While he has just been appointed President of the Transition of Burkina Faso, Captain Traoré is already facing a terrorist attack in the north of the country.
After the National Conference, which took place on October 14 and 15 in Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré was appointed President of the Transition, barely two weeks after a putsch. The head of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration (MPSR) – the new military junta in power in the country – will have the heavy responsibility of presiding over Burkina Faso. “Everything is urgent in the country”, announced Ibrahim Traoré, even before being appointed president.
And the number 1 emergency remains above all to secure the country. It was the growth of the terrorist threat that led to Roch Marc Christian Kaboré being deposed last January. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, for his part, failed to do much better… Between January and September, the army continued to register many losses and Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba was accused of having become too preoccupied with power rather than the fight against terrorism in the field.
Captain Ibrahim Traoré will have to lead several files simultaneously. In addition to its negotiations with sub-regional bodies, including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the military will have to give the army resources, or at least guarantees.
Terrorist attack kills 11
Traoré understood the threat: the National Conference thus brought together several hundred representatives of the army and the police, customary and religious organizations, civil society, trade unions and parties. But above all, the captain had invited displaced people, all victims of the jihadist attacks that have affected Burkina Faso since 2015.
Quite a symbol: an ambush by the Terrorist Armed Groups (GAT) has, in recent hours, caused the death of at least three soldiers and eight members of the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland in the north of the country.
Two weeks earlier, eleven soldiers had been killed and several dozen civilians, while humanitarian trucks trying to supply the town of Djibo, besieged by terrorists, had been targeted. At the time, Damiba was still the head of the country's armed forces. But Saturday's attack directly affects captain Ibrahim Traoré and his men.
The new President of the Transition will have a few months, at most, to restore Burkina Faso's security system. The political transition should last twenty-one months, as indicated by the "Charter of the Transition".