The President resigns and General Takes Reins

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — He recently boasted that the streets would never oust him, not after he had won at the ballot box and survived multiple violent outbursts against his 27-year rule.

But after days of turmoil in which protesters burned the Parliament building here and set fire to the homes of his relatives and aides, President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso announced Friday that he had stepped down — a rare case of the kind of popular uprising that toppled autocrats during the Arab Spring succeeding in sub-Saharan Africa.

The political demise of Mr. Compaoré, 63, who stoked some of the region’s worst conflicts but later refashioned himself into an elder statesman committed to resolving them, closed the book on one of Africa’s most enduring rulers in a region where some leaders cling to power for decades.

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“When you imagine that our young men and women who are now 27 years old have known a single president, it’s absurd,” said Issouf Traore, a 44-year-old business owner who took to the streets this week to demand the president’s resignation.


With a mix of guile and charm, Mr. Compaoré managed to juggle alliances with Western governments and the Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, turning himself into a regional power broker whose influence far outweighed the resources of his nation: a poor, landlocked country where more than half of the population has had no other leader.

“The demonstrations he could live with; he’s had that over the years,” said Pierre Englebert, a professor of African politics at Pomona College. “When they went for Parliament and set it on fire, then it went to a different level. It showed a certain resolve by the demonstrators.”

Mr. Compaoré's dual and often contradictory roles on the continent meant that he both fed conflict and, in later years, earned praise on the international stage for working to foster peace and greater stability.

“He has always been an extremely adept and sophisticated player in that region,” said Lansana Gberie, a historian from Sierra Leone who has written about the civil war there. “It has confounded many people.”

Historians have described Mr. Compaoré as a principal supporter of Charles G. Taylor, the former Liberian president convicted in 2012 of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

During the civil war in Sierra Leone more than a decade ago, American officials accused Mr. Compaoré of fueling the violence by funneling arms to rebels and sending mercenaries to fight alongside them against United Nations peacekeepers in exchange for diamonds.



But Mr. Compaoré often took on the role of regional peacemaker as well. This year, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, commended him for “his contribution to peace and stability in Mali,” including his help in reaching an agreement for a cease-fire after that country, a neighbor, was split in half by an insurgency.

A few years earlier, the United Nations Security Council had singled him out for “his critical role” in supporting the peace process in Ivory Coast — another country where he has been accused of stoking instability.

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He remained close to the French during his presidency and came to be seen as a pro-Western leader and ally in the battle against Islamist militancy in the region.

“Over the years, Compaoré has played both the role of accomplice and peacemaker,” said Corinne Dufka, an associate director at Human Rights Watch.

As “big men” like Qaddafi, Mr. Taylor and Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone were toppled or indicted, “he took on the role of elder statesman, filling a vacuum for the role of Francophone negotiator,” Ms. Dufka said. “But still, why Compaoré's actions in support of abusive regimes didn’t receive more scrutiny — indeed, condemnation — has always been a bit of a mystery.”

Mr. Compaoré was only 36 when he seized power in a coup in 1987 that felled his former friend and military colleague Thomas Sankara, a national hero whose death many in Burkina Faso continue to grieve. Though the precise circumstances of the killing have long been opaque, it has cast a long shadow over Mr. Compaoré for decades, with many residents continuing to see it as an unforgivable betrayal.