Burkina Faso’s volunteer militias were created to supplement the government’s fight against the growing terrorist threat. Along the border with Côte d’Ivoire, however, those militia members are threatening the safety of civilians on both sides of the boundary.
Nearly 70,000 Burkinabe citizens have fled their communities to shelter in northern Côte d’Ivoire. Many of them are Fulani herders, the ethnic group being targeted by militias known as Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland (VDP, using the French acronym) because many terrorists operating in the countryside also are Fulani.
There is a direct connection between the ruling junta’s decision to boost the ranks of VDP fighters and the targeting of Fulani citizens, leading to the influx of refugees in Côte d’Ivoire, according to Jean-Baptiste Zongo, an independent Burkinabe security analyst based in Côte d’Ivoire.
“Our country is in crisis, and the current authorities think that giving people weapons to kill an entire group is the solution,” Ali Barry, a Fulani nurse, told The New York Times newspaper. Barry fled his Burkinabe village in December 2022 after militiamen executed several neighbors.
For people living and working in northern Côte d’Ivoire, the threat from the VDP is ever present.
“You can come across VDPs everywhere along this border,” Vincent Baret, a veterinary inspector, told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “As a civil servant, I can’t go out into the bush.”
VDP fighters kidnapped six Ivoirian civil servants from a northern village in August and carried them back to Burkina Faso.
Ivoirian authorities have increased security and military personnel in northern provinces in response to the insecurity. That appears to have eliminated incursions from terrorists and helped life return to normal — almost.
Residents near the border are constantly aware that armed terrorists are just a few kilometers away across a poorly defined border.
“We stop work in the middle of the afternoon. We never drive at night,” one villager told AFP.
Farmers who used to work fields across the border in Burkina Faso have abandoned them for fear of encountering either terrorists or VDP militias.
“Before, we used to go to Burkina to harvest wheat, maize and cereals. Now we don’t cross the border,” Abdelrahman Ouatarra, a resident of Tougbo, told AFP.
VDP attacks on Fulani herders have reduced the amount of cross-border trade between Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, particularly in cattle markets. The business has plummeted to about a quarter of normal.
“The problem now is the VDP. We can’t negotiate with them,” Traore Lacina, head of the traders association in Doropo, told AFP.
Hundreds of Fulanis have taken their cattle to other grazing areas to escape harassment. Thousands more have abandoned their homes to seek shelter in Côte d’Ivoire.
Even as Ivoirian authorities keep terrorists at bay, the situation is made more tenuous by the young men — both Burkinabe and Ivoirian — who cross into Burkina Faso to join the VDP, increasing the potential threat from militia members.
“Our Soldiers have to deal with VDPs every day,” Baret told AFP. “They’re just illiterate militiamen, but they keep us busy. And they worry us more than the jihadis now.”