Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traore. File
| Photo Credit: AP

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Lagos:

Junta-led countries Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso officially left West Africa’s main political and trade group ECOWAS on Wednesday after more than a year of diplomatic tensions.

The withdrawal has shaken the Economic Community of West African States that many consider to be the continent’s most important regional group and which this year marks its 50th anniversary.

Its leadership said in a statement that the group would “keep ECOWAS doors open” to the three countries but their departure has left the organisation’s future uncertain.

The rupture was sparked by the July 2023 coup in Niger, after military leaders in Burkina and Mali had also seized power since 2020.

ECOWAS threatened to intervene militarily in Niger to reinstate the deposed president and imposed heavy economic sanctions on Niamey, which have now been lifted.

The three countries, who were founding members of ECOWAS, announced in January 2024 they planned to withdraw immediately but the rules of the organisation required one-year’s notice for it to take effect.

Their military rulers accused ECOWAS of imposing “inhuman, illegal and illegitimate” sanctions.

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have now formed their own confederation, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

The ECOWAS statement called on member countries to recognise “until further notice” the passports from the three countries that bear the ECOWAS logo.

It said that citizens of the three countries should “continue to enjoy the right of visa free movement, residence and establishment in accordance with the ECOWAS protocols” until a new decision is taken.

Goods and services from the three will also be treated in line with ECOWAS rules until the West African group decides its “future engagement” with the three, it added.

The military leaders in the Sahel states accuse ECOWAS of failing to help them fight jihadist uprisings in their countries and of being too close to France, the former colonial power in the region.

The three have largely cut their security ties with France and turned towards Russia, Iran and Turkey for assistance.

In a sign of the doubts within ECOWAS, Togo and Ghana have normalised their relations with the three states and Ghana’s new president, John Mahama, has named a special envoy to the Alliance of Sahel 

Security forces deployed to secure the area after an overnight attack on a restaurant in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Their loved ones were slaughtered by Islamic extremists or government-affiliated fighters. Their villages were attacked, their homes destroyed. Exhausted and traumatised, they fled in search of safety, food and shelter.

This is the reality for over 2.1 million displaced people across the West African nation of Burkina Faso, torn apart by years of extreme violence.

But unlike others displaced in the region, they are seen as a challenge to Burkina Faso’s military junta that took power two years ago on the pledge of bringing stability. Their existence contradicts its official narrative: that security is improving and people are safely returning home.

Those who fled to Ouagadougou, the capital, which has been shielded from violence, find fear instead of respite. They are made into shadows, with many resorting to begging. Most of them are not entitled to support from authorities, and international aid organisations are not authorised to work with them.

Numbers unknown

With no official displacement sites in Ouagadougou, no one knows how many people shelter in the capital or sleep on the streets. A rare acknowledgement of their existence by authorities noted 30,000 last year. But aid groups say real numbers are much higher. And as violence increases, and people crowd displacement sites in the country’s remote north and east, exposed to hunger and disease, more are expected to arrive in the capital.

One aid worker, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, described the situation as “a ticking bomb.”

Fulani ethnic group

The AP interviewed four displaced people in Ouagadougou. All spoke at great risk. Three are with the Fulani ethnic group, which authorities accuse of being affiliated with Islamic insurgents. All three said they have faced discrimination in the capital, with trouble finding jobs and sending children to school.

For decades, the Fulani were neglected by the central government, and some did join militants. As a result, Fulani civilians are often targeted both by the extremists — affiliated with Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group — and by rival pro-government forces.

A 27-year-old Fulani cattle trader from Djibo, a city besieged by armed groups since 2022 said government-affiliated forces indiscriminately treated all Fulani in the area as extremists.

“They started arresting people, bringing them to the city, beating them, undressing them. It was humiliating,” he said. His uncle spent seven months in prison because he received aid from a charity run by extremists in part to spread their ideology.

According to analysts, the junta’s strategy of military escalation, including mass recruitment of civilians for poorly trained militia units, has exacerbated tensions between ethnic groups. Data gathered by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project show that militia attacks on civilians significantly increased since Capt. Ibrahim Traore took power.

The violence has radicalised some Fulanis, the cattle trader said.

“Every day, you prayed to live through the next 24 hours,” he said. “This is not a life.” He did not want to flee and leave his parents behind. But one day, his father said: “You have to leave, because if you stay, someone will just come and kill you.”

