It's a sensitive affair, one being closely monitored by the French government and causing quite a stir in the secretive world of the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), France's foreign intelligence agency. For more than nine months, four of its agents have been held in Burkina Faso by the anti-French junta of Captain Ibrahim Traoré – a "hostage situation," according to several official French sources, in which no sign of resolution has yet appeared.

The four men were arrested in Ouagadougou on December 1, 2023, 48 hours after their arrival. They had been sent there as part of a cooperation with Burkina Faso's National Intelligence Agency (ANR), which has continued despite high tensions between the West African country and France since Captain Traoré seized power in a coup in September 2022. Suspected of espionage and destabilizing his regime, they were arrested by members of Burkina Faso's Directorate of State Security (DSE).

Although their superiors assured them that everything was in order and their arrival was expected by their Burkinabé partners, the four agents had not followed procedure to the letter. They were equipped with diplomatic passports, but on arrival they presented themselves with e-visas, rather than proper diplomatic visas with a note verbale. However, colleagues and foreign diplomats had done the same to come to Ouagadougou, without it posing a problem until then.

For around 10 days, the four French agents were held incommunicado and interrogated by the DSE. Their situation was compounded by another procedural error: the duty phones they were given on arrival had not been "cleaned," as they are supposed to be between rotations. Some contained photos of sensitive sites in the Burkinabé capital and contacts in sensitive areas of the country. While some sources in Paris do acknowledge a "series of errors," all are convinced that this situation is a pretext being used by the junta to damage relations with France – and break them off for good.

On December 17, 2023, the DGSE closed its post in Ouagadougou and repatriated the dozen or so agents working there. Behind the scenes, the role played by Russia is raising questions. Thanks to the rapprochement between Captain Traoré and Moscow, some 20 agents from the GRU, Russia's foreign military intelligence agency, arrived in Burkina Faso in November 2023 to collaborate with the ANR, effectively instituting an improbable – and impossible – cohabitation between French and Russian services. "The Russians probably whispered to the Burkinabés: 'it's them or us'," said one French security source.

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