Burkina Faso, a small poor and landlocked Sahelian state in West Africa, has been facing enormous turbulence and tragedies since 2014-2015, when the government of the former regime of Blaise Compaoré (former President of Burkina Faso) has been overturned.
Several imitators of the regime were forced to flee the country with their families; some foreign diplomats have returned to their country for fear of being attacked and for their own protection, not to mention the families of Burkinabe diplomats who have migrated abroad leaving all their possessions, their homes to be safe, and terrified of ‘to go back there. What is the status of Burkina Faso ?
The rate of migration of the Burkinabe population to foreign countries, in particular Europe, America and Canada has therefore experienced a very significant increase.
The Burkina Faso of before is no longer the Burkina Faso of now, the unfortunate and tragic events are only accumulating with the numerous attacks caused by unidentified armed men, called “terrorists” by some.
It all started with the shootings on January 15, 2016 at the famous restaurant called “Cappuccino” and then at the sumptuous hotel “Splendide Hôtel” on Kwamé N’Khrumah Avenue in the city of Ouagadougou, causing enormous loss of human life including thirty dead and a hundred injured, mostly foreigners.
In the same year, that is to say in December 2016, a dozen Burkinabe soldiers were killed in an attack against an army detachment based in northern Burkina. The following year, more precisely on August 13, 2017, the Restaurant Café Aziz Istanbul, also located on Kwamé N’Khrumah Avenue, was the target of an attack, resulting in 18 deaths.
Some have gone there for business dinners, romantic dinners and others for birthdays. They had no idea how their evening would end. It was a total chaos in Ouagadougou; the entire population was animated by a feeling of sadness and fear invaded everyone.
People weren’t going out anymore; the most famous avenue, the liveliest and most frequented by foreigners, which is the Kwamé N’Khrumah avenue, was more and more deserted and less and less frequented.
On March 2, 2018, a double attack caused by unidentified armed men targeted the French Embassy accredited to Burkina Faso and then the general staff of the Burkinabe armies and which left about thirty dead and more than 80 injured. Since all this, the attacks have only multiplied every day in Burkina Faso, including several regions and cities of the country.
This small state faces a multitude of delicate situations such as:
Persecution and arrestation of politician, member of government and diplomats by the population. What’s going on in Burkina Faso ?
The persecution and arrestation of political, government and diplomatic figures is a sad reality in many countries around the world. This issue is especially acute in Burkina Faso, where dozens of politicians, members of the government as well as diplomats have been arrested or even killed.
This has caused an exodus of citizens who are fleeing the country due to fear for their safety. Such persecution has led to a decrease in population, with many people seeking refuge elsewhere in order to avoid a similar fate.
Here’s some names of people who has been arrested: Gilbert Diendere, Lamoussa Ouedraogo, Kabore Jean-Claude, Cisse Aziz, Djibrill Bassolé, Tenkoano Ismael, Isidore Wend-Kouni Ouedraogo, Kabre Aristide, Sawadogo Silvestre, Kargougou Karim, Tapsoba Eude, Cheik Ilboudo …..
According to LEPAYS.BF and BURKINA 24, Djibrill Bassole (one of the politician leader of CDP) reveal on an interview how his life is getting more and more horrible.
They were very close to the former president Blaise Compaore.
Some of them like Assami Koanda (Peace upon him), Francois Compaore, Chantal Compaore got the opportunity to escape the country before and during the deluge.
Death before, during and after the insurection:
Burkina Faso had experienced ongoing violence and insurrection by various armed groups. The number of casualties from this conflict is difficult to estimate as it is a complex and fluid situation.
According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), there were over 5,000 deaths in Burkina Faso linked to the conflict between November 2015 and December 2020. However, it’s important to note that this number may not be comprehensive and accurate due to the difficulties in tracking conflict events and the limited access to certain areas of the country.
Ethnic groups attack:
Since the assassination of a King Mossé (ethnicity in Burkina Faso), on January 1, 2019 in a village called Yirgou by men whom some have described as Peulh (ethnicity in Burkina Faso), the mossé men have started to take on the Fulani in the region by killing any Fulani man who crosses their path. The Fulani were therefore victims of murderous stigmatization.
The toll of this inter-community or inter-ethnic war was heavy in terms of loss of human life. The women and children were all traumatized; which pushed them to flee the region and go to the big cities of the country leaving behind all their belongings.
Once in town, some were forced to beg with their children along the roads, at traffic lights, in front of public and private services, others were forced into prostitution, in order to meet their needs and those of their children. .
The luckiest managed to earn jobs as “housekeepers” in homes, businesses or bars. But at the end of that, they were victims of sexual abuse, physical rape, some contracted sexually transmitted infections and others, became pregnant without knowing the perpetrators of their pregnancies. Sad reality.
