Simporé’s TV admission: Burkina Faso reacts as the security narrative crumbles

The appearance of Defence Minister General Célestin Simporé on the national television set was meant to be a moment of celebration — a chance to shower praise on Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s security record. Instead, it became a public relations disaster that is still reverberating across Burkina Faso. By claiming that the national army had historically been “poorly trained” to explain today’s security stalemate, the general tried to absolve the current leadership of blame. But the fallout has been immediate: a furious public debate, a military rank and file feeling insulted, and a propaganda narrative that now lies in tatters. The question dominating conversations from Ouagadougou to the front lines is simple: how could yesterday’s supposedly defective army hold the enemy at bay far more effectively than the “new army” that Moscow has retrained and lavishly equipped with billions of dollars?

A clumsy attempt to rewrite history

By repeating on the state broadcaster that the armed forces lacked tactical instruction and operational readiness before the transition, General Simporé tried to construct a simplistic storyline: today’s failures are merely yesterday’s legacy.

But the facts are stubborn. Under previous governments, despite a glaring lack of material resources and undeniable structural weaknesses, the military managed to maintain a network of provincial capitals and keep territorial defence lines intelligible. 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:

• An appalling human toll: The massacres are too numerous to count. From the Mansila tragedy to recent setbacks in the Centre-Nord region, the hastily formed new units are paying an unprecedented tribute in blood.
• Inability to fight asymmetric warfare: The Russian training method, focused on frontal brutality and indiscriminate firepower, has proven completely ineffective against mobile terrorist armed groups operating in small motorcycle columns and using improvised explosive devices.
• Breakdown with local populations: By sacrificing human intelligence and military ethics in favour of a scorched-earth logic, the new doctrine has alienated rural communities, depriving soldiers of the only effective shield against terrorist infiltration: citizen information.

An insult to the sacrifice of ordinary 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 battle over the past decade. With rudimentary means and counted rations, these men held the line against an emerging threat without ever abandoning entire regions — unlike today, where retreats are disguised as “tactical evacuations,” as seen in the Boussouma drama.

A public debate that refuses to be silenced

General Simporé’s admission on national television has convinced no one. Two years after Captain Traoré’s absolute seizure of power, blaming yesterday’s training is an admission of helplessness. It is not yesterday’s weapons that lacked value; it is today’s strategy that is collapsing under the weight of its own propaganda. The fallout is likely to be felt for months to come — in barracks, in villages, and in the halls of power where the narrative of victory is growing harder to sustain.

By Daniel Mbami — Politics and Security