A few important details should be emphasized here. First, this was the first terrorist act in Burkina Faso. Second, French security forces took part in the operation to free the hostages. One US military member was with the French forces at the scene. He «accidentally happened» to be in the country. Third, US servicemen were involved…

A question pops up – why the country surrounded by neighbors where terrorist activities have become routine since a long time ago, had been spared from attacks until this tragedy occurred? Boko Haram group operates in the eastern part of Niger, the gangs of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb are active in the northern part of Mali, but no terrorist activities had been reported in Burkina Faso till the recent Ouagadougou attack. Why now, why not before? There is one explanation of such an immunity of Burkina Faso to terrorism. And this explanation is that Blaise Compaoré ruled the country for 27 years (1987-2014). As a result of Burkinabe uprising, he resigned on October 31 and fled to Ivory Coast. A few months later one of his associates tried to stage a coup d’état, but failed, making the country plunge further into anarchy. Roch Marc Christian Kaboré won the presidential election in November, 2015. He took office on December 29, 2015 – only a few days ago. Before the inauguration, Burkina Faso’s military court had issued an international arrest warrant for the former President Blaise Compaore on charges of staging a coup d’état in 1987 and the assassination of the country’s revolutionary ex-leader Thomas Sankara. A step in the right direction, no doubt about it.

Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, President of Burkina Faso

Probably, Burkina Faso had been spared from terrorist activities because the government was involved in illegal arms sales to Islamic militants. However, the perpetrators of the recent attack had no relation to Islam – Muslims were their main target. According to recent census (2006) conducted by Government of Burkina Faso, 60.5% of the population adheres to Islam. About a quarter of population are Christians. For many years the country has been ruled by Catholics, including the overthrown President Compaore, Sankara – the leader assassinated by Compaoré, and the new President Kaboré. Somehow Islamists used to easily find a common language with Christian Blaise Compaoré and had a free hand to eliminate «false» Muslims while waving Islamic flags.

The participation of US military in the operation to free hostages kept in the Splendid Hotel is easy to explain. The United States has a base in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, since 2007.

The fact of US military presence currently engaged in actual military operations in 14 sub-Saharan nations is normally kept out of public spotlight.

The list of countries to host US military facilities includes: Burkina Faso, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda…

The region boasts vast resources. Burkina Faso is rich in copper, iron ore, manganese, and phosphates and tin. Gold is the main treasure the country possesses. Unlike in the case of other gold producers which have their reserves nearly depleted, Burkina Faso is currently experiencing a dramatic gold mining boom. In 2011 (the time of major political tensions) the production grew by 32 percent. Burkina Faso has become Africa’s 4th biggest producer of gold after South Africa, Mali and Ghana. Gold accounts for about half of the country’s exports.

The new government faces security challenges. The terrorist act occurred just a couple of weeks after the inauguration to remind the President who calls the shots in the country. There is someone who can easily make the country plunge into the quagmire of terror going rampant or curb the terrorist activities. No doubt, this «someone» will not refuse the power he enjoyed in the days of Blaise Compaoré’s tenure. The only thing left is to watch the new President respond to this show of force.

There are African leaders who are adamant in their determination to pursue national interests to the very end, including Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa. But it’s not enough to stand up to the West. Thomas Sankara, former President of Burkina Faso, realized it well. In one of his most famous speeches delivered at the summit of the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) in Addis Ababa in 1987, Sankara issued a passionate call to reject debt repayments as a form of permanent plundering of African countries. He said, «If Burkina Faso alone were to refuse to pay the debt, I wouldn't be at the next conference».

Back then, the leaders of the Organization of African Unity member-countries laughed and applauded, but failed to take a unanimous decision. In a year, Burkina Faso was represented by Blaise Compaoré, who had physically eliminated Sankara three months after the speech. The current President of Burkina Faso understands well what consequences the absence of unity within the ranks African nations can lead to…

Thomas Sankara, President of Burkina Faso (1983–1987)

Armed troops loyal to Diendere, the chief of the feared presidential guard that brutally enforced order during Compaore’s 27-year rule, stormed into a Cabinet meeting in the Burkinabe capital of Ouagadougou and placed President Michel Kafando and Prime Minister Yacouba Zida under house arrest. There were indications that General Diendere overthrew the government in order to restore Compaore to power.

