almost aborted before it began when, amid the revolution, Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida launched a coup-within-a-coup and declared himself head of state. Zida ultimately yielded to international pressure and the threat of African Union sanctions, however, committing to hold democratic elections in the fall of 2015 and co-rule as prime minister with a civilian president in the interim.

It was not long before another coup was attempted. In September 2015, General Gilbert Diendéré and members of the Presidential Security Regiment, an autonomous military unit that had operated as Compaoré’s personal militia, tried to take power. The African Union suspended Burkina Faso’s membership and threatened sanctions. Mass youth protests against the coup erupted, accompanied by a general strike of workers from all economic sectors. Under international and domestic pressure, the military turned on the putschists, and the interim government was restored in a week.

National elections were held as promised in November 2015, and in the country’s first peaceful transition of power Roch Kaboré became president. The period between 2016 and 2021 proved to be the most democratic in Burkina Faso’s history, earning it high scores on V-Dem’s electoral-democracy index. And in a sign of progress on the development front, Kaboré introduced free national healthcare for pregnant women and children under five in 2016, reducing child-mortality rates from malaria.

The budding democracy was, however, confronted by an escalating Islamist insurgency. Threats of extremist violence prevented nearly 7 percent of the electorate from voting in the 2020 national elections, which Kaboré again won. Public and military unrest mounted as the government proved incapable of taming the Islamist insurgency. Afrobarometer surveys show the fallout: Presidential approval ratings have been declining since 2015, as has support for democracy, which plummeted from 80 percent that year to around 50 percent in 2022. Support for military rule, meanwhile, has been climbing over the same period.

Figure 1: Public Approval of Military Rule in Burkina Faso (Afrobarometer)

Mass protests broke out across the country in November 2021 over the jihadist violence. In response, the following month Kaboré ordered a military reshuffle and his prime minister’s resignation. But it was too little, too late. In January 2022, Kaboré fell to a military coup led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba, the former counterterrorism commander in the north. With the Islamist insurgency continuing to spiral, however, and Damiba resisting demands to end French counterterrorism assistance, the coup leader himself was ousted eight months later by another coup. The new ruling junta, led by Captain Ibrahim Traoré, was more open to Russia. Notably, the September 2022 putsch did not spark massive protests as the 2015 coup had. Instead, it was welcomed with pro-coup rallies and anti-French protests.

The return of military rule in Burkina Faso did not bring the promised security or stability. The military junta eventually backed away from pledges that Damiba had made to placate the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), committing to hold new elections and restore civilian rule by July 2024. Traoré said in September 2023 that elections were “not a priority” and security had to come first. In May 2024, the junta followed Mali’s lead and extended military rule for five more years, until July 2029. The regime has become increasingly repressive, with Traoré leading a “calculated assault on civil society” that includes curbing media freedom and expelling foreign journalists critical of the regime.

Jihadist Insurgency, Unchecked

Jihadist violence first spread from Mali into Burkina Faso in January 2016, when al-Mourabitoun fighters and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) attacked the capital, Ouagadougou. In the eight years since, the Islamist insurgency has become more violent and widespread, expanding from its initial concentration in the north to the east and southwest. A complex cast of violent extremist organizations are now operating in the country. They include Ansarul Islam, formed in December 2016; Jama’at Nusr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), formed in 2017 by the merger of al-Mourabitoun, AQIM, Ansar Dine, and Katibat Macina; and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.

In a matter of years, Burkina Faso climbed to the top of the Global Terrorism Index (GTI)’s ranking of countries most affected by terrorism. In 2015, it was not even in the top fifty. By 2019, it had jumped to seventh place. As of 2023, the last year for which we have GTI data, Burkina Faso was the most terrorism-afflicted country in the world.

Since 2019, armed-conflict events and fatalities have skyrocketed in Burkina Faso, with a large increase in civilian targeting by insurgents and military forces. The collapse of a brief ceasefire with JNIM in 2021 led to record levels of armed violence, and the 2022 coups did little to quell it. Violence remained high in 2024, causing at least 6,176 deaths through early October. In one of the deadliest attacks in Africa in recent decades, JNIM massacred some 600 villagers in the town of Barsalogho in August.

Figure 2: Violent Events in Burkina Faso

Before the 2022 coups, France led Western efforts to assist counterinsurgency operations in Burkina Faso with Operation Sabre, which had stationed 350 to 400 special-forces troops on the outskirts of Ouagadougou since 2009. France shared intelligence with U.S. special forces in the region and had neutralized some high-value targets. But by 2021, populist sentiment in Burkina Faso blamed the country’s former overlord for failing to tame the insurgency and accused it of neocolonialism. French forces withdrew at the request of the ruling junta in February 2023.

