FAUBE - When an Islamist
preacher took up the fight in Burkina Faso's northern
borderlands almost a decade ago, his only weapon was a radio
station.
The words he spoke kindled the anger of a frustrated
population, and helped turn their homes into a breeding ground
for jihad.
Residents of this parched region in the Sahel - a vast band
of thorny scrub beneath the Sahara Desert - remember applauding
Ibrahim "Malam" Dicko as he denounced his country's
Western-backed government and racketeering police over the
airwaves.
"We cheered," said Adama Kone, a 32-year-old teacher from
the town of Djibo near the frontier with Mali, who was one of
those thrilled by Dicko's words. "He understood our anger. He
gave the Fulani youth a new confidence."
Mostly herders, young men like Kone from the Fulani people
were feeling hemmed in by more prosperous farmers, whom they
felt the government in Ouagadougou favoured.
The preacher
successfully exploited their conflicts over dwindling land and
water resources, and the frustrations of people angered by
corrupt and ineffective government, to launch the country's
first indigenous jihadi movement. That cleared a path for groups
affiliated with al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Since Dicko's first broadcasts, Burkina Faso has become the
focus of a determined jihadi campaign by three of West Africa's
most dangerous armed groups who have carved out influence in
nearly a third of the country, while much of the world was
focused on the crisis in neighbouring Mali. Militant Islamist
fighters close schools, gun down Christians in their places of
worship and booby-trap corpses to blow up first responders. At
least 39 people died last week in an ambush on a convoy ferrying
workers from a Canadian-owned mine in the country.
There has
been no claim for that ambush, but the modus operandi – a bomb
attack on military escorts followed by gunmen unleashing bullets
– was characteristic of Islamist groups.
Since 2016, the violence has killed more than 1,000 people
and displaced nearly 500,000 – most of them this year.
In 2019, at least 755 people had died through October in
violence involving jihadist groups across Burkina Faso,
according to Reuters' analysis of political violence events
recorded by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project,
an NGO. Actual numbers are likely higher - researchers aren't
always able to identify who is involved in the violence.
The teacher Kone is one of many of Dicko's former supporters
who regret their earlier enthusiasm.
"We handed them the microphones in our mosques," he said.
"By the time we realised what they were up to, it was too late."
He fled to Ouagadougou two years ago, after armed Islamists
showed up at his school. More than 2,000 schools have closed due
to the violence, the U.N. children's fund UNICEF said in August.
Soldiers examine burnt-out cars outside the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s captial, after it was attacked by al-Qaeda-linked extremists. Islamic extremism is on the rise in the West African country.Pictures: AP
A LOCAL CHANNEL
A lean, bespectacled Fulani from the north, Malam Dicko
broadcast a message of equality and modesty. He reportedly died
of an illness in late 2017, but his sermons channelled deep
grievances in Burkina Faso's north where impoverished people
have long been frustrated by corrupt officials.
The province of northern Burkina Faso where Dicko lived
scores 2.7 on the United Nations Human Development Index,
compared with 6 for the area around the capital, Ouagadougou.
About 40% of its children are stunted by malnutrition, against
only 6% in the capital, according to U.S. AID.
From Ouagadougou to Djibo is a four-hour drive on a road
which peters out into a sandy track. Sparse villages dot a
landscape of sand and withered trees. Goats devour scrappy
patches of grass.
Residents complain that their few interactions with the
state tend to be predatory: Bureaucrats demand money to issue
title deeds for houses, then never provide the papers; gendarmes
charge up to $40 to take down a complaint; there are mysterious
taxes and extortion at police roadblocks. Lieutenant Colonel
Kanou Coulibaly, a military police squadron commander and head
of training for Burkina Faso's armed forces, acknowledged that
northerners "feel marginalized and abandoned by the central
government."
In about 2010 preacher Dicko, who had studied in Saudi
Arabia in the 1980s, began tapping this discontent, recalled
Kone and other former Djibo residents. He denounced corruption
by traditional religious leaders and practices that he deemed
un-Islamic, including lavish wedding and naming ceremonies.
The movement he created, Ansarul Islam (Defenders of Islam),
opened a path to militants from outside Burkina Faso —
particularly Mali.
Early in 2013, French forces were pounding northern Mali to
wrest control from al Qaeda-linked fighters who had seized the
region the previous year. Dicko slipped over the border to join
the militants, said Oumarou Ibrahim, a Sufi preacher who knew
Dicko and was close to the No. 2 in his movement, Amadou Boly.
In Mali, Ibrahim said, Dicko linked up with Amadou Koufa, a
fellow Fulani whose forces have unleashed turmoil on central
Mali in recent years. French forces detained the pair near the
border with Algeria; Dicko was released in 2015.
He set up his own training camp in a forest along the
Mali-Burkina border, Kone, the teacher, and Ibrahim, the Sufi
preacher, told Reuters.
Dicko forged ties with a group of Malian armed bandits who
controlled drug and livestock trade routes.
On the radio that year, he urged youths to back him, "even
at the cost of spilling blood."