In August, the transition government’s Constitutional Court ruled that the presidential candidate of Compaore’s former ruling, Congress for Democracy and Progress party, Eddie Constance Konboigo, was ineligible to run for office. The plans for the military coup against the transition government were formulated after the court’s ruling.

Ousted during a popular rebellion in 2014, Compaore fled to the neighboring Ivory Coast, another nation where AFRICOM has significant influence within the armed forces. Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara, who originally hails from Burkina Faso, then-Upper Volta, is a close friend and ally of Compaore. Ouattara was placed into office as president of Ivory Coast after dubious interference by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a cipher for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as non-governmental organizations financed by George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Diendere has been an active participant in AFRICOM’s annual FLINTLOCK military exercises. He even served as the chairman for the Burkina Faso FLINTLOCK Committee. Under the rule of Compaore, Burkina Faso permitted AFRICOM and the CIA to set up two secretive bases inside Burkina Faso, one a drone base at Ouagadougou Airport with the operational code-named of CREEK SAND and a classified regional intelligence fusion center attached to the U.S. embassy in Ouagadougou bearing the code-named of AZTEC ARCHER.

AFRICOM heavily relied on Diendere to support the U.S. Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership and U.S. military special operations against Islamist guerrillas active in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and southern Algeria. AFRICOM also provided training to Diendere’s elite Presidential Security Regiment (RSP) that carried out the coup against Burkina Faso’s democratic transitionary government. Diendere’s closest AFRICOM liaison officer was U.S. Army Colonel Kurt Crytzer.

Although the coup against the Burkinabe government was condemned by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and French President Francois Hollande, the criticism from the U.S. State Department was couched in typical muted terms. It was clear that the State Department did not want to appear to be aggressively condemning a coup that was hatched and carried out by the Pentagon’s and CIA’s military friends in Burkina Faso. Hollande also appeared to have forgotten that in 2008 Diendere was awarded one of France’s most prestigious military medals, the Legion of Honor.

While he was Burkina Faso’s dictator, Compaore was feted by U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House and at a reception for foreign leaders in New York who were attending the annual UN General Assembly plenary session. Compaore personally assassinated Burkina Faso’s revolutionary and progressive leader Thomas Sankara in a CIA- and French intelligence-backed military coup in 1987. Sankara was an ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and a strong opponent of the World Bank and U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s aggressive military policies in the Third World. On Compaore’s orders, Sankara’s body was dismembered and buried in an unmarked grave. Many Burkinabe believe that Diendere was, along with Compaore, personally involved in murdering Sankara and disposing of his body. With the approval of Washington, Compaore reversed all of Sankara’s progressive policies and returned Burkina Faso to a neo-colonialist outpost of U.S. and French dominance over Africa.

Among the candidates planning to run for president of Burkina Faso were a number of loyalists of Sankara, known as “Sankarists.” One leading Sankarist candidate, Bénéwendé Sankara, the leader of the “l’Union pour la renaissance-Parti sankariste” (UNIR-PS), was considered a favorite to become the next president. Although no relation to the assassinated president, Sankara has long been a defender of his late namesake’s progressive leftist policies.

The CIA and AFRICOM became alarmed that a follower of Sankara could be elected president, this jeopardizing America’s covert military and intelligence operations in Burkina Faso.

Conveniently, Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who served as an “economic hit woman” for the Ford Foundation, World Bank, and CIA in Indonesia, Suriname, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, and the Philippines, was in Ghana when the 1987 coup against Sankara was launched. Although her role in the coup is subject to speculation, her record is rife with close involvement with the governments of dictators like Suharto of Indonesia, General Muhammad Zia Ul-Haq of Pakistan, and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines.

Diendere was involved in a number of armed conflicts in Africa that have also involved CIA and Israeli Mossad operatives. These include the bloody civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Diendere was also involved in the shipment of arms from Romania to the CIA-supported UNITA guerrillas in Angola during the time that the Angolan group was subject to a UN arms embargo. There is evidence that Diendere was also involved in illegally supplying arms to Ouattara loyalists in Ivory Coast. The illicit weapons, transported to Ivory Coast without the authorization of the Brazilian government but with the knowledge of the CIA and Soros groups, originated with the Brazilian arms manufacturer Condor S/A. Industria Quimica.

