Ibrahim Traoré
==============

Ibrahim Traoré is the military ruler of Burkina Faso, assessed by John Kiriakou on the DeProgram programme in September 2025 after a viewer raised his name. Kiriakou recognised it at once, "Oh, I know him", where his co-host did not.

Taking power

Kiriakou's summary is that Traoré is "a young military officer in Burkina Faso that took power I don't know, two, three, four years ago", by overthrowing the government.

His judgement of the trajectory since is negative and recent: "He's become, in my view, increasingly irrational over the last couple of months."

The undelivered transition

The first charge is the broken promise. "It's been at least three years now and there has been no transition back to democracy, which he had promised at the outset. Didn't happen. He's the dictator. The military dictator."

Kiriakou treats the promise itself as a recognised genre rather than a personal failing, and supplies the standard wording: "Well, we will have an election as soon as things settle down."

The recent measures

He cites three, in the order he recalled them.

The first is criminal. "He outlawed homosexuality. So if you're gay, you risk 10 years in prison for being gay."

The second is institutional, and Kiriakou explains the body before describing its abolition, Burkina Faso maintains a permanent electoral commission whose job is to plan each election. "He scrapped it. Fired everybody. Got rid of everybody. He took personal control." The consequence he draws is direct: "and there aren't going to be any elections."

The third he sources vaguely, saying only that he does not remember where he read it: a programme "to expel all of the foreigners from Burkina Faso."

His verdict

Kiriakou notes his own surprise at knowing as much as he does about the country, "I don't even know why I know this much about Burkina Faso", and does not romanticise what preceded the coup: "Burkina Faso was never a garden spot."

The conclusion is one sentence: "but man, it's getting worse and worse and worse."

See also

- Djibouti
- Somaliland
- John Kiriakou