His father was later killed.

His mother has joined him in the capital. They have not received support from the government.

As much as 80% of Burkina Faso’s territory is controlled by extremist groups and more civilians died from violence last year than in the years before, but in Ouagadougou, it is easy to forget that the government is battling an insurgency.

Burkina Faso’s junta head on Saturday named former communications minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo as prime minister, according to a presidential decree, a day after dissolving the government. File.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Burkina Faso’s ruling military junta appointed a new Prime Minister, a day after dissolving the government without providing any reason.

Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, until now Communications Minister and spokesperson of the government, will be the West African country’s new Prime Minister, junta leader Ibrahim Traore said in a presidential decree read on state television Saturday.

Mr. Traore had issued a decree Friday dismissing Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela and announcing the dissolution of the national government. No reason was given for the move.

The junta in Burkina Faso seized power in September 2022 by ousting the military rule of Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba about eight months after it staged a coup to remove democratically elected President Roch Marc Kaboré.

The country is one of several West African nations where the military has recently taken over, capitalizing on popular discontent with previous democratically elected governments over security issues.

However, since its inception, the junta has struggled to end Burkina Faso’s security challenges — the very reason that it claimed had prompted it to take power.

Growing attacks by extremists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have devastated Burkina Faso, where thousands have been killed in recent years and more than 2 million people have been displaced, half of them children.

Around half of Burkina Faso’s territory remains outside of government control, analysts say.

The country’s transitional government has been running under a constitution approved by a national assembly that included army officers, civil society groups and traditional and religious leaders.

Under pressure from West Africa’s regional bloc, ECOWAS, the junta had set a goal to conduct an election in July 2024 to return the country to democratic rule. However, in May it extended its transition term for five more years, the duration of one presidential term.

Alongside the coup-hit nations of Niger and Mali, Burkina Faso has severed ties with longstanding Western and regional partners, including former colonial ruler France and ECOWAS, which they all quit early this year.

About 600 people were killed within a few hours by members affiliated with Al-Qaeda in an August attack on the town of Barsalogho in Burkina Faso, a report claimed on Friday. The residents of Barsalogho were shot dead on August 24 as they dug protective trenches.

The attack, in which most of the victims were women and children, was one of the worst in the West African country’s history, which has been grappling with a jihadist insurgency waged by rebels affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

The members of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliate based in Mali and active in Burkina Faso, shot down villagers as they swept into the outskirts of Barsalogho on bikes.

While the United Nations estimated a death count of around 200, JNIM said it had killed nearly 300 “fighters”. However, CNN, citing a French government security assessment, reported that up to 600 people were shot dead in the attack.

A man, who said he was one of dozens of men told to dig the trenches by the army, told CNN that he was 4 kilometers from the town at about 11 am, in a trench, when he heard the first gunshots.

“I started to crawl into the trench to escape. But it seemed that the attackers were following the trenches. So, I crawled out and came across the first bloodied victim. There was blood everywhere on my way. There was screaming everywhere. I got down on my stomach under a bush, until later in the afternoon, hiding,” he said.

Another survivor, who lost two members of her family in the attack, said JNIM killed people “all day long”.

“For three days we were collecting bodies – scattered everywhere. Fear got into our hearts. At the burial time, there are so many bodies lying on the ground that burying was hard,” she said.

The military reportedly ordered the locals to dig a vast trench network around the town to protect it from jihadists circulating nearby.

JNIM has warned civilians against endorsing the army in its fight against the insurgency.

According to the ACLED analysis group, which tracks global conflict, members affiliated with Al-Qaeda – which was founded by Osama bin Laden and carried out the 9/11 attacks in the US – and the Islamic State group have killed about 3,800 this year.

Since the start of the conflict in 2015, more than 20,000 people have been killed and over two million displaced in Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries situated in the Sahel, a region wracked by instability.

(With agency inputs)

Arouna Loure, a vocal critic of Burkina Faso’s ruling military junta, received a conscription order on September 7 last year requesting that the anaesthesiologist start a month of military service four days later.

The order did not specify a date or location for the doctor to report for duty. Days later, on September 13, two armed men intercepted Mr. Loure between operating theatres at a hospital in the capital Ouagadougou, forced him into a vehicle, and drove to a military camp near the northern city of Kaya, he said.

