Burkina Faso: Assassination Plot Against President Traore Foiled
President of Faso, Captain Ibrahim TRAORÉ, praised the mobilization of the Sahelian people in the face of external threats the opening ceremony of the 2nd session of the College of Heads of State of the Confederate, at the Centre international Bamako Conference (CICB). Photo: Mali Presidency/FB
Burkina Faso’s security forces foiled a plot to kill President Ibrahim Traoré and disable a drone base, ahead of a planned military invasion, the country’s minister of security, Mahamadou Sana, announced on January 6. “Our intelligence services intercepted this operation in the final hours,” he said in a late-night TV broadcast.
As per a recording obtained by security agents allegedly showing conspirators discussing the plan, the operation was set to start an hour before midnight on January 3. “Beginning with the neutralization of Comrade Captain Ibrahim Traoré, Head of State and President of Faso, either at point-blank range or through an operation to mine his residence,” Sana said, “there were to be efforts to put the drone base out of service, and a ground military intervention by external forces.”
Adversaries on the southern border
While he did not name the countries involved in this allegedly planned military intervention, its northeastern and northwestern neighbors – Niger and Mali, respectively – are Burkina Faso’s allies. After ousting the regimes propped up in their countries by France and establishing popular military governments that expelled the French troops and nationalized several resources, the trio formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
Its adversaries are in the south, where France-backed regimes remain in place, especially the Ivory Coast to its southwest, which Sana accused of funding USD 125,000 for this operation. To its southeast is Benin, whose territory, the Burkinabe government alleges, is being used by France to train terrorists to destabilize Burkina Faso after being expelled from the country.
Earlier in December 2025, France, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso’s southern neighbor Ghana, and Sierra Leone militarily intervened in the country to prop up France-backed president Patrice Talon after a coup attempt against him.
Several of these foreign troops, hostile to Burkina Faso and the AES, remain stationed in Benin. To its west on Burkina Faso’s southern border is Togo – home to “the principal actor” named by Sana in this plot, Burkina Faso’s former Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba.
Who is Damiba?
Riding on the wave of mass protests demanding the expulsion of French troops from the country, Damiba had taken power as the transitional president in January 2022 after leading the coup against the then-President Roch Kaboré, widely perceived in the country as a French puppet.
However, Damiba did not order the French troops out. Amid mounting resentment against the continued French presence even after Kaboré was removed, another coup followed in September that year. His junior, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, took the reins, removing Damiba from power.
Within months of taking power, Traoré expelled the French troops, the last of whom withdrew by February 2023. An avowed Pan-Africanist with the bearings of Burkina Faso’s revolutionary Marxist leader Thomas Sankara, assassinated in 1987, Traoré has become arguably the most popular leader in Africa and among the young African diaspora in the West.
Damiba, in the meantime, has been living in Togo, from where he has allegedly masterminded multiple coup attempts against Traore, all of which have failed.
“The irreversible march toward the liberation of Burkina Faso from the chains of imperialism”
Amid heightened activity by security forces on the intervening night of January 3 and 4, word was out about a possible coup against Traoré. Several groups on social media issued a call to citizens to mobilize in defense of the government. Hundreds took the squares and roundabouts in the capital, Ouagadougou, sloganeering in support of Traoré and declaring themselves a bulwark defending him.
“This latest mobilization of the people to protect their leader, Comrade Captain Ibrahim Traoré, bears witness to their determination to support the irreversible march toward the liberation of Burkina Faso from the chains of imperialism,” Sana said in his broadcast on Tuesday.
Reassuring that “the situation is under control,” Sana nevertheless called for “heightened vigilance among the population to strengthen strategic monitoring in the fight against imperialism.”
Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch
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