As Burkina Faso’s chief spymaster, Diendere maintained regular contact with the CIA’s station chief in Ouagadougou and top AFRICOM intelligence officers.

A number of Africa specialists predicted that AFRICOM would become a protection racket designed to maintain in power America’s client-dictators in Africa. The events in Burkina Faso have borne out the prediction. This author’s book, “Decade of Death: Secret Wars and Genocide in Africa 1993-2003,” warned that U.S. foreign policy in Africa would be “militarized” under AFRICOM with the U.S. State Department’s role in determining American policy vis-à-vis Africa demoted to a mere advisory role.

With West Africa facing increased desertification as a result of global climate change, America’s policies in pan-Sahel Africa have almost exclusively been concentrated on stemming the activities of Salafist insurgent groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger and Ansar al Dine in Mali. Diendere has been a major figure in AFRICOM anti-insurgency operations extending from Chad in the east to Mali in the west. The Salafists in West Africa would not have gained as much strength had it not been for the AFRICOM/NATO operations in Libya that overthrew that nation’s leader, Muammar Qaddafi, in 2011. AFRICOM and NATO have cynically used the expansion of Salafist extremism throughout West Africa to justify a greater U.S. military presence in the entire region.

Acting as agents for the Pentagon and CIA are local military commanders like Diendere in Burkina Faso and Brigadier General Zakaria Ngobongue in Chad. These military officers, who have been groomed by AFRICOM, are nothing more than protection agents for U.S. imperial interests and reprise the roles of British colonial agents during the height of the British Empire.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), headquartered in Stuttgart, rapidly went into action and ensured that the Burkinabe military appointed Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida as the «interim» president of Burkina Faso. Obama, CIA director John O. Brennan, and AFRICOM were worried that the major opposition party, Union for Rebirth / Sankarist Movement (UNIR/MS) would not form a new government. The UNIR/MS leader, Bénéwendé Stanislas Sankara, a relative of the late Thomas Sankara and attorney for the Sankara family, stood a very good chance of becoming Burkina Faso’s new president. 

However, Zida, a graduate of the U.S. Joint Special Operations University at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida and an AFRICOM military intelligence course held in Botswana, was quickly moved in by the Obama administration to replace Compaoré, who fled to neighboring Côte d’Ivoire. The Ivorian president, Alassane Ouatarra, whose mother was born in Burkina Faso, is considered to be a virtual puppet of the World Bank, the Pentagon, and Israel.

Burkina Faso, under Obama’s friend Compaoré, permitted the establishment of a U.S. drone base in the country, a classified operation code-named CREEK SAND, and a classified regional intelligence fusion center attached to the U.S. embassy, code-named AZTEC ARCHER.

U.S. Drone bases in Africa

While assigned to one of her nebulous intelligence-like non-official cover (NOC) jobs with the World Bank, Obama’s French-speaking mother was working in Ghana at the time that Sankara, who modeled himself as an African version of the Cuban revolutionary leader Ché Guevara and pulled Burkina Faso out from World Bank tutelage, was assassinated by Army Captain Compaoré and his rebel military officers. Compaoré ordered Sankara’s body dismembered and buried in an unmarked grave. Compaoré reversed all of Sankara’s policies, centered on the former French colonial backwater that continued to use the colonial name «Upper Volta» striking out on its own with the new name of «Burkina Faso»and nationalizing foreign-owned industries. Compaoré rejoined the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, privatized industries nationalized by Sankara, and moved to restore close relations with France and the United States. 

Obama’s mother’s presence in Accra during the 1987 Burkinabe coup was similar to her convenient presence in New York City in 1985 while working for the Ford Foundation. In 1985, the CIA decided to launch an operation to overthrow Suriname’s leftist president Desi Bouterse. The CIA enlisted the support of Suriname’s expatriate business community, which largely lived in New York City. Obama’s mother, who spoke Javanese from her time in Indonesia, was able to converse and coordinate anti-Bouterse operations with the Surinamese expatriates, most of whom also spoke Javanese owing to the influx into Suriname of Javanese from the Dutch East Indies during Dutch colonial rule. 