Mr. Loure, 38, had denounced the violence linked to Burkina Faso’s almost a decade-long fight against Islamist insurgents in the West African country.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have accused Burkina Faso’s junta of kidnapping and conscripting some of its critics, citing victims and civil society groups. Reuters could not find any public response by authorities to the reports and the junta did not reply to requests for comment.

Mr. Loure, who was released after three months of forced military service, said he was conscripted at the same time as eight other government critics and activists at the Kaya camp.

“They want to silence us,” he said during a telephone interview in March. “These conscriptions are arbitrary and punitive.”

In the beginning of June, the national order of doctors in Burkina Faso issued a statement saying Mr. Loure had gone missing again. Two civil society sources confirmed the information. He has not reappeared since.

Four victims who spoke after their release said they were snatched from their workplace or the street by armed police or military officials. Their kidnappers were either wearing Burkina Faso Army uniforms or were men in civilian clothing who verbally identified themselves as police or military, they said.

When Mr. Loure arrived at the military camp in Kaya in September, there were five other conscripted activists already there and three more were brought in during his five-week stay at the camp.

Three of the activists spoke to Reuters after they were discharged from the military on condition of anonymity, citing fears of retribution. They said that, before they arrived in Kaya, men in military uniform tortured them for days in an ex-ministerial villa in the Ouaga 2000 neighbourhood of Ouagadougou.

They saw other prisoners during their stay, some with severe injuries. Reuters was not able to confirm independently the details of their accounts.

Tearing up, one activist said soldiers held his nose and mouth under an open faucet and tied plastic bags over his face.

During torture sessions, all were accused of conspiracy against the state and plotting to overthrow the junta.

Once at the Kaya base, they were made to clean toilets, do laundry and wash dishes. Soldiers bullied and fired guns at some of them. They suffered daily humiliation and exhausting sports drills the older conscripts struggled to follow, they said.

“They treated us like animals,” one of them said.

Junta spokesperson Jean-Emmanuel Ouedraogo, Interior Minister Emile Zerbo, State Minister Bassolma Bazie and Army spokesperson Isidore Noël did not respond to several requests for comment on the testimonies.

The abductions are part of junta leader Ibrahim Traore’s efforts to silence critics since he seized power in a September 2022 coup — the second that year — with a promise to restore security, analysts said.

‘Authoritarian drift’

“The regime’s authoritarian drift is clear,” said Mathieu Pellerin, a Sahel expert for the International Crisis Group. He said the government was hardening its stance towards internal critics as its position became more “fragile”.

Burkina Faso’s Army has only made incremental gains despite spending millions of dollars on the war and boosting its ranks with thousands of volunteer auxiliaries known as VDPs, analysts and humanitarian groups said.

Frustrations about authorities’ failure to shield civilians from the insurgency stoked the first military coup that ousted President Roch Kabore in January 2022, and then the toppling of Mr. Traore’s predecessor eight months later.

In Burkina Faso, more than 6,500 civilians have been killed since the start of 2020, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a global source of data on political violence. More than half died under the current government.

Earlier this year, the junta suspended several foreign media outlets for covering a HRW report accusing the Army of extrajudicial killings.

The conscription of junta critics began in March 2023 with Boukare Ouedraogo, the visually-impaired president of a civil society group in Kaya.

Mr. Ouedraogo, 32, had spoken at a press conference that month about feeling let down by Mr. Traore.

Five days later, Mr. Traore visited Kaya, summoned Mr. Ouedraogo and ordered his arrest, said Moussa Sawadogo, a colleague who attended the meeting.

Just after Mr. Ouedraogo’s arrest, in April 2023, the junta issued an emergency decree that grants authorities the right to conscript citizens above the age of 18.

“It marked the start of a trend,” said Ousmane Lankoande of the Balai Citoyen, a prominent citizens movement that played a key role in 2014 protests that ousted president Blaise Compaore, who had ruled Burkina Faso for nearly three decades. “We used to feel so hopeful about the future,” Mr. Lankoande said, describing the mood after the 2014 uprising restored civil liberties. “Today that freedom has been stolen.”

Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Alliance of Sahel States
| Photo Credit: X@BakaryYaou

Junta-run Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have finalised plans to form a confederation after turning their backs on former colonial ruler France to seek closer ties with Russia.

Their Foreign Ministers met Friday in Niger’s capital Niamey to agree on a text establishing the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

“The objective was to finalise the draft text relating to the institutionalisation and operationalisation of the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)”, said Niger Foreign Minister Bakary Yaou Sangare as he read the final statement late Friday.

He said the text would be adopted by the heads of state of the three countries at a summit, without specifying the date.

“We can consider very clearly, today, that the Confederation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) has been born,” Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said after meeting General Abdourahamane Tiani, the head of Nigerien military regime.

The third Foreign Minister at the meeting was Burkina Faso’s Karamoko Jean-Marie Traore.

The Sahel region has been subject to deadly jihadist violence for years, which they accused France of not being able to curb.

The three countries said late January they were quitting The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which they said was under French influence, to create their own regional grouping.

File picture of mural in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
| Photo Credit: AP

Burkina Faso suspended the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Voice of America (VOA) radio stations for their coverage of a report by Human Rights Watch on a mass killing of civilians carried out by the country’s armed forces.

Burkina Faso’s communication spokesperson, Tonssira Myrian Corine Sanou, said late on April 25 that both radio stations would be suspended for two weeks, and warned other media networks to avoid reporting on the story.

According to the report published by Human Rights Watch on April 25, the army killed some 223 civilians, including 56 children, in villages accused of cooperating with militants. The report was widely covered by the international media , including the Associated Press.

“VOA stands by its reporting about Burkina Faso and intends to continue to fully and fairly cover activities in the country,” the network said in a news article reporting on its suspension.

The BBC did not respond to a request for comment.

File picture of a mural in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Military forces in Burkina Faso killed 223 civilians, including babies and many children, in attacks on two villages accused of cooperating with militants, Human Rights Watch said in a report
| Photo Credit: AP

Military forces in Burkina Faso killed 223 civilians, including babies and many children, in attacks on two villages accused of cooperating with militants, Human Rights Watch said in a report published on Thursday.

The mass killings took place on February 25 in the country’s northern villages of Nondin and Soro, and some 56 children were among the dead, according to the report. The human rights organisation called on the United Nations and the African Union to provide investigators and to support local efforts to bring those responsible to justice.

“The massacres in Nondin and Soro villages are just the latest mass killings of civilians by the Burkina Faso military in their counterinsurgency operations,” Human Rights Watch Executive Director Tirana Hassan said in a statement.

“International assistance is critical to support a credible investigation into possible crimes against humanity.”

The once-peaceful nation has been ravaged by violence that has pitted jihadis linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group against state-backed forces. Both sides have targeted civilians caught in the middle, displacing more than 2 million people, of which over half are children. Most attacks go unpunished and unreported in a nation run by a repressive leadership that silences perceived dissidents.

The HRW report provided a rare firsthand account of the killings by survivors amid a stark increase in civilian casualties by Burkina Faso’s security forces as the junta struggles to beat back a growing jihadi insurgency and attacks residents under the guise of counterterrorism.

Earlier in April, The Associated Press verified accounts of a November 5 army attack on another village that killed at least 70 people. The details were similar — the army blamed the villagers for cooperating with militants and massacred them, even babies.

Witnesses and survivors told HRW that the February 25 killings were believed to have been carried out in retaliation for an attack by Islamist fighters on a military camp near the provincial capital Ouahigouya, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) away.

The toll of civilian deaths was higher than first described by local officials. A public prosecutor previously said that his office was investigating the reported deaths of 170 people in attacks carried out on those villages.

A Burkina Faso government spokesperson didn’t respond to requests for comment about the February 25 attack. Officials previously denied killing civilians and said jihadi fighters often disguise themselves as soldiers.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in Burkina Faso since jihadi violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group first hit the West African nation nine years ago, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a United States-based nonprofit.

Burkina Faso experienced two coups in 2022. Since seizing power in September 2022, the junta led by Capt. Ibrahim Traoré has promised to beat back militants but violence has only worsened, analysts say. Around half of Burkina Faso’s territory remains outside of government control.

Frustrated with a lack of progress over years of Western military assistance, the junta has severed military ties with former colonial ruler France and turned to Russian instead for security support.