Burkina Faso Cuts Diplomatic Ties with France
Ouagadougou Accuses Paris of Backing Terrorism
The government of Burkina Faso severed its diplomatic relations with France on 26 June, citing the “neocolonial ambitions” of its former coloniser, which it once again accused of supporting terror groups currently ravaging the Sahel.
The decision came just over three and a half years after Capt. Ibrahim Traoré's government expelled all French troops and the French ambassador from the country in January 2023, a year after the France-backed regime was ousted in a popular military coup.
In 2024, Burkina Faso expelled three other French diplomats, accused of subversive activities. Nevertheless, it had continued to maintain formal diplomatic relations until Friday, when it announced severing them with immediate effect, citing France’s “active support for subversive networks and terrorists.”
Neighbouring Mali and Niger, also under attack by groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, have also repeatedly insisted that the terror attacks are in fact a proxy war against their sovereignty, waged by France after its troops were expelled.
“In the face of these imperialist designs to dominate our country and subjugate our people, we have chosen the path of responsibility and sovereignty,” Burkina Faso’s communications minister, Gilbert Ouédraogo, said in the televised statement announcing the end of diplomatic relations.
“The essential conditions for fostering relations based on mutual respect, reciprocal trust, respect for the principle of non-interference in internal affairs, and national sovereignty are no longer met,” he added.
France, which denies the allegation of supporting terror groups, called the decision to sever all diplomatic ties “hostile and unfounded.”
“Necessary reciprocal measures are currently under review,” its foreign ministry spokesman, Pascal Confavreux, said, expressing concern about the safety of French nationals in Burkina Faso and calling on them to maintain heightened vigilance.
However, Ouédraogo had already assured their safety in the statement, announcing the end of diplomatic ties. “The government wishes to emphasise that this decision in no way undermines the historic, human, cultural, and social ties that unite the Burkinabe and French peoples. It pertains exclusively to the institutional framework of relations between the two states at the diplomatic level,” he said.
Reaffirming Burkina Faso’s “hospitality” to foreign nationals and committing to ensure their safety, he called upon “all citizens to act with responsibility, restraint, and civic-mindedness toward French nationals and all expatriates living on Burkinabe soil, in strict compliance with the laws of the Republic.”
 | A guest post by
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I know it is hard for people to think that money itself is conceived of wrongly and has been so for centuries. At one time and for a very long time the whole world was wrong about the earth as the center of the solar system. And ALL of the world's "experts" were also wrong despite the consensus. Now we think that money itself is the center of economics. But money is NOT a natural resource. It is a human construct. And if its conceptual base is wrong, then the entirety of the system based on that is wrong as well.
So, expulsion of diplomats does nothing to stop the illiteracy of money itself that was imposed at the time of colonialism. Here is one telling of the history of colonization
From the abstract:
“In the European colonies, land expropriation and forced labor were used, but another important means of forcing indigenous populations to work as wage-laborers or produce cash crops was taxation and the requirement that taxes be paid in colonial currency. This paper provides an overview of this method, and documents its historical importance, concentrating on Africa. Taxation also played an important role in the monetization and commoditization of African economies, and in the rise of a peripheral capitalism. As the paper demonstrates, Marx was not unaware of money taxes functioning in this manner, and the phenomenon was in no way limited to Africa.” - Matthew Forstater
From the above paper by Forstater: ".... The problem was that if the subsistence base was capable of supporting the population entirely, colonial subjects would not be compelled to offer their labor-power for sale. Colonial governments thus required alternative means for compelling the population to work for wages. The historical record is clear that one very important method for accomplishing this was to impose a tax and require that the tax obligation be settled in colonial currency.
This method had the benefit of not only forcing people to work for wages, but also of creating a value for the colonial currency and monetizing the colony. In addition, this method could be used to force the population to produce cash crops for sale. What the population had to do to obtain the currency was entirely at the discretion of the colonial government, since it was the sole source of the colonial currency. This method was widespread and important enough to be called “a secret of colonial capitalist primitive accumulation” (since it was not the only method, it must be called “a” secret). This practice is extremely well documented, yet it has hardly ever been mentioned as an important method of primitive accumulation."
