In Burkina Faso, the outbreak of violence underlines the limits of the counter-terrorism strategy of the junta

In Burkina Faso, did Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s junta make the right choices against the jihadists? On Saturday April 15, a large camp of the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), the name given to the civilian army auxiliaries responsible for fighting terrorism, was targeted in the locality of Aoréma, in the north of the country. The attack, which claimed the lives of eight soldiers and 32 paramilitaries according to the government, is the deadliest to have targeted VDPs and security forces since Captain Traoré came to power on September 30, 2022, by a coup – the second in eight months. Several security and humanitarian sources contacted by The world even mention nearly 70 combatants killed, mostly VDPs.

The camp, located about ten kilometers from Ouahigouya, the capital of the North region, was “pounded for more than an hour by several hundred assailants, who arrived on motorbikes and on board heavily armed pick-ups”, underlines a Burkinabé security source. An operation attributed to the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the subsidiary of Al-Qaeda in the Sahel.

This umpteenth major offensive by jihadist groups in the North, a border region of Mali plagued by insecurity since the start of the war launched by jihadist groups against Burkina in 2015, illustrates the security impasse in which the country finds itself. junta, which came to power on the basis of a promise: to do better than its civilian predecessors and finally overcome this Islamist threat which has already killed more than 13,000 people, according to the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project ( Acled).

“Charcoal”

Engaged in an offensive and militia counter-terrorism strategy, the junta led by young Captain Traoré says it has recruited more than 90,000 VDPs since October 2022. These civilians are briefly trained by the army before being deployed in the field, under his control. The Aoréma camp, set up a few months ago, was one of the main centers for auxiliaries in the north of the country. A device whose location was problematic, according to the security source cited above: “The army has two protected camps inside the town of Ouahigouya. Why didn’t the general staff transfer one of them to Aoréma, instead of installing the VDPs in this insecure peripheral zone? They are sent to coal instead of soldiers. »

According to Tanguy Quidelleur, a doctoral student at the Institute of Social Sciences of Politics and a specialist in conflicts in the Sahel, sending auxiliary civilian forces to the front line is a way for the junta to “reassure a certain number of soldiers, by showing them that there is now a kind of buffer, the VDPs, between them and the jihadist groups”, and this in a context where the regime of Captain Traoré remains contested within an army fractured by the two putschs of 2022.

Also, the VDPs pay a heavy price in the fight against terrorism. According to Acled, more than 150 of them have been killed since January in clashes with Islamist groups. While the latter continue to progress, to the point of controlling more than 40% of the territory today, the authorities announced the general mobilization on Thursday, in order to “Give the State all the necessary means” to defeat the enemy. A decree that allows them to requisition people and property.

In parallel, an “empty attics” operation was launched to reinforce the equipment of the soldiers. All soldiers, active and retired, have thus been called upon to hand over their uniforms to their brothers in arms deployed in the field. In early April, the new Chief of Staff, Colonel Major Célestin Simporé, announced an acceleration of the army offensive. This new operation, launched jointly with the Malian army and called “Kapidougou” (“the hive” in the Mooré language), currently mobilizes nearly 800 soldiers.

“Preferred targets”

In response to the raid that targeted the VDP camp at Aoréma, the government said it had deployed air reinforcements that enabled “to destroy a terrorist column which was trying to exfiltrate”. Report announced: “At least 50 terrorists neutralized. » But the next day, Sunday, 50 km to the southeast, a new attack this time targeted the Kongoussi military detachment, resulting in the death of two soldiers and around twenty jihadists, still according to the government.

Unarmed civilians are frequently the first victims of these deadly assaults. The raids of April 6 and 7 in Kourakou and Tondobi, near the Niger border, during which 44 villagers were killed, is a new demonstration of this. “Massively arming populations to involve them in the fight against jihadist groups makes civilians prime targets for the latter, who attack them in retaliation”, emphasizes researcher Tanguy Quidelleur.

In November 2022, Jafar Dicko, the leader of Ansaroul Islam, the most influential jihadist group in the country, which has pledged allegiance to GSIM, threatened with reprisals the localities whose inhabitants would be tempted to fight alongside the army in a video posted on social media. The GSIM seems since to have carried out its threat, accelerating the rhythm and the scale of its operations. The NGO Acled attributes nearly 230 attacks to him since the beginning of the year, during which more than 770 people have been killed.

Opposite, the army and its civilian auxiliaries are suspected of having killed more than a hundred civilians during their anti-terrorist operations over the past four months, thus fueling a spiral of violence. Several security and humanitarian sources also note that the jihadist raid that targeted the VDPs and the army in Aoréma on April 15 occurred following a “outbreak of abuses by the army and paramilitaries around Ouahigouya”.

“Implementation strategy”

“This is part of the strategy for establishing jihadist groups, analyzes a humanitarian, specialist in northern Burkina Faso. Attacking forces accused of extrajudicial executions allows terrorists to pose as defenders of local communities and thus accelerate their recruitment. »

Since January, in Ouahigouya, at least a dozen civilians have been killed by Burkinabe soldiers and VDPs, again according to Acled. It was in a military camp located 35 km from Aoréma that the video was shot in February showing children murdered in the midst of soldiers, as revealed by the daily Release March 27.

At the same time, kidnappings of civilians suspected of collaborating with the enemy have also increased. According to our information, several Burkinabés, who had been officially mandated in 2022 by the former president, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, to engage in dialogue with jihadist groups with the aim of making them surrender their arms, have disappeared. these last weeks. Abductions that their relatives and several sources attribute to the Burkinabe intelligence services. When contacted, the Ministry of Security did not respond to requests from the World.