In early October, Burkina Faso recalled its entire diplomatic staff, aside from administrative officials, from Cote d’Ivoire. Diplomatic tensions were already high between the two neighbors, with neither country having replaced its ambassador after their mandates expired, in 2021 for Cote d’Ivoire and 2022 for Burkina Faso.
But over the past year, their already antagonistic relations have become further enflamed by a series of border spats in which both sides have seized and detained the other’s security forces. In one particularly severe incident in March, an Ivoirian military helicopter had to be called in to keep the situation from boiling over.
The situation appeared to reach a nadir earlier this year when Burkinabe President Ibrahim Traore, a military officer who came to power in a coup in September 2022, began to repeatedly accuse Cote d’Ivoire of harboring dissidents who were planning to overthrow his government, while linking several recent alleged coup attempts to Ivoirian President Alassane Ouattara.