When General Célestin Simporé, Minister of Defence, appeared on the national broadcaster to praise the security record of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, he reached for a well-worn line: the country’s army had historically been “poorly trained.” It was a polished attempt to explain away a deepening crisis — and it has landed with a thud among citizens who are paying the price. The fallout is not abstract. It touches families who have lost soldiers, traders whose routes have been strangled, farmers driven from their land, and communities now cut off from the state. At the heart of the public’s anger is a simple question: how did the supposedly deficient army of yesterday manage to hold the line far more effectively than the retrained, heavily equipped force of today?

Rewriting the past to explain away the present

By repeating on national television that the armed forces lacked tactical instruction and operational readiness before the transition, General Simporé is trying to sell a tidy narrative: today’s setbacks are merely yesterday’s inheritance.

The facts refuse to cooperate. Under previous governments, despite glaring shortages of equipment and undeniable structural weaknesses, the military managed to keep provincial capitals connected and maintain recognizable territorial defence lines. Today, the transitional authorities boast of creating more than 30 new battalions and putting training back at the centre of their agenda — yet effective state control has collapsed across more than 65% of the country. For ordinary people, that means fewer protected roads, shuttered schools, stalled markets and a shrinking space in which to live and work.

The high price of the new training doctrine

To replace the old training model, Ibrahim Traoré’s government threw itself into the arms of Russian instructors from Africa Corps. The result of this overhaul has been a sharp rise in lethality on the front lines — and in the suffering of those caught in the middle:

• A devastating human toll: The mass casualties no longer surprise anyone. From the tragedy at Mansila to recent reverses in the Centre-Nord, the hastily trained new units are paying an unprecedented price in blood — a price borne by families across the nation.
• Unable to fight an asymmetric war: The Russian approach, built around frontal force and indiscriminate firepower, is proving useless against mobile terrorist groups operating in small motorcycle columns and using improvised explosive devices. The consequences spill into villages that become targets rather than protected spaces.
• A rupture with local communities: By sacrificing human intelligence and military ethics in favour of scorched-earth tactics, the new doctrine has alienated rural populations, depriving soldiers of the most effective shield against terrorist infiltration: information from ordinary citizens. For businesses, this means severed supply chains; for civilians, it means displacement and fear.

An insult to the sacrifice of rank-and-file soldiers

To declare on a television set that the troops were “poorly trained” insults the memory of the thousands of soldiers and gendarmes who fell in combat over the past decade. With rudimentary means and counted rations, these men held the front against a growing threat without ever abandoning entire regions — unlike today, when withdrawals are dressed up as “tactical evacuations,” as seen in the Boussouma tragedy.

General Simporé’s televised admission convinces no one. Two years after Captain Traoré’s absolute seizure of power, blaming yesterday’s training is an admission of helplessness. It was not yesterday’s weapons that lacked value; it is today’s strategy that is collapsing under the weight of its own propaganda. And the bill — in lives, livelihoods and lost territory — is being paid by the very people the strategy was meant to protect.

By Mariama Hamani — Analyst