Burkina Faso is in mourning. On Tuesday December 24, he suffered the deadliest attack since the start of the jihadist violence five years ago. In the commune of Arbinda, located in Soum, in the north, near the Malian border, 35 civilians, including 31 women, and seven soldiers were killed.
For Jérôme Pigné, French specialist in terrorism in West Africa at the Thomas More Institute, this increase in insecurity is explained by the evolution of the terrorists' strategy. If he notes "targeting at the level of representatives of the authorities in the Soum region", he also notes "an aggravation of violence on the ground vis-à-vis the civilian populations."
An analysis shared by Siaka Coulibaly, Burkinabè political scientist specializing in security issues. "Until now, the main targets of armed groups have been the symbols of the state, such as civil servants, the military or the gendarmes. But today, they are turning more and more towards civilians," he notes. he.
The tactics of the terrorists have changed and they do not hesitate to attack civilians and the military, as in the attack on Arbinda. "While the (military) detachment came under heavy fire, another group of armed individuals attacked the civilian population, mainly women, including displaced persons who had taken refuge in Arbinda," said a military source. to AFP.
Attack civilians to prevent them from collaborating
It is not the first time that the population has been massively hit by terrorist attacks. In early November, 37 civilians were killed in the attack on a bus carrying workers from the Semafo mine in eastern Burkina Faso. And almost a month earlier, armed individuals stormed a mosque in Salmossi, in the north of the country. They killed 16 people, all of the Muslim faith, and injured two.
In total, since 2015, jihadist attacks in Burkina have left more than 700 dead and around 560,000 displaced and refugees, according to the United Nations.
>> To read: In Burkina Faso, "the jihadists attack the army to refuel with weapons and ammunition"
This assessment is explained in particular by a growing imbalance between the power of armed groups and the plight of civilians. Jérôme Pigné describes "increasingly sophisticated" attacks. "The armed groups carry out very focused operations because they are well informed," he said. "When they attack a barracks, a camp or a village, they manage to organize themselves to take the populations or the barracks of the security forces by surprise."
Attacking civilians is also a way to silence or scare them. "The terrorists are surely afraid of seeing populations collaborating with the state or with the intelligence services," specifies Jérôme Pigné.
Because the support of the civilian population in defense is rather widespread in the Sahel countries. "It's a good intelligence system that lets you know what's going on from the inside," says Siaka Coulibaly.
A majority of women among the victims
Arbinda's attack also raises the issue of women, who represent the majority of the victims. For Siaka Coulibaly, it is unlikely that they were particularly targeted. "This does not correspond to the operating modes of these armed groups," he explains. "Women are not armed and they are vulnerable so traditionally they do not attack them in the first place."
Jérôme Pigné also thinks that these women are collateral victims. "In this region, there are a lot of displaced people, who are often women and children," explains the researcher. "The fact that they fled their area of origin and that they are women makes them the first victims of this situation of insecurity".
>> Read: Louis Magloire Keumayou: "Armed groups strike where they feel they have fertile ground"
To protect civilians, Burkina Faso has chosen to directly involve its population in the fight against terrorism. After the November 6 attack on a bus, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, President of Burkina Faso, "ordered the recruitment of volunteers for the defense of the homeland, in the areas under threat".
For the moment, the Burkinabé State has not communicated on the procedures for recruiting these volunteers. "We cannot say more for security and strategic reasons," a source close to the government told RFI. For Jérôme Pigné, this announcement testifies to the failure of Burkina Faso to secure its population. "This illustrates the disarray and the inability of this state to control these armed groups. Like all the Sahel states that are victims of terrorism, Burkina is at a loss," he said. "All of them lack human resources in the intelligence field."
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