General Yacouba Isaac Zida, a former transitional head of state stripped of his military rank for desertion and now living in exile, has delivered a stinging critique of Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s claim to sovereignty within the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Zida’s words cut to the heart of what he calls a political illusion: “True sovereignty does not consist in choosing whom to depend on, but in giving oneself the means to depend on no one.” In saying this, Zida holds up a mirror to the contradictions of a Burkinabè military class that remains trapped in a cycle of instability and broken promises.
The Ouagadougou regime’s frantic pivot to Moscow
Under the banner of an “anti-imperialist break,” the transitional government in Ouagadougou has rushed headlong into Moscow’s embrace. Yet this is nothing more than a crude renegotiation of the terms of submission. Behind the populist slogans, the regime struggles to conceal its chronic inability to build genuine autonomy. Instead, it keeps the country locked in a fourfold external dependency.
Military and doctrinal subservience
The ambition to create a national defense force crumbles in the face of systematic reliance on foreign instructors and paramilitaries. The supply of aircraft, ammunition, and light armored vehicles—often falsely presented as “locally manufactured” when they are merely assembled on site—confirms total subordination to external logistics chains.
The humiliation of food dependency
The rhetoric of self-sufficiency collides brutally with reality. The media spectacle surrounding the reception of Russian wheat donations, or the repeated appeals for international humanitarian aid to feed displaced populations, shows that the regime cannot even guarantee its citizens’ basic subsistence.
Financial and budgetary vulnerability
Unable to fund its own crisis budget through sound internal resources, the military leadership resorts to financial expedients and emergency loans from new geopolitical patrons, mortgaging the economic future of generations to come.
Technological and strategic deadlock
Whether it is agricultural inputs or energy equipment, the absence of an autonomous industrial base condemns the country to beg beyond its borders for what it cannot produce itself.
The AES: a supranational slogan to mask internal failure
The haste to create a confederal army and supranational structures within the AES amounts to a propagandistic flight forward.
- Surrender to domestic emergencies: Claiming to merge regional sovereignties while national territory remains largely outside state control is strategic blindness. The absolute priority should be securing populations and consolidating basic institutions, not stacking up empty shells.
- Staging legitimacy: The multiplication of summits and fiery declarations serves primarily as a political shield to perpetuate unelected regimes of exception, at the expense of rigorous, realistic planning.
Authentic sovereignty is not displayed in military parades or in dependence on foreign grain handouts. By substituting Moscow’s patronage for Paris’s, Captain Traoré has not freed Burkina Faso: he has simply changed its guardian.
