French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday that he was awaiting “clarifications” from Burkina Faso on a possible request for the departure of French troops stationed in the country within a month.
Referring to the “great confusion” in the information that has been circulating since Saturday in Ouagadougou, Emmanuel Macron explained that he wanted to wait for the transitional president Ibrahim Traoré “to be able to express himself.” “I think we have to be very careful,” “we are waiting for clarification from Mr. Traoré,” he added during a Franco-German press conference in Paris.
A source close to the Burkina Faso government said on Saturday that the authorities requested “the departure of the French soldiers as soon as possible”, confirming information from the Burkina Faso Information Agency (AIB).
growing tensions
This information and these uncertainties are part of a context of growing tensions between the two countries for several months and while Moscow tries to advance its pawns, particularly through mercenaries from the Wagner company, in this country weakened by jihadist attacks. On Tuesday, the transitional president, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power in a coup in late September, the second in eight months, told students that the “struggle for sovereignty” was “compromised.”
“In the next few hours you will see a certain amount of information tending to review our relations with certain States,” he had warned, while France, a former colonial power, which maintains a contingent of about 400 special forces in the country as part of its anti-jihadist fight in the Sahel, has been contested in Burkina Faso for several months.
Russian manipulation?
Several demonstrations, the one last Friday, recently took place in Ouagadougou to demand the withdrawal of France from this country of the Sahel, a region that covers several countries where Paris has been engaged in a vast policy of combating the spread of groups for almost a decade. jihadists, but who is lagging behind, and who has already had to leave neighboring Mali at the request of the coup authorities – who have also decided to use Wagner’s services.
On Burkina, Emmanuel Macron insisted on the need to be careful with the “manipulation” of information, “a specialty of some in the region who, by the way, may be linked to (…) our Russian friends.”
French authorities regularly accuse Russia or its services of trying to manipulate public opinion on the continent and stir up anti-French sentiment.
Source: BFM TV
