(4 minutes read)
· Burkina Faso’s new strongman, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, has pointed out that the prevailing brutal militant insurgency in the country was the justification for seizing power.
· Damiba heads a junta that on last Monday overthrew the country’s elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore
· The deposed president was facing public anger at his failure to contain the crisis
· Jihadists’ attack has been a burning problem for the country since 2015. Over 2,000 people have died.
Burkina Faso’s new strongman, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, has pointed out that the prevailing brutal militant insurgency in the country was the justification for seizing power.
Damiba heads a junta that on last Monday overthrew the country’s elected president, Roch Marc Christian Kabore. The deposed president was facing public anger at his failure to contain the crisis. Jihadists’ attack has been a burning problem for the country since 2015. Over 2,000 people have died. Most of the casualties were from army, police and civilian volunteers. Of the 21 million people of the country, close to 1.5 million people are severely affected by the violence let loose by the Jihadists.
Damiba, 41, was judged by many as a strong and tough person. He was commander of the 3rd Military Region, which covers eastern Burkina Faso — one of the worst-hit areas. Damiba has been a critique of prevailing strategies to stem the insurgency. He also published a book last June called “West African Armies and Terrorism: Uncertain Answers?”
On Monday, he was part of a group of uniformed men who declared they had taken power. But he left the job of reading out the statement to a captain, Sidsore Kader Ouedraogo, who read out a paper signed by Damiba as president of Patriotic Movement for Preservation and Restoration (MPSR), as the junta calls itself. The statement underscored the continuous deterioration of the security situation, which threatens the very foundation of the nation.
Damiba is trained at the Georges Namoano Military Academy in Po in southern Burkina Faso. Like many military officers in the French-speaking Sahel, Damiba has had close affiliations with France. He was also trained at the prestigious Military School of Paris. Political observers opine that he is very close to the French Administration and may seek tacit support of the western forces in carrying out his mission. But what is happening in the other Sahel country -Mali- where there is a political instability because of the coups that had happened in the recent times, there is a section who believes that these developments strike at the very root of democratization of the continent.