President Obama has studiously carried his mother’s «baggage» in dealing with countries where she was clandestinely active. He has refused to meet with Bouterse, who returned to Suriname’s presidency in the 2010 election. In 2013, Bouterse’s son Dino Bouterse, while traveling on a diplomatic passport, was arrested by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Panama and was charged in New York on flimsy charges with assisting Hezbollah.

Obama has also ordered financial pressure to be applied against Indonesia after the inauguration of Joko Widodo as president. The decline in oil prices, seen as being manufactured by Wall Street, has not only hurt Russia and Iran, but also Indonesia. Jokowi, as he is popularly known, defeated the Indonesian military’s candidate, retired General Prabowo Subianto, after a contested election. Obama, whose mother and Indonesian stepfather, retired Lieutenant Colonel Lolo Soetoro, who, like Burkina Faso’s new dictator Zida, was trained by the U.S. military in the United States, supported the CIA’s 1965 coup against Indonesian President Sukarno. Jokowi was the handpicked candidate of Megawati Sukarnoputri, Sukarno’s daughter and, herself, a former president of Indonesia. With regard to Burkina Faso, Suriname, and Indonesia, Obama and his CIA director, Brennan, ensure that Ann Dunham’s legacy and political baggage are enshrined in U.S. foreign policy.

Had the Sankarists returned to power in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital, there would have undoubtedly been score-settling with the United States. The future of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Air Detachment, which flies drones throughout the Saharan region and is located at Ouagadougou International Airport, could have been in jeopardy, along with the large U.S. military mission and intelligence fusion center attached to the U.S. embassy. 

Sankara, who also praised Cuba’s Fidel Castro and President Daniel Ortegain Nicaragua, was a major target for the CIA and his Burkinabe political heirs continue to be in Langley’s gun sights. 

In October 1987, Sankara praised Guevara at a commemoration ceremony honoring the 20^th anniversary of the execution of the Cuban revolutionary leader at the hands of a CIAhit squad in Bolivia. Sankara said, in praise of Guevara’s revolutionary ideals, «revolutionaries can be killed but you cannot kill ideas». Upon making his decision to reject IMF/ World Bank loans and grants, Sankara stated at anews conference, «We must speak in one voice, saying this debt cannot be paid. And since I am the lone voice, I will be assassinated. We must say together, we cannot pay, because we have to work to build a future for our people. If only Burkina Faso refuses to pay, I will not be here at the next conference».

Two weeks after making those remarks, on October 15, 1987, Sankara’s second-in-command, Compaoré, who has since been feted on more than one occasion by Obama in the United States, walked into a room where Sankara was sitting and fired two shots into Sankara at point blank range. Sankara slumped in his chair and died. Compaoré had coordinated his coup with the CIAstation at the US embassy in Ouagadougou and the French General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) station at the French embassy. There was also strong suspicion of Mossad involvement in the coup. 

Gone was the voice of the man who said, «As an army at the service of the revolution, the National Popular Army will have no place for any soldier who looks down on, scorns, or brutalizes his people… this will be a struggle against those who starve the people, the agricultural speculators and capitalists of all types… health care available to everyone… trade with all countries on an equal footing and on the basis of mutual benefit… it fills me with indignation to think of the Palestinians, who an inhuman humanity has decided to replace with another people – a people martyred only yesterday… I wish to also feel close to my comrades of Nicaragua whose harbors are mined, whose villages are bombed, and who, despite everything, face their destiny with courage and clear-headedness… the most pitiful and appalling – yes, the most appalling -record in terms of arrogance, insolence, and incredible stubbornness, is held by a small country in the Middle East, Israel. With the complicity of its powerful protector, the United States – which words cannot describe – Israel has continued to defy the international community for more than twenty years… Ideas do not die».

Obama’s and AFRICOM’s installation of Zida as Compaoré’s replacement is to ensure that Sankarists never again quote Guevara, Castro, or Thomas Sankara from the public squares of Burkina Faso.