Western, especially French, influence in Burkina Faso has weakened since then. The United States, which had provided some security assistance to the Kaboré government, suspended its aid after the January 2022 coup. The European Union similarly suspended all security cooperation. Western partners have hesitated to support the junta’s counterinsurgency strategy, which is increasingly unconcerned with human-rights abuses, especially those committed by civilian militiamen under the banner of the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland.

With French forces gone, Traoré has turned to Russia, declaring the country a “strategic ally” last May. Since then, Russian influence in Burkina Faso has grown rapidly: A hundred Russian Africa Corps instructors, part of a private Russian military company known as the Bear Brigade, arrived in the country late last year to lead counterterrorism operations. Since then, Burkinabé counterinsurgency efforts have led to mass atrocities against civilians. In February 2024, the Burkina Faso military summarily executed at least 223 civilians in two villages. More recently, Burkinabé authorities have forcibly enlisted, arbitrarily arrested, and kidnapped perceived critics, human-rights defenders, and magistrates in abuse of the general-mobilization decree enacted to fight the insurgency.

How to Contain the Unrest and Defend the Coast

If there is one lesson from Burkina Faso’s history over the last decade, it is that failure to contain an Islamist insurgency can undermine support for democracy and cooperation with the West while motivating support for coups, military rule, and cooperation with dictators. The United States should have backed Kaboré’s government more vigorously. It must not make the same mistake with other West African democracies.

The insurgencies that are undermining democracy and empowering anti-Western military juntas in Burkina Faso could easily spread to its southern neighbors. It is therefore in the interest of the United States and the West to strengthen democracy and security partnerships with countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin. There has been a gradual uptick in jihadist armed violence in these states in recent years — just as there had been in Burkina Faso before 2019 — especially in northern Benin and Togo. Benin is most at risk, with the number of fatalities doubling to 173 over the past year.

We suggest three ways the United States can avoid repeating its mistakes in Burkina Faso in the littorals.

1.) Support these governments before insurgencies escalate. Engagement should be proactive and holistic, going beyond mere security cooperation to include personal diplomacy, more democracy aid, and trade and investment tied to delivering public goods. This could help to prevent the rising disaffection with democracy that we have witnessed in Burkina Faso.

2.) Establish a Joint Intelligence Analysis Cell (JIAC) for the littorals. A JIAC would help littoral partners keep violent extremist organizations at bay through coordinating and synthesizing intelligence and analysis, with support from the United States and potentially the United Kingdom and France — the latter’s inclusion would help mitigate language constraints. This approach would also help maintain a U.S. footprint in the broader region to offset the loss of its base in Niger after the 2023 coup there.

3.) Bolster border-security assistance. Borders in the littoral states remain porous and vulnerable to penetration from insurgents seeking to undermine democracy and spread their influence. The United States and the European Union should double down on existing efforts to enhance regional border security. Some of the West’s support to curb terrorist transit in the region over the past half-decade has gone to Côte d’Ivoire, which since 2019 has built additional border posts. Ghana, too, received some border-security aid from the EU. AFRICOM is deepening its relationship with Ivorian security forces; earlier this year, AFRICOM’s commander, General Michael Langley, visited Benin. Last year, the United States transferred equipment to Benin’s armed forces and provided training on border-security tactics. This is a good start, but it is not enough. The West could further support these efforts by supplying border-security sensors and additional surveillance equipment to better detect illegal crossings.

The United States and Western and regional partners, such as ECOWAS and the African Union, need to double down on efforts to safeguard democracy in the littorals and mitigate the spread of violent extremism. This will require greater commitment to engagement in the region, including more diplomacy, funding, training, and equipment. Only by providing this type of practical and material assistance can we prevent West Africa’s littorals from following the tragic example of Burkina Faso.

John Chin is an assistant teaching professor of political science in the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the lead author of the Historical Dictionary of Modern Coups D’état (2022). Haleigh Bartos is an associate professor of the practice in the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. She has fifteen years of experience working to support policy and analyzing national security issues. Aleksaundra Handrinos is a student at Carnegie Mellon University majoring in ethics, history, and public policy as well as international relations and political science.

Copyright © 2024 National Endowment for Democracy

Image credit: Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images