The keys to the war that shook Southeast Asia are in the conflict that grips countries like Burkina Faso and Mali
It doesn’t smell of napalm in the morning in the Sahel, the smell of victory for Lieutenant Colonel Killroy, nor are cities attacked as ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ resounds, although, curiously enough, Wagner is also present in his savannas and sandbanks. , especially in Burkina Faso and Mali. Well, yes, like in the famous ‘Apocalypse Now’ series, there are attacks on cities and lots and lots of helicopters. “It’s the only way to travel between cities because the insecurity over land is total,” said Eugenio Jover, a missionary from Valladolid, who lives in Burkina Faso. A huge conflict is taking place without borders or defined fronts. However, the governments of the sub-Saharan region are withdrawing in the face of the Islamist militias and the advance of the radicals is imposing a new social and political scenario.
The Spanish priest remains in the country that is suffering from the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The NGO Manos Unidas supports their presence in a situation that continues to deteriorate. “I live 100 kilometers from the capital, in a quiet area, although the reality is that the government does not control more than a third of the country,” he explains, as a sign of widespread desperation, he assures that the natives have lost their smiles . “There is a feeling of utter helplessness,” he claims. To date, two million people have been displaced by the conflict and endure the rainy season with little shelter from the trees.
It is not easy to explain what is happening. The image of a Salafist guerrilla spreading like an oil slick across the African continent does not correspond to reality. “This is not a religious problem, this is much more complex,” Jover warns. The conflict refers to the turbulent history of the Sahel, a swath bordering the Sahara to the north and the Sudanese savanna to the south, stretching more than 5,000 kilometers west-east to the Red Sea and all the continent.
Some of the countries that have part of their territory in this strip – Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Ethiopia, among others – are artificial entities with weak governments and burdened by a dictatorial past, when every protest was fiercely suppressed by the army. The democratization efforts in Burkina Faso, always unsuccessful, have not been able to limit the autonomy of the military, a state within the state, favored by impunity. Violence is a pattern of internal policy. Now it’s aggravated and generalized.
There have been two coups in 2022 alone, one in January and the other on September 30, in which interim president Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was ousted for his inability to face an Islamic insurgency. Damiba had come to power just eight months earlier with another ‘putsch’. Captain Ibrahim Traore took over as interim leader.
The Sahel’s parallels with Vietnam are evident. The French have left Mali, as they did in Indochina after their defeat by the communists. Ten years ago, the Elysée managed to stop the Islamist offensive in the north, but it is aware that aid to the government will not lead to victories over the jihadists because corruption is ruining their efforts. Operation Barkhane has been wound up in a gloomy atmosphere.
South Vietnam was a Gruyere cheese that crumbled under the subversive action of the ubiquitous Viet Cong guerrillas. The Sahel is following a similar course. Jihadist expansion has moved from north to south and last July there was a car bomb attack on the main barracks on the outskirts of Bamako, the Malian capital.
The war against radicals has hit Mali for ten years and broke out in Burkina Faso in 2015. The progress of the war in this second is dazzling and its effects exacerbate those caused by climate change. The numbers are overwhelming. Two million residents, a tenth of the population, have fled their homes, three and a half million people are without food and 630,000 are on the brink of famine. “And no one will come to save them,” laments the priest.
The military coups in both countries show the inability of their weak democracies to stop the war, another circumstance that arose in South Vietnam and Cambodia. Despair in the face of the government’s inability explains the popular support for the uprisings. The coup plotters promised a firm hand. But it is not feasible. Months later, they open a dialogue with the enemy.
Fear reigns in the field. There is hunger, hatred and a desire for revenge that has sedimented for decades. Mali’s military leadership instigated terror with its policy of repression against the Arabs and the Tuaregs, the desert men who inhabit the northern region and who demand independence or autonomy from Bamako. The 1963 uprising was crushed by troops who used summary executions, cattle slaughter and source poisoning to subdue the rebels. Diby Silas Diarra, Kidal’s butcher, was one of the architects of this operation. Six years later, he was arrested for conspiracy to commit a coup and imprisoned in a salt mine where he was beaten to death by the brother of a Tuareg who had died in that uprising.
