Mohamed Hasab Al-Rasoul, researcher in regional affairs
Africa-Press. The African Sahel region, particularly Burkina Faso, is witnessing rapid geopolitical transformations, with a new rapprochement with “Israel” coinciding with Ouagadougou’s announcement to sever its historical ties with France. This rapprochement is exemplified by the acceptance of the new Israeli ambassador’s credentials after a long wait, a move that carries significant political implications.
On one hand, “Israel” seeks to exploit the fragile regional conditions and fill the security vacuum left by the withdrawal of French forces. On the other hand, Captain Ibrahim Traore is looking for a way to break continental isolation and cover up his escalating internal failures. However, he has chosen the worst means, which have exposed the contradiction between his anti-colonial rhetoric and his calls for freedom, liberation, and independence. This choice has raised fundamental questions about the consistency of Traore’s position and the credibility of his rhetoric and political project.
Burkinabe-Israeli Relations
Burkinabe-Israeli relations have fluctuated since 1960, the year of independence, until the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, experiencing periods of severance and return. However, relations peaked in pragmatism during the presidency of former Burkinabe leader Blaise Compaoré, who transcended the typical diplomatic and economic relations to engage in significant political participation in Zionist institutions. With the succession of military coups, the trajectory of relations remained subject to immediate assessments related to the needs of the military authority, without reaching a level of severance or ascending to a strategic course.
Traore’s Era: The Field Speech and the Threshing Floor Calculation
Ibrahim Traore assumed power in September 2022, and like other coup leaders, he began his tenure with a revolutionary speech calling for independence and opposing French colonial presence, raising the banner of renaissance and sovereignty. However, this launch quickly collided with the challenges of reality, as he failed to gain African recognition, with the African Union and continental countries refusing to acknowledge his authority, thus reinforcing his diplomatic isolation.
Just as the transitional authority failed to achieve a breakthrough in the African space, it also struggled to attain internal success to address political tensions, weave national reconciliations, and forge political alliances, while economic and security crises ballooned like a snowball, and promises of renaissance and progress dissipated like mirages. His relations with Russia remained stagnant despite open horizons.
Nevertheless, the authority clashed with dissolved parties, and more dangerously, it adopted reckless policies and a political discourse that clashed with public conscience when it attacked Islam, threatened students of religious sciences, and distorted history by blaming Arabs for colonial sins, from which they are innocent. This sparked social and political tensions that deepened internal rifts.
Amid these crises, Traore turned to “Israel” in a sharp deviation from his declared revolutionary path, replacing principled revolutionary ideals with immediate interests, which negatively impacted his credibility and image among his people and supporters of his discourse that normalization has undermined. The field speech fell on the threshing floor.
Israeli Penetration in the Sahel: Roots and Reality
The roots of Israeli interest in Burkina Faso date back to the mid-1950s when Golda Meir led an African tour in 1958 and launched the “Mashav” technical cooperation program, relying on the “periphery theory” that viewed African countries on the fringes of the Arab world as a means to encircle Arabs.
With the dawn of the 21st century, “Israel” reactivated its strategy under the slogan “Israel Returns to Africa,” witnessing a diplomatic push in 2009 led by Avigdor Lieberman, followed by Netanyahu’s visit in 2016, the first by an Israeli Prime Minister to the continent in five decades.
This strategy in the Sahel is based on four main axes: investing in the geopolitical position of the Sahel as a lifeline connecting North Africa to the West, allowing for diplomatic and intelligence access; transforming the African position supportive of the Palestinian cause by exploiting developmental gaps and building loyal local elites; investing in resources; and countering growing Iranian influence, particularly regarding African resources, especially uranium.
The Israeli researcher Yaron Salman revealed that the security element has become the most influential axis in relations with African countries, as “Israel” has employed military training and intelligence capacity building as channels to enhance its influence in countries experiencing security tensions.
However, the reality of deteriorating security in Burkina Faso reveals the gap between the “savior hero” image that Traore promotes and the actual scene; writer Ze’ev Abraham described the country as one of the most dangerous in the world, with armed groups controlling vast areas, while the Burkinabe authority has not achieved a tangible breakthrough in this critical file.
Supporting what Yaron and Abraham have indicated, Denis Sitrovnich, an expert at the Israeli National Security Institute, placed Burkina Faso within a rapidly expanding Russian sphere of influence, coinciding with the growing roles of Turkey and Iran, thus outlining Israel’s motives to gain a foothold in the Sahel to monitor its competitors and build new security and diplomatic networks.
Distortion of History and Collision with Conscience
Traore’s shift was not limited to the diplomatic level but extended to the realm of history and identity, attempting to reshape national consciousness to serve his new alliances. In a speech delivered on July 19, 2026, he claimed that Africans had suffered over a thousand years of enslavement at the hands of Arabs, asserting that “the last slave market did not close until 1962.”
He ignored in this narrative that the slave trade, which constituted the greatest tragedy in the continent’s history, was predominantly European, and that the Islamic empires that arose in West Africa—such as the Sokoto Caliphate, the Tukulor Empire, and the Aslo Empire—were of African origin and formation, built on civilizational foundations rather than on the enslavement of peoples. Moreover, Islam did not spread in Burkina Faso itself until the mid-20th century, after the collapse of those kingdoms, and its percentage rose from 35% to about 63% today, without any accompanying Arab colonial presence.
What makes this historical narrative even stranger is that it comes from a leader who raises the banner of liberation from Western colonialism while covering up the atrocities committed by it. Traore has forgotten that France is the one that militarily occupied his country at the end of the 19th century, that it is responsible for the crimes of slavery, and that it is the one that killed Thomas Sankara in 1987 and aborted the Burkinabe renaissance experiment.
From Distortion of History to Confrontational Policies
The distortion of history has led to sharp internal policies, as Traore announced the cessation of sending students abroad to study Islamic sciences, threatened to revoke the citizenship of those wishing to continue their studies, arrested senior scholars in the country, closed the largest mosque in the capital, enacted a law restricting Islamic and educational activities, and entrenched secularism. In a confrontational speech, he threatened to start a battle with actors in the Islamic field despite their peacefulness and moderation.
Sliding from Revolution to Normalization
In a striking paradox, the announcement of the acceptance of the Israeli ambassador’s credentials coincided with an unprecedented escalation in anti-Arab and anti-Islam rhetoric, as if it were a cover to justify relations with a colonial entity founded on occupation and settlement. Instead of the revolutionary discourse being a national project based on justice and liberation, it transformed into a pragmatic tool that the transitional authority could use to justify its changing positions and criminalize yesterday’s allies who stood by him when he raised the banners of independence, facilitating an alliance with their adversaries.
In this way, Traore has placed himself in opposition to the Arabs who praised his liberatory discourse at the beginning of his tenure, revealing that the liberation slogans he raised were merely a cover for an authoritarian project seeking to survive at the lowest cost.
Lessons of the Revolution that Were Revealed
Traore has proven that a revolution that sells its principles at the first test is not a revolution but hides an autocrat in the guise of liberation. Since he ascended to power, adorned with an anti-colonial discourse, the bet on his project to achieve tangible accomplishments that redefine national sovereignty and respond to the aspirations of a people suffering from the ravages of tyranny, poverty, and backwardness has quickly unraveled, revealing his inability to fulfill his promises, his isolation from his surroundings, and his collision with the conscience and history of his people.
At the moment of separation, he chose a political project that serves Zionist policies, renouncing the values of independence and justice that he once raised as a banner. Thus, his credibility dissipated, and the truth of his discourse, which was never anything but a tool for survival in the seat of power, was revealed, not a liberatory project.