"......Several points concerning the role of direct taxation in colonial capitalist primitive accumulation need to be made. First, direct taxation means that the tax cannot be, e.g. an income tax. An income tax cannot assure that a population that possesses the means of production to produce their own subsistence will enter wage labor or grow cash crops. If they simply continue to engage in subsistence production, they can avoid the cash economy and thus escape the income tax and any need for colonial currency. The tax must therefore be a direct tax, such as the poll tax, hut tax, head tax, wife tax, and land tax. Second, although taxation was often imposed in the name of securing revenue for the colonial coffers, and the tax was justified in the name of Africans bearing some of the financial burden of running the colonial state, in fact the colonial government did not need the colonial currency held by Africans."
"....The requirement that taxes be paid in colonial currency rather than in-kind was
essential to producing the desired outcome,...."
Since colonial times we have remained faithful servants to an illiterate and impossible system of imposed make believe.
The trouble with assigning blame to those "who put us into this mess" is that it fails to put the responsibility to correct this mess on us. It is not ever going to be the case that 'the bad guys' see the light and feel guilty and decide to change their ways. The thing is that until 'the bad guys' are also known to be 'the village idiots' they will hold a level of credibility and 'authority' that no populace should be stupid enough to accept.
So, 'the blame game' also misses the focus about 'What' is running as opposed to 'who' is running it.
The 'imposed illiteracy' that surrounds money itself cannot be cured by holding the actors in this melodrama accountable for their actions within the illiterate paradigm. You see, one first has to think of, or be forced at gunpoint to accept, that money is an item of value that can also perform the function of 'unit measure of value.' But those two are mutually exclusive. The function called 'measure' is not sensible or reliable if the unit is constantly in flux and self-referential. That is the core illiteracy about money in the 'educated' class.
The imposition of a preferred 'trade good' in more modern times may have come first, in older times, by confusing a fungible commodity with its ability to perform the function of measure. If that was the core fundamental error in thinking then correcting that then dismisses the legitimacy of imposing the preferred trade good into the societal realm of measurement.
As is plain from the history presented above, when the 'coin of the realm' was imposed the intent was to capture labor and resources for the nefarious intent of the imperialist. That imperialist not only does not have the power to impose such on the populace or other nations if they do not accept it....but the reason to not accept this false claim of authority is that the imperialist attempting this can clearly be shown to be illiterate about the function of measure and the abstract representation of value when using a unit based system of representation and record keeping.
We cannot keep accepting self-declared 'authority' on the part of the "issuer" of the numbers we use to do the bookkeeping about our own activity. Nor can we accept that the numbers on the ledger (or the coins of the realm that came before) are items of value all by themselves.
Yet, most all are going along with this.
Money is not a resource at all. That is the core illiteracy that people struggle with. Holding back genuine economic activity waiting for the abstract units to record that activity is like waiting for some of the inches to be available so that you can measure the boards to build something. And the unit of money is itself an absurdity in the field of Applied Math. How can one make sense of equations using a term that is undefined and unstable?
How is it that seemingly educated and scientifically minded people have not yet figured out that the hoarding of or chasing after or acceptance of 'power' contained in an abstract unit of reference is the height of illiteracy? All are subjugated to this illiteracy.
According to Wikipedia, "Metrology is the scientific study of measurement.[1] It establishes a common understanding of units, crucial in linking human activities."
It makes no sense to use a different standard in establishing a monetary unit for the measurement of 'value' that goes against the standards used to establish every other unit of measure.
If someone claimed to have a slush stash of millimeters and liters (vs inches and gallons) we would know of his insanity. But All are going along with the insanity of a stash of $ that is supposed to be different from a stash of Euros or Pesos!! You know how these units come into being....right!?