West African’s mediator for Burkina Faso, Mahamadou Isoufou, the former president of Niger, said in Ouagadougou on Saturday that the security situation “remains difficult” as almost half of the country is now beyond state control. .
“Today, 40% of the territory is out of state control,” he said, noting that “Burkina Faso is currently experiencing a multidimensional crisis: security, humanitarian, political and socio-economic.”
Mr. Isoufou made the remarks after a meeting with the head of the military regime, Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Santaogo Damiba.
Mr Isoufou, who arrived in the country on Friday, met with military junta officials to discuss the political transition process.
The military regime, which came to power in late January, has announced that the political transition will take three years before elections are held.
The junta invokes the seriousness of the security crisis facing Burkina Faso. Jihadist attacks are frequent and deadly.
Lt. Col. Damiba ousted President-elect Rock Marc Christian Cabore, who has been accused of incompetence in dealing with jihadist violence, and promised that restoring security would be his top “priority.”
But the attacks did not stop and last weekend 86 civilians were massacred in the city of Seitenga (north). This massacre is one of the worst in the history of the African country.
“We referred to the events in Seitenga and expressed our condolences to the head of state, the government and the people of Burkina Faso. These events, very painfully, prove how difficult the security situation remains,” Isoufou said.
“I am leaving with the delegation of the Economic Community of West African States (Cédéao) reassured that the head of state is open-minded, open to dialogue,” he added.
Mr. Isoufou was accompanied by the Chairman of the Cédéao Committee, Jean-Claude Cassie Brou, and the Peace and Security Commissioner of the same regional body, Francis Beanzen.
At the end of March, Cédéao demanded that Burkina Faso set a new, more “reasonable” timetable for the political transition, by April 25th at the latest. But Ouagadougou asked for more time.
At the request of the military regime, the West African organization sent a delegation to Burkina Faso in late May for a three-day mission to assess the situation.
Following his meeting in early June, he expressed “concern” about the 36 months of the transition process planned, as well as the “deterioration of the humanitarian situation”.
Cédéao also extended the suspension of Burkina Faso’s participation in all its organs and appointed former Nigerian President Mahamadou Isoufou as mediator.
Since 2015, jihadist attacks swearing allegiance to either Al Qaeda or Islamic State have claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people and displaced nearly 2 million more people in Burkina Faso, a country of 21 million people, one of the poorest in the world. the large gold deposits it has.
Source: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
Source: Capital
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