With a string of attacks that have claimed dozens of lives, jihadists in Burkina Faso have sounded a loud alarm call for the country’s new. The military junta, which on January 24 ousted elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore over his failure to quell the insurgents, now finds itself in an uncomfortable position.
In a four-day killing spree in Dori, in the troubled northeast, 23 civilians and 13 gendarmes died in ambushes, road mines or hit-and-run raids by jihadists on motorbikes.
The deaths have put security worries at the top of the agenda after seven weeks in which new strongman Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba focused on cementing his position as interim president.
Burkina has been battling a jihadist insurgency since 2015 that swept in from neighbouring Mali.
Violence led by groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced at least 1.7 million, according to an AFP tally.
Defying international pressure for a swift return to civilian rule, Damiba has set down a three-year timetable for restoring elected governance and declared the country’s security crisis his priority.
He has restructured Burkina’s anti-jihadist campaign, appointed a new armed forces chief of staff and reshuffled the government, although he kept Kabore’s defence minister, Barthelemy Simpore.
Last Thursday, he issued a decree requiring soldiers who had gone into retirement in the past three years to get back into uniform. But there are mounting questions as to how these big announcements translate into action on the ground at a time when urgency is essential.
“The Burkinabe public is still waiting for the road map from the new authorities. The general view that is emerging … is that everything has slowed down,” the newspaper l’Economiste du Faso said in an editorial.
Source: eNCA
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