Islamic Violence And Political Instability In Burkina Faso

The Coup Trap Burkina Faso When a military junta seized power more than two years ago in Burkina Faso, the coup leaders promised to end the violence and fighting that were plaguing the country. They failed. Islamist fighters now hold sway over 40 percent of the landlocked West African country, according to ACAPS, a research firm. Jihadists have also killed more than 2,000 people this year, an almost 75 percent increase over the rate before September 2022, when the junta staged its coup against a leader who had taken power only nine months earlier in another coup, World Politics Review added. These are some of the reasons that some people in Burkina Faso have lost faith in their armed forces. A video now circulating in the country, for example, depicts Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland, a government-sanction militia group, hacking corpses with machetes, while “gloating” on camera, the BBC reported. The military under Burkina Faso’s interim president, Capt. Ibrahim Traore, is now investigating the matter. News in the country now often centers on lethal attacks where the central government and its militia allies have not been able to defend their positions. Last month, al Qaeda-linked terrorists killed as many as 600 people in the remote northern town of Barsalogho. CNN dubbed the attack one of the deadliest in Africa in decades, describing the violence as another example of how the region – called the Sahel – has become increasingly unstable in recent years. Investigators at Human Rights Watch later concluded that Burkinabe troops could have prevented the attacks if they had not forced civilian laborers to dig a trench around a military base in the town, creating a target for the jihadists, and then leaving those civilians defenseless. The same al Qaeda-linked militants killed more than 100 Burkinabe soldiers in the town of Mansila near the border with Niger, added Al Jazeera. Another 150 people died when terrorists attacked the northeastern town of Manni, wrote the Catholic News Agency. Traore bears responsibility for these losses. He came to power in 2022, a year when Burkina Faso saw two coups and three presidencies. He has retained power, rather than setting up democratic elections or another transfer of power as he promised in the early days of his administration, saying that the security situation in the country has warranted it. Writing in Geopolitical Intelligence Services, African affairs expert Teresa Nogueira Pinto described Traore’s situation as a “coup trap” where juntas come under pressure to solve the problems that weakened the previous government they overturned. In Burkina Faso, where the junta has lost control over half of its territory and where one in four Burkinabe now requires humanitarian aid, the coup has had disastrous consequences. “Over the past decade, and particularly in the last four years, militant insurgency has upended security and humanitarian conditions in the Sahel, now considered the global epicenter of jihadism,” she wrote. “Amid regional turmoil and domestic political instability, Burkina Faso – until recently viewed as a beacon of stability – has become the epicenter of religious extremism in the Sahel.” Share this story