People of different religions kill and distrust each other:
Knowing that the unidentified armed men advocate Jihâd (the fact of perfectly fulfilling one’s Islamic religion) and call themselves Jihadists, the men of Christian affiliation have got it into their heads that the unidentified armed men are only Muslims and gradually became very suspicious of all Muslims in the country.
This is what created a massacre between Christians and Muslims in several villages and regions of the country. The churches are set on fire, the faithful Christians are assassinated in full prayers or at home; mosques are also set on fire and Muslim brothers killed mercilessly.
In the big cities of the country, the Christians are very suspicious and reject the Muslims, yet they have nothing to do with it. Muslims do the same, take their precaution vis-à-vis Christians and are on the sidelines, but in Burkina Faso, Muslims are the most numerous and represent more than 60% of the population.
Unfortunately, without social cohesion and solidarity, this country risks collapsing.
The closure of schools, the flight of magistrates, health workers, teachers, and state administrative officers:
Following the various attacks by terrorists in villages and regions, with a very heavy toll in terms of human losses for the FDS (Defence and Security Forces), public officials of the State such as magistrates, health workers, school teachers, inspectors, customs officers, and administrative officers no longer felt safe at all.
Places of worship and prayer were burned, several ambulances were looted, health workers were kidnapped and killed, schools were burned, students and teachers were killed, state services and homes administrative agents have been burned, and all this, by the terrorists.
Hundreds of schools no longer exist, thousands of students have been forced to stop their studies in the middle of school, it has been more than 4 years since some students in exam classes have not even been able to pass their patent and their baccalaureate. Many are affected morally, some have even resorted to suicide because they have lost some of their comrades, their teachers or their parents.
The Sahel, the east and the north of the country are no longer belong to the Burkinabe:
Unidentified gunmen wreaked havoc in the north of the country, particularly in the towns of Dori and Djibo. They took over everything, and even invaded the public services of the State such as the Burkinabe National Electricity Company (SONABEL), the National Office for Water and Sanitation (ONEA), and the different banks.
Half of the inhabitants have deserted the cities, some have been killed, the rest of the inhabitants still live there knowing that they have nowhere to go, but live in very bad and sad conditions, without electricity, in famine, water is becoming an increasingly precious commodity, since the National Office for Water is no longer present in these towns. The inhabitants are therefore obliged to line up in front of the wells and the drilling sites to obtain water; sometimes,
One has the impression that the Sahel and part of the North no longer belong to Burkina Faso. The unidentified armed men have made it their Headquarters (HQ), it is they who dictate their law there, monitor, give orders to the inhabitants, and kill all those who oppose it. They are also the ones who do the roadside checks, since some policemen have been killed and others have fled. When they see buses or trucks approaching, they search all the passengers and whoever looks suspicious or has a weapon, they automatically kill him in front of the gaze of the other frightened passengers.
Internally displaced persons:
Many people, the majority of whom are women and children, feel compelled to leave their villages at all costs to avoid being killed by unidentified gunmen. They flee leaving everything behind them, they flee these terrors not even knowing where to go. The hardest thing is that some are afraid to take the roads because most are mined with explosive devices. They are therefore forced to go through the bush, the dangerous forests, inhabited by wild animals.
The majority of internally displaced people come to Kaya, a city located in the Center North, others to Ouagadougou (the capital of Burkina Faso) and the site hosting the most displaced people in Ouagadougou is the Panzani site, located in Kamboinssé district. They live in deplorable conditions, and despite the various interventions of associations or Non-Governmental Organizations, aid is not sufficient because there are more and more of them. The number of internally displaced people in Burkina Faso has increased from 50,000 people in January 2019 to 2,000,000 people in mid-2022. This balance sheet is very heavy for a small poor country like ours, especially since we have been experiencing serious inflation for some time.
On the various sites sheltering the internally displaced, we see children who are frightened and mentally affected, inconsolable women and men who have lost their loved ones, their cattle, their agricultural plantations, their homes, their wealth, absolutely everything; they did not even imagine that it could happen to them one day.
Pillage of resources, animals and sabotage of crops and seeds:
The Sahel and North of Burkina Faso are the strongest regions in terms of cattle breeding (cows, oxen, sheep, and goats) since the Fulani like to practice cattle breeding. And among certain ethnic groups, the one who owns animals is considered a rich and powerful man because the sale of these animals brings in a lot of money.
But the unidentified armed men took advantage of their massacre and killing to loot the many animals that were in the possession of the inhabitants. Most of these animals were sent to the slaughterhouses of the big cities (Ouagadougou, Bobo Dioulasso), in order to make them available to the population for their consumption; but since the looting by these armed men, we no longer receive enough animals, which means that the price of meat has increased in the big cities.
These unidentified armed men also sabotage farmers’ fields, which means that the crops have not yielded enough for a few years, and if it continues like this, famine will set in in Burkina Faso, already that some are unable to feed themselves.
