Jihadist strikes on Burkina Faso have shed light on West
Africa’s Achilles’ heel, experts say.
They point to a country whose security apparatus has
been battered by the ouster of a dictator with military
roots, and where poverty and unemployment provide
jihadists with fertile ground for recruitment.
Audacious twin attacks on Friday in the capital
Ouagadougou targeting the military headquarters and the
embassy of former colonial ruler France, sent
shockwaves through the region.
The strike on the military HQ appears to have been aimed
at a scheduled meeting of the so-called G5 Sahel — a
French-backed group of five countries fighting jihadism in
the volatile Saharan region.
Burkina Faso is the “soft underbelly” of the region, Paul
Koalaga, a professor of geopolitics and security expert
said.
“Burkina Faso has been fighting terrorists since 2015 — a
commitment that has been strengthened by the G5 Sahel
— and a riposte was just waiting to happen,” he said.
The country has been the target of jihadist attacks since
2015.
On August 13 last year, two assailants opened fire on a
restaurant on the capital’s main avenue, killing 19 people
and wounding 21. No one has so far claimed
responsibility.
On January 15, 2016, 30 people — including six
Canadians and five Europeans — were killed in a jihadist
attack on a hotel and restaurant in the city centre.
A February 21 attack near the border with Niger left two
French soldiers dead and a third injured in an area which
is believed to shelter jihadists.
Koalaga said Burkinabe authorities had failed to address
the threat, and now are trying “to deflect attention by
accusing officials from the old regime” — a reference to
Blaise Compaore, ousted in 2014 in a popular uprising
after 27 years of iron-fisted rule.
– Soldiers involved? –
“There are jihadist sleeper cells in African capitals and
the radicalisation of youths is spreading, especially in the
poor suburbs of Ouagadougou which have very high
unemployment rates,” he said.
Sources in Ougagadougou said that the attackers were
almost all from Burkina Faso.
Eight assailants and eight soldiers were killed and 85
people were injured, according to an updated government
toll issued on Tuesday.
Sixty-one of the injured were soldiers and 24 were
civilians — the first time that civilian casualties have been
mentioned..
“Burkina Faso’s intelligence system fell apart after the
fall of Blaise Compaore”, Koalaga said.
“In Burkina Faso, the intelligence system did not rest on
an institution but on the shoulders of one man, General
Gilbert Diendere,” said Rinaldo Depagne, a West Africa
expert from the International Crisis Group.
Diendere, Compaore’s right-hand man, is currently being
held and tried for a failed coup in 2015 aimed at bringing
his boss back to power.
Depagne said he did not rule out the possibility of some
soldiers being involved in the latest attack, an accusation
levelled by some Burkinabe authorities.
“We know that some of the 566 soldiers sacked after the
(anti-Compaore) riots of 2011 have joined jihadist
groups,” he said, adding that the dissolution of an ultra-
loyalist presidential praetorian guard had fuelled “lots of
frustration among soldiers.”
The latest attack shows that the militants are changing
tack and now targeting troops instead of civilians, said
Nicolas Desgrais from the University of Kent in
southeastern England, who is an expert on security issues
in West Africa.
Depagne said extremist violence in the region had flared
since France and Mali launched a crackdown on the
jihadist Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) in
Mali’s vast lawless desert north.
Koalaga said the GSIM, which claimed Friday’s attacks in
ouagadougou, staged a revenge strike in Burkina Faso
because it was vulnerable.
GSIM said it was a response to the deaths of some of its
leaders in a French army raid in northern Mali in February
in which 20 jihadists were either killed or captured,
according to French military sources.
Depagne, for his part, suggested Ouagadougou would
have to negotiate with jihadist groups or risk an
“interminable war, as in Somalia which has lasted for 27
years.”
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