Burkina Faso, 2015 — military coup

Event Summary

On 16 September 2015 members of the Regiment of Presidential Security, an elite autonomous guard unit created under former president Blaise Compaore, seized the transitional government of Burkina Faso in a coup, detaining the interim leaders who had been running the country since the 2014 uprising. The RSP soldiers stormed a cabinet meeting and took captive the transitional President Michel Kafando, Prime Minister Isaac Zida, who was himself a former deputy commander of the RSP, and members of the cabinet. The next day the plotters announced on state television that they were dismissing Kafando, dissolving the transitional government and legislature, and setting up a National Council for Democracy under General Gilbert Diendere, a close Compaore ally and former chief of the presidential staff.

They justified the coup by denouncing an electoral law that barred backers of Compaore's 2014 term extension bid from the coming election, and pointed to plans to disband the RSP itself. The coup provoked immediate street protests, in which at least ten to fourteen people were killed, and the regular army marched on the capital demanding the RSP surrender. Under that pressure and regional mediation by ECOWAS, the coup collapsed within a week and the transitional government was restored on 23 September.