Youth unemployment:
Unemployment is a scourge that harms the development of a country. In Burkina Faso, there are more and more graduates every year, but the dream of every young person is to be able to finish their studies at university and get the job they want with all their heart. But unfortunately, thousands of young people finish their studies and are unemployed at home.
In Burkina Faso, if a young person wants to get a good job, he has to have long arms (connections) or his parents have connections all over the country. Sometimes for a job offer, new graduates are asked to have several years of experience, but how to get experience if no company or organization wants to hire them for an internship, let’s not talk about it. a job?
It is a sad situation that young people in Burkina Faso are going through and it is as a result of this that social vices are born, such as growing banditry among men and excessive prostitution among women.
Several young men are forced to indulge in horrible practices; some become bandits, thieves, internet pirates, and join sects and others are in drug and human organ trafficking networks. With regard to some girls, ill-intentioned people easily manipulate them and lead them to enter into prostitution networks, and into the hands of sexual predators. Others are fooled by unknown people on the pretext that they will be sent abroad to obtain a job and a better life and once there, they are victims of physical violence, slavery.
It is a sad reality but are the consequences of unemployment and poverty.
The coup of January 24th 2022 by the military named “MPSR” Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and restoration:
On the night of January 23 to 24, 2022, a soldiers dismissed the former President of Burkina Faso, Mr Rock Marc Christian KABORE from office who was democratically elected and took power.
The Burkinabe population did not expect it and it was total chaos in the capital (Ouagadougou). There were shootings all over the city and everyone was afraid for their lives. Some residents believed that the unidentified gunmen had entered the capital to stir up disorder.
ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and the AU (African Union) therefore condemned this coup and took measures to sanction Burkina Faso.
The (MPSR) headed by Mr. Paul Henri SANDAOGO DAMIBA felt that the former president could not effectively manage the country’s security crises and that it was necessary to take control. This party has already been in power for 6 months but there is still no change, things are only getting worse and the unidentified armed men are getting stronger and stronger; carry out a lot of massacres, continue to kill the FDS (Defense and Security Forces) and civilians. They are even about to block the axis (Ouagadougou-Bobo Dioulasso).
What is the status of Burkina Faso ? Another coup again.
Disgruntled troops in Ouagadougou, the nation’s capital, staged a coup in September 2022 and installed Captains Ibrahim Traoré as leader.
Serious violations where committed by armed Islamist organizations, militarized state security forces, and pro-government gangs, further degrading the human rights and humanitarian situation in Burkina Faso.
What’s the solutions to overcome Burkina Faso issues ?
According to Mr Rock Marc Kabore, all the issues that the country are facing off are coming from Blaise Compaore and his old regime (CDP).
The only solution to overcome Burkina Faso issues is to forgive those who attempted to destabilize the country.
Why should the government forgive them ?
Forgiveness is an important aspect of human relationships and personal growth. There are several reasons why forgiveness is important:
Letting go of negative emotions
Forgiving someone who has wronged you can help release negative emotions such as anger, resentment, and bitterness. Holding onto these emotions can be harmful to your mental and physical health, and forgiving can help the country move forward.
Restoring relationships
Forgiveness can help restore relationships that have been damaged by conflict or hurt. It can also promote reconciliation and lead to a stronger, healthier relationship.
Promoting peace
Forgiveness can be a powerful tool in promoting peace and resolving conflicts. It can help break cycles of violence and promote healing.
The current president should be clemency to the former leaders
A presidential pardon is a power granted to the President of any country to grant clemency or forgiveness for federal crimes. The pardon power allows the President to release individuals from the consequences of their crimes or reduce their punishments.
The pardon can be granted at any point after the commission of the offense, including before, during, or after a trial or conviction. The pardon can also be granted for any federal offense, except in cases of impeachment.
The President does not need approval from any other branch of government to grant a pardon.
According to the US Department of State and other sources, the country (Burkina Faso), was experiencing a complex security situation characterized by ongoing violence and terrorism.
The country has seen an increase in attacks by Islamist extremist groups such as Ansarul Islam, Jama’at Nasr Al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). These groups have targeted both civilian and military targets, including schools, markets and government buildings.
The violence has led to significant displacement of people within Burkina Faso, as well as to neighboring countries. The United Nations estimated that as of August 2021, more than 1.3 million people had been internally displaced within Burkina Faso, while over 20.000 had fled to neighboring countries.
Alert us embassy Ouagadougou, as of September 2021, the Us Department of State had issued a level 4 travel advisory for Burkina Faso, advising US citizens not to travel to the country due to terrorism, kidnapping and violent crime.
The Burkinabe community is driven by a sense of fear. The state of Burkina Faso has been enormously weakened financially and economically. All of the country’s major development projects have been stopped, because they are no longer credible enough in the eyes of potential investors.
Overall, forgiveness is important because it can help the country restore relationships, promote personal growth, and promote peace. It is not always easy to forgive, but it can be a powerful way to move forward and live a happier, healthier life.