Revenge was embedded in the minds of the so-called blue men. The army, aware of its logistical limitations, promoted the creation of militias from other tribes against the Tuareg, in the case of the Ganda Iso of the Shongay community. The Islamists’ subsequent outburst has multiplied the rise of popular tribal-feeling self-defense groups such as the Dan Na Amba Sagou, the Hunters Who Trust in God, the Dogon People, or the Sahel Salvation Alliance, which originated within the fulani. Far from promoting peace, the proliferation of militias has served to fuel old feuds and provoke a trail of massacres.
Terror was also a very effective tool for the Viet Cong. The indiscriminate attacks, the planting of mines on the roads and the torture and murder of officials created insecurity in rural areas deprived of state protection. The locals bowed to the communists and later fell victim to the South Vietnamese army. Mali residents have also relented and sought compromises with radicals from the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), the Katiba Macina or the Islamic State of the Great Sahara. “These are not good agreements”, laments the religious from La Mancha, Ángela García, from Segou, in the center of the country, also supported by Manos Unidas. “They break for whatever reason and the guerrillas are responding with massacres.”
Making a pact with the devil has never been free. The Indians are Muslim-majority and Maliki rite, flexible to the local tradition of animist roots, and must adopt the rigorous interpretation of Sharia. As revealed by the independent agency The New Humanitarian, the radios are turned off and the women take on the stern veil when the guerrillas arrive, administering justice and collecting taxes in exchange for protection. But there is no stability, preferences vary and disagreements are constantly taking place. In addition, villages under Islamist control are victims of government attacks and often do not receive humanitarian aid.
The Burkinabé scenario is similar. More than 2,000 schools and hundreds of pharmacies have been closed. “The military is on the defensive. There are massive hirings, but there is a lack of training and motivation,” explains Jover, pointing out that misery fuels conflict. “Insecurity has led to banditry, looting and cattle rustling.” In addition, the militia members have found acolytes among unemployed youth, often of Peul or Fulani descent, children of shepherds who are deeply affected by the disappearance of pastures and the conflict with farmers. “They are nomads and are severely discriminated against, like the gypsies in Spain in the last century.”
Self-defense groups such as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland were also established in Burkina Faso, but today those who still resist in their villages seek harmony with the leaders of Ansarul Islam or the Islamic State. Until September 30, the ruling military junta had changed its discourse in the country where Spanish journalists David Beriain and Roberto Fraile were murdered last year. The Ouagadougou regime favored dialogue, but recently took command.
Changing the way of doing politics can be another way to tackle the problem. Former President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger, another country hit by the jihadist phenomenon, was awarded the Mo Ibrahim Prize last year, which recognizes good governance. In recent times, the ruling class of this country has promoted inclusive measures for the various national ethnic groups and prevented the creation of armed gangs of a tribal nature. The violence is less, but it doesn’t stop either. The Sahel is at a crossroads. “There are attacks and casualties every day,” Jover complains. “Even if there is negotiation, there are no immediate solutions to be found.”
A thousand suspected Russian instructors arrived in Bamako last December to train troops and secure the political elite. Many had gained the experience in Ukraine, Syria, Libya or the Central African Republic and soon went into battle with the radicals. The use of fortune soldiers has been banned on the continent since 1985, the year the Convention on the Elimination of Mercenarism was signed, but the spoils are too greedy for their continued interference in the most diverse scenarios, from Equatorial Guinea to the Comoros Islands.
According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, Russian professionals are an instrument of the Kremlin’s expansionism in the region. The recent African tour of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov demonstrates this primary interest in areas rich in natural resources and thus lacking in protection. This is no newcomer to the political scene. The same entity showed footage of campaigns leading up to the coup by a group called the Mali Patriots Group, which protested the democratic government and demanded cooperation with Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Wagner’s interference has further complicated the war picture and led to accusations of massive human rights violations. Russia already has its own My Lai, the massacre of civilians by American troops in a Vietnamese village. Between March 27 and 31, his troops occupied the city of Moura, in central Mali, and are said to have executed some 300 civilians. There are no witnesses or reports about it. The army blocked the entry of Minusma, the UN mission for the African country, and Russia vetoed an independent investigation proposal from the Security Council.
Source: La Verdad
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