General Célestin Simporé, Minister of Defense, appeared on Radio-Télévision du Burkina (RTB) to praise the security record of Captain Ibrahim Traoré. Instead, he offered a well-rehearsed communications tactic: blaming the current security stalemate on the claim that Burkina Faso’s army was historically “poorly trained.” Behind this political self-exoneration, the reality on the ground delivers a stinging rebuttal to the high command. One question now haunts public opinion: how did yesterday’s supposedly failing army manage to contain the enemy far more effectively than the “new army” retrained by Moscow and equipped with billions in hardware?
Rewriting history to mask the present rout
By repeatedly stating on the national broadcaster that the armed forces lacked tactical instruction and operational preparation before the transition, General Simporé attempts to build a simplistic narrative: today’s failures are merely yesterday’s legacy.
Yet the facts are stubborn. Under previous regimes, despite a glaring lack of material resources and undeniable structural weaknesses, the military apparatus managed to hold the network of provincial capitals and maintain intelligible territorial defense lines. Today, even as the transitional regime boasts of creating more than 30 new battalions and placing military training at the heart of its action, effective state control has collapsed across more than 65% of the national territory.
The resounding failure of the Russian training doctrine
To replace the old training model, Ibrahim Traoré’s regime threw itself headlong into the arms of Russian soldiers from Africa Corps. The result of this “downgrade”? A sharp rise in lethality on the front lines:
- An appalling human toll: The massacres are beyond counting. From the tragedy of Mansila to recent setbacks in the Centre-Nord region, the hastily formed new units are paying an unprecedented tribute in blood.
- Inability to counter asymmetric warfare: The Russian training method, focused on frontal brutality and blind firepower, proves utterly ineffective against mobile terrorist armed groups (GATs) operating in small motorcycle columns and using improvised explosive devices.
- Breakdown with local populations: By sacrificing contact intelligence and military ethics in favor of a scorched-earth logic, the new doctrine has alienated rural communities, depriving soldiers of the only effective bulwark against terrorist infiltrators: citizen information.
An insult to the sacrifice of rank-and-file soldiers
Declaring on a television set that the troops were “poorly trained” is an insult to the memory of the thousands of soldiers and gendarmes who fell in combat over the past decade. With rudimentary means and counted rations, these men held the line against an emerging threat without ever abandoning entire regions as is the case today under the guise of “tactical evacuations” — as seen in the Boussouma drama.
General Simporé’s admission on RTB convinces no one. Two years after Captain Traoré’s absolute seizure of power, blaming yesterday’s training is an admission of powerlessness. It is not yesterday’s weapons that lacked value; it is today’s strategy that is collapsing under the weight of propaganda.
