Burkina Faso’s military leader, Ibrahim Traore, moved last week to silence growing talk of a power struggle at the top of government, declaring that he intends to stay the west African nation’s only leader.
Speculation of infighting has been driven by the lengthy absence of two powerful junta figures within the military government, which seized power in a coup in September 2022.
“There can’t be two captains on one ship,” the authoritarian Traore told community leaders on Thursday in Ouahigouya, in northern Burkina.
“Everyone who works with me knows how I operate,” the 38-year-old captain went on. “If anyone screws up, I’ll take you down without a second thought. There are no strongmen around me,” he warned.
Attention has centred on the junta’s second- and third-in-command, Oumarou Yabre, one of the most powerful figures in the country’s security apparatus, and Farouk Azaria Sorgho, junta spokesman and head of a strong Rapid Intervention Battalion.
Yabre, who oversees the intelligence services and the National Security Council and is regarded as Burkina’s number two, has not been seen publicly since late May. A security official, speaking anonymously, told AFP that Yabre had stopped attending his office at the National Intelligence Agency, and that the security detail at his home had been sharply reduced.
According to another security official, “He didn’t appear at the traditional flag-raising ceremony at the presidency, which he usually attends, or at the recent ceremony at the presidential palace to promote three senior officers to general.” Members of Yabre’s circle say several of his close associates have been seized or arrested, among them Islamic preacher Ishaq Kindo, who had criticised a bill on religious freedoms.
Sorgho, the regime’s high-profile third-in-command, has likewise not appeared in public since mid-May. He leads Rapid Intervention Battalion No 4 in Ouagadougou and speaks for KORAG, a body Traore created to shape the junta’s “strategic vision.” Security officials allege the commander has been “abducted” by Traore associates, while his father, former infrastructure minister Adama Luc Sorgho, was reportedly arrested and then taken by armed men.
Security operations have stepped up in the capital over the past two months, with long-closed roads reopened to divert traffic away from the presidential palace, where residents say checkpoints have been mounted.
Source: Vanguard.
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