Burkina: civilians fear reprisals after Jnim threats against VDPs
A recruitment for the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP) in Ouagadougou, November 16, 2022. © Olympia de Maismont / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
While the recruitment drive for the Volunteers for Homeland Defense (VDP) has been successful, civilians taking part in it risk paying the price.
Earlier this week, the jihadists of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (Jnim) threatened, in a video published earlier this week, to attack the villages of the new VDPs, numbering 90,000 according to the government figures.
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In the video, the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (Jnim) warns:
civilians who help the authorities
will endanger their villages.
The terrorist group announces the continuation of the blockade of cities in the north of the country, as well as its extension to the rest of the territory.
Threats taken seriously by Binta Sidibe Gascon, vice-president of the Kisal observatory, an NGO present in the Sahel:
“
A few days ago, however, young people were arrested on the axis of Fada by terrorists, because they were accused of having responded to the
recruitment of the VDP
.
Until then, the attacks were mainly on state symbols.
But there, they will attack the civilians.
The all-military cannot work, we really have to tackle the root causes of this Sahelian crisis, move towards development projects, move towards discussion, dialogue, in areas where the State is completely absent.
»
For Jules César Wangre, president of the Citizen Union for Change - a civil society organization -
the VDPs represent an innovative solution
to fight against terrorism.
The rest is just intimidation:
“
There are civilians who were massacred
before the VDPs were enlisted
.
So this question, from this angle, does not hold much.
Intimidation does not work and cannot lead one and the other to give up the reconquest of the national territory.
The regime that is there is there to
experiment with new ways
of approaching this war, which is asymmetrical.
»
Contacted by RFI, neither the General Staff nor the spokesperson for the Burkinabè government responded to our request.
►
To read also:
More than 5,700 schools closed in Burkina Faso due to insecurity
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Burkina Faso
Terrorism
Defense
Ibrahim Traore