Description
Since the turn of the 2010s, Burkina Faso has been grappling with increasing insecurity. Initially associated with the growth of criminality, the country has been particularly challenged, especially since the year 2018, by the massive and sustained presence of jihadist groups on its territory. These circumstances have led to various armed mobilizations in response. Above all, the state, initially discreetly and later more assertively, has supported various armed mobilizations in the context of a "war on terror". In September 2022, in Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré took power by force to overthrow Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had himself achieved his position thanks to a coup d'état. Indeed, since the country's independence in 1960, the central role played by men-at-arms in Burkinabe politics has been linked to the recurrent practice of coups d'état by the military. This "alternation of power by putsch" confirms the role of armed violence, or the threat of it, as a major political resource in the country. Above all, the presence of the military in power interacts with various violent forms of government, particularly those that have developed recently. As soon as he came to power in a coup d'état, Captain Traoré decreed general mobilization and launched a massive recruitment drive among the population, in order to build up paramilitary forces to fight the jihadist groups that now control large swathes of the country. According to the authorities, 90,000 people have already signed up to become "Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland" (VDP), a corps instituted by a law passed in 2020 by former president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. These are Burkinabè citizens trained, equipped, and financed by the army, to assist it in its operations. How did recruiting and arming the population become one of the central public policies of the ruling junta? This presentation traces the trajectory of the Burkinabè state and the establishment of a form of governance that relies on violence. Despite the transformations brought about by the ongoing conflict and the apparent disorder, it is indeed the state that remains the central player in the management of self-defence groups.
