When Defense Minister Célestin Simporé appeared on national television to praise the security record of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, he offered a well-rehearsed explanation for the current stalemate: the Burkinabè army was historically “poorly trained.” But that attempt at political self-exoneration collides with a brutal reality on the ground. A question now grips public opinion: how did yesterday’s supposedly deficient army manage to contain the enemy far more effectively than the “new army” retrained by Moscow and lavishly equipped with billions in hardware?
Rewriting history to conceal a present collapse
By repeatedly asserting on the national broadcaster that the armed forces lacked tactical instruction and operational preparation before the transition, General Simporé tries to construct a simplistic narrative: today’s failures are merely yesterday’s legacy.
Yet the facts are stubborn. Under previous regimes, despite a glaring lack of material resources and undeniable structural weaknesses, the military apparatus managed to hold the network of provincial capitals and maintain intelligible territorial defense lines. Today, even as the transitional regime boasts of creating more than 30 new battalions and placing military training at the heart of its action, effective state control has collapsed across more than 65 percent of the national territory.
The resounding failure of the Russian training doctrine
To replace the old training model, Ibrahim Traoré’s regime threw itself headlong into the arms of Russian Africa Corps soldiers. The result of this “downgrade”? A sharp rise in lethality on the front lines:
- An appalling human toll: The massacres no longer count. From the Mansila tragedy to recent setbacks in the Center-North, the hastily formed new units are paying an unprecedented blood tribute.
- Inability to face asymmetric warfare: The Russian training method, focused on frontal brutality and indiscriminate firepower, proves utterly ineffective against mobile terrorist armed groups operating in small motorcycle columns and using improvised explosive devices.
- Rupture with local populations: By sacrificing contact intelligence and military ethics in favor of a scorched-earth logic, the new doctrine has alienated rural populations, depriving soldiers of the only effective bulwark against terrorist infiltrators: citizen information.
An insult to the sacrifice of enlisted soldiers
Declaring on a television set that the troops were “poorly trained” is an insult to the memory of the thousands of soldiers and gendarmes who fell in combat over the past decade. With rudimentary means and counted rations, these men held the line against a nascent threat without ever abandoning entire regions, as is now the case under the cover of “tactical evacuations” like the Boussouma drama.
General Simporé’s admission on national television convinces no one. Two years after Captain Traoré’s absolute seizure of power, blaming yesterday’s training is an admission of impotence. It was not yesterday’s weapons that lacked value; it is today’s strategy that is collapsing under the weight of propaganda.
