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The NPA’s implicit claim that Colonel Isaac Zida’s coup and his negotiations with the bourgeois opposition are a “victory resulting from the popular uprising” is an absurd political lie.

Diplomats had few illusions about the man sometimes dubbed “handsome Blaise”. Compaoré was a repressive ruler who ruthlessly eliminated his opposition. Two ministers were executed in 1989 after denouncing the government’s “right-wing drift” and the country became a virtual one-party state. In 2011, he brutally crushed protests by students and the military.

As a recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) put it: “For 25 years, he has ensured he did not fall out with anybody.” The result was a reliable flow of foreign aid, averaging $400m a year – which accounted for 80 per cent of public expenditure. Compaoré cultivated his image as a man who could do deals with almost anyone. The ICG described how Burkina Faso “developed a kind of ‘mediation industry’, which has brought it political and economic dividends”.

For all their early promise, the Arab Spring revolutions have destabilised North Africa and allowed militant Islamist groups to flourish. The threat to western interests is evident. From the west’s perspective, the arrival of men such as the Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is by far preferable to the chaos now reigning in Libya.

MPs who backed Mr Compaore's unconstitutional bid last year to extend his 27-year rule would be barred from office, the law states.

Three former ministers are among the eight allies of Mr Compaore whose arrests have been confirmed by the authorities. They include the former ministers of interior, mining and infrastructure - Jerome Bougouma, Salif Kabore and Jean-Bertin Ouedraogo respectively.

He won five elections, of course with the usual tricks, but he won them nevertheless. But he instituted few reforms, skirted the nation’s real problems, and was mainly preoccupied with schemes to keep himself in perpetual office, while at the same time making himself useful to France and the United States, both of which have bases in the country.

The army coup is an old idea that no longer works, because African populations are wiser than they were, and less starry-eyed about the capacities and virtues of soldiers. So the second direction, toward a new democratic start, is more likely. Violence could derail it, and there were worrying clashes on Sunday. But, short of such a disaster, that should mean that Burkina Faso will soon have a civilian transitional government, and elections will be held as planned next year

Violent protests erupted in 2011 throughout the country. On Thursday, demonstrators set Burkina Faso's parliament on fire First out were the students, following the death of one of their number in police custody.Shopkeepers, traders, magistrates, lawyers, peasants and finally the rank-and-file soldiers followed. But they didn't form a mass movement and this is what "saved Blaise Compaore", according to Mr Depagne, who lived in Burkina Faso for a number of years. The opposition parties were not able to build a political platform to offer an alternative based on the people's discontent at high prices, low wages and Mr Compaore's undivided rule. Yet, these upheavals lasted several months in the first half of 2011.

Hours before Mr Compaore resigned, a letter he had received earlier this month from French President Francois Hollande - who has now welcomed his resignation - emerged in the media to reveal that France was ready to support him in finding a job within the international community at the end of his mandate, if he withdrew his proposed bill on presidential term limits.

The U.S. military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project.