Africa Watch – Janus-faced

Burkina Faso’s military summarily executed 223 civilians, including at least 56 children, in a single day in late February, an investigation has alleged. The mass killings happened weeks after Russian troops landed in the country to help improve security. The massacre may amount to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported. However, Burkina Faso has said the HRW report alleging that soldiers were responsible for killing the villagers on 25 February made “baseless accusations.” Burkina Faso suspended the BBC and Voice of America radio networks for two weeks after they aired the report accusing the army of the attacks.

West African military forces battling Islamist insurgencies have, over the years, struggled to maintain discipline in their war against the Islamists. The alleged February massacre is the fourth of such killings since April 2023.

Frustrations with the development and pace of the counterterrorism efforts are sometimes the violence triggers as state officials routinely accuse civilians of collaborating with the insurgents. The tricky nature of these conflicts puts civilians in the crosshairs, locked between two parties looking to starve the other of a substantial support base. However, for a lot of the villages where these massacres take place, it is a fight for survival.

The state’s failure to control and police borders has made it possible for the insurgents to use border communities as transit hubs for food, fuel and ammunition. This failure has built up over the years following lip service to successive international agreements on stronger border policing. The states in peril, having kicked out French forces, have looked to complement efforts using Russian mercenaries whose connections to these atrocities are well documented.

In Mali, for instance, Human Rights Watch reported that Wagner forces (now known as Russia Africa Corps) killed at least five hundred people (most of them civilians) in Moura town, in the Mopti region of Mali, during operations against Al Qaeda affiliates in 2023, continuing a pattern seen in the Central African Republic, Libya and Mozambique.

Despite the increase in the frequency of these massacres, there does not seem to be any spirited attempt by the state to investigate the atrocities, as the Burkinabe information minister’s response has shown. That is depressing.