Terror in Burkina Faso: how insurgents brought chaos to the once-stable Francophone state
Abdoulaye only left when a fellow primary school teacher was murdered by jihadists, in front of a classroom full of children.
“When you are in danger you don’t sleep. You’re constantly stressed. You walk down the street thinking that someone could murder you any moment,” he said, recalling the moment in 2017 when he fled his village in northern Burkina Faso.
Abdoulaye is an alias he uses due to ongoing threats against his life. The young teacher has not worked since leaving his community, and struggles with the cost of living in the capital, Ouagadougou.
Violence has displaced more than 150,000 people in this poor West African country over the last two years alone.
In a turbulent region, Burkina Faso was known until recently for its stability but that has now changed.
When Blaise Compaore, who turned the country into one of the poorest in the world after seizing power in a coup in 1987, was turfed out in a popular revolution five years ago hopes were raised that the country would find a way to prosper.
But those hopes began to crumble after jihadists killed 28 people in a Ouagadougou hotel popular with westerners in January, 2016.
It was the first significant sign that Burkina Faso was being sucked into an Islamist insurgency sweeping across the southern fringes of the Sahara desert, a region known as the Sahel.
Since then, Islamist groups from Mali and Niger have relentlessly expanded their attacks in Burkina Faso, threatening both the country’s political transition and its social cohesion.
The Islamic State in the Levant (Isil) has also moved into the region, sensing in the Sahel’s vulnerability an opportunity to recreate its dreams of a caliphate, shattered after defeat in Iraq and Syria.
Currently, more than 145,000 children are out of school and 1,000 educational establishments have closed their doors due to extremist threats.
But as it turned out, the school attacks were just the beginning.
What started with targeted ambushes on the military and moved on to teachers and village chiefs has accelerated. Wherever you look, the once tight social fabric that held two dozen ethnic groups together is unravelling in Burkina Faso.
The Burkinabe military is still struggling to contain Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) jihadists in the north, and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) extremists in the east.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made a point of accepting an ISGS pledge of allegiance in his first propaganda video in five years, urging the local branch to “avenge their brothers in Iraq and Sham”.
As the jihadists have strengthened their numbers and bolstered their firepower by subcontracting attacks to criminal groups, militias known as “Koglweogo” have formed and unleashed a terrible wave of violence against one ethnic group, the Fulanis, accused of collaborating with terrorists.
Since early April, unidentified gunmen have also attacked four churches in northern and central Burkina Faso, killing 22 people and adding a new dimension to conflict that has already divided previously peaceful communities.
“The jihadists manipulate community tensions very effectively,” said Burkinabe security analyst analyst Mahamoudou Savadogo. “They are opportunistic. They profit from that to gain followers.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/...rgents-brought-chaos-once-stable-francophone/
