Military Takes Power in West African Nation of Burkina Faso
The New York Times
Mutinous officers said the public was fed up with President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré because of his inability to stop attacks by Islamist militants.
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The military seized power in Burkina Faso on Monday, ousting the country’s democratically elected president after mutinous soldiers stormed his home, in the latest of a series of military coups in African countries struggling to beat back a rising tide of Islamist violence.
President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, 64, had been leading Burkina Faso, a poor and landlocked country of 21 million people in Western Africa, since 2015. But he faced growing public criticism over his government’s failure to stem militant attacks that have destabilized broad swathes of Burkina Faso, displaced 1.4 million people, and caused 2,000 deaths last year alone.
Although the violence by the militants is part of a broader campaign in the Sahel, a vast stretch of land just south of the Sahara, many soldiers and civilians in Burkina Faso faulted their president over his failure to stop it.
