{"id":228155,"date":"2023-01-30T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=228155"},"modified":"2023-01-26T06:08:47","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T06:08:47","slug":"burkina-faso-ejects-french-troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/01\/burkina-faso-ejects-french-troops\/","title":{"rendered":"Burkina Faso Ejects French Troops"},"content":{"rendered":"

25 Jan 2023 – <\/em>On 18 Jan 2023, the government of Burkina Faso made a decision to ask the French military forces to depart from the country within a month. This decision was made by the government of Captain Ibrahim Traor\u00e9, who staged<\/a> the second coup of 2022 in Burkina Faso in September<\/a> to remove Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had seized power in a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat in January. Traor\u00e9, now the interim president<\/a> of Burkina Faso, said that Damiba, who is in exile<\/a> in Togo, had not fulfilled the objectives of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration, the name of their military group. Traor\u00e9\u2019s government accused Damiba of not being able to stem the insurgency in the country\u2019s north and of colluding with the French (alleging that Damiba had taken refuge<\/a> in the French military base at Kamboinsin to launch a strike against the coup within a coup<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Burkina Faso unrest: France agrees to pull its troops out.<\/p><\/div>\n

France entered<\/a> the Sahel region in 2013<\/a> to prevent the southern movement of jihadist elements strengthened by the war in Libya, prosecuted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In the past few years, anti-French sentiment<\/a> has deepened in North Africa and the Sahel. It was this sentiment that provoked the coups in Mali (August 2020<\/a> and May 2021<\/a>), Guinea (September 2021<\/a>), and then in Burkina Faso (January 2022<\/a> and September 2022<\/a>). In February 2022, Mali\u2019s government ejected the French military, accusing<\/a> French forces of committing atrocities against civilians and colluding with jihadi insurgents. Burkina Faso has now joined Mali.<\/p>\n

The ejection of France does not mean that there will be no NATO countries in the region. Both the United States and Britain have a large footprint<\/a> from Morocco to Niger, with the United States trying to draw African countries into its contest against China and Russia. Regular trips by U.S. military leaders\u2014such as<\/a> U.S. Marine Corps General Michael Langley (commander of U.S. Africa Command) to Gabon in mid-January \u2013 and by U.S. civilian leaders\u2014like<\/a> Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Senegal, South Africa, and Zambia<\/a>\u2014are part of a full-court press to ensure that African states forge closer ties with the United States and its allies over China. The designation of Russia\u2019s Wagner Group\u2014which is said<\/a> to be operating in the Sahel\u2014as a \u201ctransnational criminal organization<\/a> \u201d by the United States and the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit<\/a>, held in mid-December, are both attempts to draw African states into a new cold war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Almost half of the Burkinab\u00e9 population lives below<\/a> the poverty line, and \u201cmore than 630,000 people are on the brink of starvation,\u201d in the country, according<\/a> to the UN. The country is, however, not poor with its gold export reaching $7.19 billion<\/a> in 2020. These gains do not go to the Burkinab\u00e9 people but go to the large mining companies. Ejection of the French military will not be the answer to these deep-seated problems faced by Burkina Faso.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at<\/em> Globetrotter. He is the director of <\/em>Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research<\/a><\/em> and a senior non-resident fellow at <\/em>Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies<\/a><\/em>, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including <\/em>The Darker Nations<\/a> and <\/em>The Poorer Nations<\/a>. His latest book is <\/em>Washington Bullets<\/a>, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article was produced by <\/em>Globetrotter<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 18 Jan 2023, the government of Burkina Faso made a decision to ask the French military to depart from the country. France entered the Sahel region in 2013. The ejection of France does not mean that there will be no NATO countries in the region. Both the US and UK have a large footprint from Morocco to Niger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":186469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[237,131,2989,1268,1675,780,91,551,70],"class_list":["post-228155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","tag-africa","tag-africom","tag-burkina-faso","tag-european-union","tag-france","tag-military-intervention","tag-nato","tag-neocolonialism","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}