Burkina Faso’s Cancelled Democracy

Burkina Faso’s junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré attends a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow on 10 May 2025. Credit: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFPOpinion by Andrew Firmin (london)Friday, August 07, 2026Inter Press Service LONDON, August 7 (IPS) - Burkina Faso’s charismatic young military leader, army captain Ibrahim Traoré, has stopped pretending. In April, he declared that people should ‘forget about the question of democracy’ because ‘democracy isn’t for us’. When Traoré seized power in September 2022, ousting a leader who’d staged a coup earlier that year, he promised elections by June 2024. The junta broke that pledge, pushing any transition back to 2029. Now Traoré has confirmed he has no intention of restoring democracy. Instead, Burkina Faso’s military junta is tightening its repression, while working with neighbouring states to internationalise its dangerously undemocratic model. Crackdown intensifiesRepression has unfolded in a context of jihadist insurgency. Frustration with the democratically elected government’s security failures helped fuel the conditions that led to military rule, but the army hasn’t turned things around. The insurgency has grown, and...