Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso has become a stark symbol of worsening security trends in West Africas Sahel region. Since 2016, Islamist insurgent groups have asserted control over parts of the country and carried out terrorist attacks in the capital, Ouagadougou. Some have ties to the conflict in neighboring Mali, and to Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. The government has struggled to counter insurgent gains despite international backing and military aid, while state security forces and militia groups have been implicated in severe human rights abuses. The conflict has crippled health and education systems in parts of the country and deepened food insecurity. Over a million Burkinab were internally displaced as of late 2020, nearly double the number a year earlier, according to U.N. data. The COVID-19 pandemic has also brought new health and economic hardships. President Roch Marc Christian Kabor was reelected in November 2020 to a second five-year term. Security threats prevented polling stations from opening in multiple districts, and opposition leaders initially decried the results as fraudulent. Despite a comfortable margin of victory, Kabor appears likely to face ongoing public demands for greater security, job creation, governance reforms, and accountability. Opposition presidential candidates called for peace talks with jihadist groups, which Kabor opposesas does France, the countrys most significant external counterterrorism partner. Kabors first election to the presidency in 2015 capped a yearlong political transition that began when protesters, backed by some military commanders, ousted semiauthoritarian President Blaise Compaor. A towering figure in West African politics, Compaor had come to power in a 1987 coup; his latest attempt to evade term limits by changing the constitution sparked the protests that unseated him.