Burkina Faso’s government is committing war crimes

The order given in December 2023 was “to enter the hive and eat the warriors’ honey”. The previous month jihadists had attacked a military base in northern Burkina Faso. In response, the national army and civilian members of the volunteer defence forces (known as VDPs, from their French acronym) rampaged through at least 16 nearby villages and hamlets. Hundreds of civilians were killed; many were simply rounded up and gunned down. Survivors spoke of “butchery”. The Burkinabè government hailed it as a success.

The operation was just one of many atrocities committed by government forces and their allies between 2023 and 2025, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), a pressure group. The report, published on April 2nd, concludes that the events amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the dominant jihadist group in Africa’s Sahel region, is implicated. But most of the 1,800 or more civilian victims of the 57 attacks documented by HRW were killed by government forces (see chart). The junta led by Ibrahim Traoré, Burkina Faso’s brutal but charismatic president, also stands accused of a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Fulani ethnic minority. The government says the report is false and its only purpose is to “demonise” the army.

Government soldiers have conducted a “scorched-earth counter-terrorism strategy” ever since the first jihadist attacks on Burkinabè soil in 2015, says Corinne Dufka, an independent Sahel expert. But under Mr Traoré, who seized power in a coup in 2022 and swiftly launched a “total war” against the jihadists, targeting civilians “has become an essential component of the strategy”, argues Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, one of the report’s authors. This is pushing more of the population into the arms of the jihadists and thereby undermining the junta’s central justification for holding power.

Mr Traoré’s counter-insurgency strategy has two elements. The first is a greatly expanded role for the VDPs. In 2022 some 50,000 new recruits joined these militias, more than double the number of troops in the official army, notes Ulf Laessing, an expert on the Sahel at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Germany. Poorly trained, and drawn mostly from ethnic groups such as the Mossi, the most populous and most powerful community in the country of 24m, the VDPs are “accelerating the ethnicisation of the violence”, says Franklin Nossiter of the International Crisis Group, a global think-tank. Reprisal killings have proliferated. “If a village is spared by the jihadists…[it] is targeted by the VDPs and the military,” one Burkinabè refugee told HRW. “And if…a village has VDPs, this village is targeted by jihadists.”

The second is the deliberate targeting of Fulanis. A nomadic and often marginalised ethnic group scattered across west Africa, Fulanis are widely accused of supporting insurgents. When Mr Traoré met some of their leaders in 2023 he reportedly called on them to “acknowledge that the epicentre of terrorism is in Fulani localities” and to do more to distance themselves from JNIM. The alternative, he warned, would be “a lot of deaths”. Since then, according to HRW, the army and VDPs have attacked Fulani communities, forcing residents from their homes and looting their property. Social media are awash with anti-Fulani vitriol.

None of this is unique to Burkina Faso. Mali and Niger, its neighbours, are also run by juntas. Both have enlisted civilian militias in their battle against JNIM. Yet since 2022 the worst massacres against civilians have been in Burkina Faso, says Ilaria Allegrozzi of HRW. This may be because it is the most densely populated, meaning civilians are more likely to be caught in the crossfire. But it is probably also because of the junta’s popular indoctrination and conscription, which have meant that many people have a stake in the violence.

None of this is reducing the threat from jihadism. JNIM in Burkina Faso is growing faster than elsewhere, notes Ms Dufka. In some places it acts increasingly like a state. Yet this looks unlikely to damage Mr Traoré’s regime. The jihadists remain far from taking the capital and his scorched-earth strategy still looks popular outside areas affected by it. Hence civilians will continue to suffer both the attacks of jihadists and the army’s attempts to fight them. ■