The transitional authorities in Burkina Faso on Thursday April 13 decreed general mobilization in order to "give the state all the necessary means" to deal with the jihadist attacks hitting the country. "It is especially through this decree to give a legal, legal framework, to all the actions to be implemented to deal with the situation that Burkina Faso is experiencing", is it specified in a press release from the presidency, published at the end of the Council of Ministers.
"Faced with the security situation facing Burkina Faso, the salvation of the nation depends on a national outburst of all the daughters and sons in order to find a solution", declared the Minister of State, Minister Defense and Veterans Affairs, Colonel-Major Kassoum Coulibaly. However, the precise contours of this mobilization have not been detailed.
“General mobilization makes certain defense measures applicable throughout the territory. It entails a state of emergency in the parts of the territory concerned, ”explained to Agence France-Presse (AFP) a high-ranking security source. The authorities also decreed the "warning" which gives the head of state, according to another source, "the right to request people, goods and services, the right to restrict certain freedoms".
According to the law on the organization of national defence, "in the event of danger threatening the security and territorial integrity, the security of institutions and that of populations, the Head of State may, in addition to the state of emergency, decree for all or part of the national territory: warning, state of emergency, general mobilization".
An "intact determination" to fight the jihadists
In December, the transitional president, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, had seized the Constitutional Council for the taking of this decree and had obtained a favorable opinion. In the referral letter consulted by AFP, Captain Traoré invokes "serious threats to the institutions of [Burkina] Faso, the independence of the Nation, the integrity of the national territory". On Tuesday, the Ministry of Defense launched an operation dubbed "Empty Attics" calling on all military personnel in the country, active or retired, to donate their uniforms for soldiers currently in the field.
Burkina Faso, the scene of two military coups in 2022, has been caught since 2015 in a spiral of jihadist violence that appeared in Mali and Niger a few years earlier and which has spread beyond their borders. Last week, forty-four civilians were killed in an attack on two villages in the northeast of the country near the Niger border. The violence has claimed more than 10,000 lives over the past seven years, civilians and soldiers, according to NGOs, and some two million displaced.
In February, Captain Traoré, who came to power in late September during a putsch, expressed his "intact determination" to fight the jihadists, despite the multiplication of attacks. Last week, a new army chief, Colonel-Major Célestin Simporé, was appointed and said he wanted to step up the offensive to force the jihadists to "lay down their arms". Anxious to regain their "sovereignty" in the fight against the jihadists who control some 40% of the territory, the Burkinabe authorities in January asked the French Saber force, made up of 400 special forces soldiers, to leave the country.
