Burkinabe junta’s security strategy of recruiting cheap militiamen backfires — NYT report

By arming civilians who are poorly trained and have little to no respect for human rights, Burkina Faso’s junta-led government has brought the West African nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations to the brink of civil war, says a latest report by The New York Times (NYT).
A West Africa correspondent for The New York Times, based in Dakar, Senegal, traveled across northern Ivory Coast to document the violence faced by nearly 150,000 people who fled neighboring Burkina Faso that, as he reports, is “now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa”. Since seizing power in a coup in 2022, the junta leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, has escalated a war against Islamist insurgents that has seen tens of thousands of people killed and nearly three million others displaced. To strengthen the country’s embattled military, the junta-led government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, who are tasked with protecting communities against the insurgents.
According to the NYT report, under Captain Traoré, the civilian militia has “spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against each other, with minority ethnic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.” Data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project show that acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Traoré’s coup. The militiamen are accused of having carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows. Burkina Faso’s government did not respond to a request for comment.