Burkina Faso soldiers announced on state television on Monday that they had taken control of the West African country after a mutiny over the civilian president’s failure to contain an Islamist insurgency.
Reading from a statement signed by Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, a junior officer announced the suspension of the constitution, the dissolution of the government and parliament, and the closure of the country’s borders as of midnight Monday.
He claimed that the new Patriotic Movement for Preservation and Restoration (MPSR) would restore “constitutional order” in a “reasonable” amount of time, and that a nationwide nighttime curfew would be implemented.
On Monday, African and Western powers condemned what they deemed a “attempted coup,” and the EU demanded President Roch Marc Christian Kabore’s “immediate” release.
The United States has called for Kabore’s release and urged “members of the security forces to respect Burkina Faso’s constitution and civilian leadership.”
Despite contradictory reports over Kabore’s whereabouts, European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said in a statement: “We now know that President Kabore is under the control of the military.”
Soldiers in Burkina Faso, which has been fighting an Islamist insurgency since 2015, stood up on Sunday at numerous army barracks across the country. They requested that the military’s top commanders be removed and that greater resources be allocated to fighting militants, but they made no mention of Kabore’s departure.
The president, who has been in office since 2015 and was re-elected in 2020, has faced mounting public outrage over his failure to stop the country’s killing.
Several coups or attempted coups have occurred in Burkina Faso. The military overthrew the civilian government in neighboring Mali in 2020, where the insurgency began before crossing the border.
The ECOWAS grouping of West African governments described the current unrest as a “coup attempt” on Monday, holding “soldiers responsible for (Kabore’s) physical well-being.”
