Extremists Threaten to Encircle Burkina Faso’s Capital

ADF STAFF

New research shows that Burkina Faso’s security situation has worsened dramatically one year after the first of its two military coups.

Since the coups that brought Capt. Ibrahim Traoré to power in October 2022, deaths from terrorism in Burkina Faso have tripled, according to an analysis by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS).

“This violence, coupled with the geographic spread of extremist activities effectively surrounding Ouagadougou, puts Burkina Faso more than ever at the brink of collapse,” ACSS analysts wrote in a report.

Traoré’s pledge to rein in extremists in two to three months has stretched to a year during which the junta effectively has lost control over the country’s north and east, analysts say.

Traoré’s junta has delayed promised elections until 2024. In late September, the junta announced that that it had put down another attempted coup against its government.

“We must recognize that the problem which justified the irruption of Captain Traoré on the national political scene is far from being resolved,” wrote the editors of L’Observateur Paalga, a private Burkinabé newspaper, on the anniversary of the second coup.

Terrorist groups such as Katibat Hanifa, an offshoot of Mali-based Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, now control nearly 7,000 square kilometers of territory in an arc following Burkina Faso’s northern borders with Mali and Niger, then southeast to the borders with Benin and Togo. Terrorists’ territory has grown nearly 50% since the 2022 coups, according to the ACSS.

Terrorism began increasing after the junta, in late 2022, enlisted an estimated 90,000 people in the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland (VDP) militias. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the militias soon were blamed for the deaths of at least 80 civilians — most of them ethnic Fulani — in response to an extremist attack against police in the community of Nouna.

In April 2023, the Collective Against Impunity and Community Stigma (CISC) reported that men wearing Burkinabé Army uniforms killed 136 people in the northern community of Karma. The dead included women and children, according to the CISC.

Volunteer militias and uniformed soldiers have been involved in more than 760 civilian deaths, including a growing number of executions, since early 2022, according to the ACSS. Those deaths, in turn, have aided extremists, who use them as justification for further attacks.

According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), Burkina Faso is likely to see nearly 9,000 fatalities linked to terrorist organizations in 2023 — more than double the number in 2022. Violence against civilians has followed the same trajectory in that period.

The spike in terrorism-related violence in Burkina Faso helped make the Sahel the region of the world most affected by terrorism, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s 2023 Global Terrorism Index. Burkina Faso ranks number two behind Afghanistan for acts of terrorism.

The violence inundating nearly half of Burkina Faso has slowly surrounded the central plateau where the capital, Ouagadougou, sits.

Although the central region has avoided the bloodshed found elsewhere, terrorists are claiming territory that includes crucial transit routes from ports in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo, potentially blockading food and other supplies across much of the landlocked country, according to the ACSS.

“A sustained blockade of Ouagadougou would have devastating effects for the entire country,” the ACSS analysts wrote.