Clair MacDougall,WPR, Friday, July 9, 2021
The images that circulated on social media following last month’s bloody attack on the village of Solhan, in northeastern Burkina Faso, weren’t as gory as those that are often shared online after towns have been hit by armed groups. But even in a country where such killings are a near-daily occurrence, there was something about the photographs—showing dozens of bodies wrapped in woven prayer mats and piled into a mass grave—that jolted many people to take to the streets.
“It was horrible, but it showed us the limits of our state and the current regime in finding solutions to the insecurity problem,” Salif Kabore, a sociology student who participated in an opposition-sponsored protest rally over the weekend here in the capital, told me. “We have lived with this for more than five years.”
No group has claimed responsibility for the June 5 attack on Solhan—a village populated mainly by artisanal gold miners—which killed at least 132 people, according to the government. Some local sources claimed the death toll was as high as 200. Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, an affiliate of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, condemned the massacre and denied responsibility in a statement shared with WPR by MENASTREAM, a research consultancy group focused on the Sahel and North Africa.
Since 2016, Burkina Faso, as well as neighboring Mali and Niger, has faced attacks by armed groups affiliated with al-Qaida and the Islamic State. The violence has displaced more than 1 million people, largely under the radar of the international community. “The humanitarian crisis in the Sahel seems to me to be totally neglected,” said the actress Angelina Jolie, the special envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, during a visit last month to a refugee camp in northern Burkina Faso.
The slaughter in Solhan came on the heels of another attack hours earlier in the nearby village of Tadaryat, which killed 14 people. Weeks later, on June 22, 11 policemen were killed in an ambush during a relief mission to another town affected by the violence. That incident also triggered public outrage and calls for mass demonstrations.
In response, President Roch Marc Kabore reshuffled his Cabinet last week, firing his defense minister and announcing he would temporarily take on the role himself. He appointed Col. Maj. Aime Simpaore, who had previously been a national security adviser, as his deputy, and also replaced his security minister.
Despite Kabore’s calls for citizens to refrain from public protests, a number of rallies have taken place over the past week, led separately by civil society organizations and opposition groups connected to ousted former President Blaise Compaore’s party, the Congress for Democracy and Progress, or CDP. In footage posted to social media, thousands of people can be seen parading down the streets of major cities, but the numbers have yet to reach the scale of the mass mobilization of 2014—what the Burkinabe call the “popular insurrection”—that led to the end of Compaore’s 27-year rule.
“Every day there are attacks, and when there is an attack the government just makes a speech, there is no real response. The insecurity is increasing,” said Aisseta Ilboudou, a supporter of the CDP party, now headed by businessman Eddie Komboigo, who led rallies in Ouagadougou over the weekend.
Ilboudou, who runs a small coffee shop and raises and sells chickens, migrated to Ouagadougou 14 years ago from the northern city of Djibo. Her hometown was at peace then, but has since been caught up in the fighting, hosting thousands of displaced persons from neighboring villages.
“I’ve lost my uncles, and we still don’t have news from some people. We don’t know whether people are living or not, and there are others who have died also,” Ilboudo told WPR. “I don’t know a lot about security, but we need to give the soldiers materials and weapons so that they can better fight them. The terrorists are better-armed than them.”
“It was horrible, but it showed us the limits of our state and the current regime in finding solutions to the insecurity problem.”
The pace of attacks has been rising again in recent months, after a period of calm in which the government reportedly undertook secret negotiations with jihadist groups around last November’s presidential election. Kabore was declared the winner of that vote, even as hundreds of thousands of displaced Burkinabe were unable to cast ballots.
An estimated 500 people have been killed across the Sahel by jihadist groups since early 2021, according to Human Rights Watch. Along with domestic human rights groups, HRW has also documented abuses by state security forces in the past. In July 2020, the organization reported that at least 180 bodies had been found in mass graves in and around Djibo; eyewitness accounts implicated Burkinabe soldiers.
Authorities have also recruited hundreds of volunteer fighters under a controversial law passed in 2020. Officially known as Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, or VDPs, these fighters work alongside state forces but have been criticized for allegedly committing abuses with impunity. Some analysts have also expressed concern that the VDPs could eventually grow into an armed political force capable of challenging the government’s power.
In one video that was posted online on June 21 and subsequently shared widely, a senior VDP fighter serving in the northern province of Loroum named “Ladji” complained of poor working conditions and deaths among their ranks. “We confronted our enemies, but they are stronger than us,” Ladji said to the camera, speaking in Moore, the language spoken by the dominant ethnic group of Burkina Faso, the Mossi. “To the authorities, we ask you: Fear God. Feel pity for us. At the beginning we were more than 150 people, and now we are six.” Flanked by four other VDPs, with an AK-47 strapped across his chest and desert terrain stretching out behind him, he demanded to know whether the authorities have “sold the territory” or are otherwise profiting from the conflict.
“There is a lack of confidence among the VDPs that already existed among the citizens,” Sampala Balima, a Ouagadougou-based expert in violent extremism in the Sahel region, told WPR.
Balima pointed to the ongoing demonstrations and dissent among the ranks of the VDPs as a potentially volatile combination, given the backing the VDPs enjoy from ordinary citizens. “The demonstrations are signs of a possible insurrection. What is happening in Ouagadougou is an echo of what is happening in the countryside,” she said.
According to Serge Bambara, a rapper who helped found the civil society group Le Balai Citoyen—or The Citizens’ Broom—which played a major role in the 2014 uprising, people are searching for answers about why an attack like the one in Solhan occurred and why the security forces failed to respond.
“Who is responsible? Is it the military … or higher up? We should know the truth,” Bambara said in an interview at his recording studio in Ouagadougou.
Citizens’ Broom has filed a complaint against the government in the High Court of Ouagadougou for failing to protect citizens, along with another complaint regarding the government’s failure to act on troubling reports from both the local newspaper L’Evenement and the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project alleging that Apollinaire Compaore, a wealthy and well-connected Burkinabe businessman, has been involved in tobacco smuggling that helps finance armed groups in the region.
“The situation is deteriorating, so we have to react so that the government understands the gravity of the situation,” Bambara said. “The government shouldn’t think they can get out of this with a pirouette and a game of musical chairs.”
Clair MacDougall is a journalist and writer who is based in Burkina Faso and currently covering the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in the Sahel region