"WHITES AND COLONISERS"
Troops ride in a vehicle near the French Embassy in central Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Friday March 2, 2018. Gunfire and explosions rocked Burkina Faso's capital early Friday in what the police said was a suspected attack by Islamic extremists. By midday the gunfire became intermittent and helicopters flew above the French Embassy in Ouagadougou.(AP Photo/ Ludivine Laniepce)
For some years Burkina Faso's president, Blaise Compaore,
had managed to keep good relations with Mali's Islamists. But in
2014, he tried to change the constitution to extend his
27-year-rule. Residents of the capital drove him from office.
Without Compaore, Burkina Faso became a target. Barely two
weeks into a new presidency, in January 2016, an attack on the
Splendid Hotel and a restaurant in Ouagadougou killed 30 people.
It was claimed by al Qaeda-linked militants based in northern
Mali.
Dicko became even more radical after that: He fell out with
associates including his No. 2, Boly.
Ibrahim, the Sufi preacher, said Boly came to his house in
Belhoro village in November 2016, agitated because Dicko had
ordered him to raise cash to pay for AK-47 rifles and grenade
launchers from Mali.
Boly refused. Dicko threatened him, Ibrahim said. Boly was
either with him, "or with the whites and the colonisers."
Two weeks later, gunmen assassinated Boly outside his Djibo
home. Ibrahim said he fled his own village the next day.
The teacher Kone, whose house was down the street, said he
heard the gunshots that day. A wave of killings followed. The
militants assassinated civil servants, blew up security posts,
executed school teachers.
One day in May 2017, Kone was running late for school when
he got a phone call from a colleague. Armed men from Dicko's
movement had come and asked after him.
He shuttered the school and sped to Ouagadougou.
BOOBY TRAPS
Now headed by Dicko's brother Jafar, Ansarul Islam was
sanctioned by the United States in February 2018. None of its
leaders could be reached.
It still controls much of Burkina Faso's northern border
areas but two other groups have also built a presence on the
country's borders, according to the European Council on Foreign
Relations. Islamic State in the Greater Sahara dominates along
the eastern frontier with Niger. And Koufa's Macina Liberation
Front, which is closely aligned to al Qaeda, is active on the
western border with Mali.
These spheres of influence can be loose: Fighters for all
three are believed to cooperate with each other and with bandit
groups.
Their attacks - including the kidnap and killing of a
Canadian citizen in January claimed by Islamic State - are
becoming more brutal. In one instance in March, a Burkinabe
security official told Reuters, militants stitched a bomb inside
a corpse and dressed it up in an army uniform, killing two
medics - a technique used by Malian fighters.
Recent attacks on churches have killed about 20 people, and
a priest was kidnapped in March.
The European Union and member states have committed 8
billion euros ($9 billion) over six years to tackling poverty in
the region but so far, responses from Ouagadougou and the West
have been predominantly military.
The United Nations has spent a billion dollars a year since
2014 on a 15,000-strong peacekeeping force in Mali. Almost 200
members have been killed - its deadliest mission ever.
France has 4,500 troops stationed across the region. The
United States has set up drone bases, held annual training
exercises and sent 800 troops to the deserts of Niger. Led by
France, Western powers have provided funding and training to a
regional counter-terrorism force known as G5 Sahel made up of
soldiers from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania.
Despite all this, Islamist violence has spread to places
previously untouched by it, as tensions like those that first
kindled support for Dicko intensify.
"You have a solution that is absolutely militarised to a
problem that is absolutely political," said Rinaldo Depagne,
West Africa project director at International Crisis Group, an
independent think tank. "The security response is not addressing
these problems."
CYCLE OF ABUSE
The fact that a large number of recruits are Fulani has
triggered a backlash by other ethnic groups, and those who have
fled northern Burkina Faso say they had scant protection.
One woman said gunmen on motorbikes attacked her village,
Biguelel, last December. The gunmen accused her family of
colluding with "terrorists" simply because they were Fulani.
They torched her home and shot her husband and dozens of others
dead, but she escaped.
The next day the woman, Mariam Dicko, and about 40 others
went to a military police post in the nearby town of Yirgou.
"They said it was over now, so they couldn't help us," said
Dicko - a common surname in the country.
Kanou, the military police commander, acknowledged that
troops were sometimes not present when needed. "But when patrols
are being attacked, it's more difficult," he added. "We have to
take measures to protect ourselves."
As Western forces rely increasingly on their Sahel partners,
rights groups and residents say they sometimes overlook abuses
by locals. Four witnesses described to Reuters summary
executions of suspected insurgents during search operations.
These included an incident in the village of Belhoro on Feb. 3,
in which security forces ordered nine men out of their homes and
shot them dead, according to two women who saw the killings.
New York-based Human Rights Watch documented 19 such
incidents in a report in March, during which it says 116 men and
boys were captured and killed by security forces. The government
said the army is committed to human rights and is investigating
the allegations. "In our struggle there will necessarily be
innocent victims, not because we want to, but because we are in
a tough zone," Kanou said. U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young said
America takes up any "mistakes" with the government.
In November 2018, Burkinabe forces raided the village home
of a lab technician at a clinic in Djibo, accusing his
60-year-old father of being a terrorist, two friends of his told
Reuters.
They killed the father in front of his son.
The following week, the technician, Jibril Dicko, didn't
show up for work. His phone went dead.
Neighbours said he had gone to join the jihad.