At the beginning of March, death struck Burkina Faso viciously. That day three villages in the north of the country woke up to a brutal attack: armed men attacked mosques and churches and executed 170 civilians in a few hours. Eight years ago, such terror would have been unthinkable in Burkina Faso, until then a bastion of peace in the Sahel. Not anymore.
The political anxiety, with two coups d’état in 2022, and the establishment on Burkinabe soil of groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State from Mali or Niger have turned the country into the world epicenter of terrorist violence. According to the Global Terrorism Index (ITG), which monitors victims of jihadism on the planet, last year Burkina Faso was the state with the most fatalities due to attacks by fundamentalist groups (1,907 deaths), almost a quarter of those that occurred. in the world, a total of 8,352 deaths.
It is the first time since the report began 13 years ago that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq lead the list.
For the Catalono-Ivorian analyst Vivan Ogou, a conjunction of reasons is behind this deadly drift. To the inaction both nationally and internationally when jihadism began to spread in Burkinabe territory, Ogou adds “an under-resourced army” and the “breeding ground for extremists of poverty, droughts and humanitarian crises.” For Ogou, the military junta that governs the country after the coup d’état two years ago is repeating the mistake of giving “only a military response that perpetuates structural violence when the problem is deeper.”
The Sahel region worries the West due to the unchecked advance of jihadist groups and the loss of influence of France. Russia, through the Wagner mercenary group, has taken advantage of and fueled social disenchantment with Paris with propaganda and is now the main partner of the coup plots in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Although Captain Ibrahim Traoré, current president of Burkina Faso, has made anti-French rhetoric and the fight against jihadism his banner, the number of deaths from terrorism rose by 68% last year.
Analyst Fahriaman Rodrigue Koné, Sahel expert at the Institute for Security Studies, also points out a cocktail of reasons to explain the free fall of the so-called country of upright men. Koné highlights the political crisis “that has diverted the response to violent groups and the ability to confront them” and years of social degradation and that has allowed jihadists “to take advantage of community conflicts to expand.”
The trend does not improve this year. The Armed Conflict Data and Location Project noted that, in January alone, Burkina Faso recorded 439 murders due to jihadist violence. Kidnappings, especially politicians or businessmen to demand ransom, have also multiplied by 30 in the last five years and fear has triggered hunger: 6.3 million people need food aid.
Impunity has left hundreds of thousands of people abandoned. According to an Amnesty International report, at least 46 Burkinabe towns were under siege or controlled by armed groups in 2023.
Under this strategy, seen for the first time in 2019 but which expanded in 2022 and already subjugates a million people, the extremists establish checkpoints on the entry and exit routes of the population, place explosive devices to limit traffic and They occasionally attack civilians. For the director of AI in West Africa, Samira Daoud, the situation is unsustainable. “Ansaroul Islam and other groups commit serious human rights violations in Burkina Faso. “They have set up sieges across the country, killing thousands of civilians and destroying infrastructure, especially bridges and water wells.”
In addition to pointing out the collapse of Burkina Faso, the ITG report, prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace, also looks at the Middle East. The text highlights a 22% increase in deaths from terrorism, motivated among other things by the Hamas attack on October 7 against Israel that killed 1,200 people in one day, the attack with the highest number of victims since 11-11. S in USA
Despite this, the authors of the report specify that, even if the Hamas attack were excluded, deaths from terrorism would have increased by 5% in the last twelve months.
