International Business Times quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on the coup in Burundi and its implications for the United States:
“The country’s military has been one of the top recipients of U.S. training and equipment in Africa,” says Peter Pham, head of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.
Thousands of Burundi’s soldiers have received some kind of American training through various missions and exercises, in conjunction with other troops as part of groups such as the African Union, particularly its mission in Somalia (AMISOM.)
“This places the U.S. in a quandary,” Pham says. “We don’t like U.S.-trained soldiers staging coups, but we also don’t like presidents overstaying their mandates.”