On Sunday October 2, he resigned from Captain Traoré, the head of the ruling junta in Burkina Faso, Lt. Col. Damiba. After this umpteenth coup, violence increased, especially against the French embassy. For Vincent Hugeux, journalist, essayist, teacher at SciencesPo, guest on Monday 3 October on franceinfo, in Burkina Faso “we are witnessing the relentless and inevitable decline of French influence and presence in sub-Saharan Africa”.
franceinfo: Is it a strategic country at war in the Sahel?
Vincent Hugeux : Of course there is a contingent, estimated at 400 men, special forces whose vocation is to train their Burkinabe brothers-in-arms at a base some thirty kilometers from the capital, Ouagadougou. If this element of the device were hastily withdrawn after the previous withdrawal of the Malian side of the Barkhane device, it would in a sense be a new episode in a soap opera that could be titled the inexorable and inevitable decline in influence and the French presence in sub-Saharan Africa.
The ties to France are dissolved by the coup. Is it a loss of influence?
We’ve just had a fairly unprecedented textbook case, that is, double-trigger coup attempts, first in Mali 2020-2021, then now in Burkina Faso, eight months apart. The legitimate obsession of the African people for a momentary improvement in security has not found an answer. There is a double paradox regarding this sequence. But it is precisely when Paris’ hold on its former African colonies is at its weakest that rejection proves most vicious.
We hear about the plundering of African resources. It’s effectively a colonial residue that was never actually mined. But today foreign trade and French investments in Africa are less than 5%.
Vincent Hugeux
at franceinfo
Most of these investments are aimed at English-speaking African countries, i.e. outside the Pre-Square. The second paradox, even more unusual than the previous one, is that we turn to Russia as the spearhead, local opinions abundantly exploited by local and foreign actors, at the very moment when the army of Holy Russia is eliminating the stinging backlash and connects on the Ukrainian front. You can’t say, I saw it on the spot, that this famous Wagner troupe, these mercenaries subject to the Kremlin, showed great bravery in the fight against the jihadists. They shone more in robbery and extortion than in returning the menace of the madmen of Allah.
France could not seduce the Burkinabe people?
What I have been able to measure in the course of my reports is the great perplexity of Africans, who will say to you: “How is it that the fifth or sixth army is in the world with all its technological superiority, its satellites, its fighters? unable to crush a gang of jihadists? So it’s not that simple, because jihadism has become much more professional. He opposes conventional weapons with a completely new and new conflictuality, with perfect knowledge of the terrain, small isolated groups, etc. But this has created fertile ground for the dissemination of absolutely delusional theses, which insinuate not only a form of leniency towards the jihadists, especially France , but accuse him of having armed, equipped and financed today’s murderers.