Security strategy of recruiting cheap militiamen backfires in Africa

Ouangolodougou: They were falling asleep on a thin mat that they had been sharing since they were married five years ago. Suddenly, the roar of motorcycles woke them up. Armed men then dragged Rainatou Diallo and her husband, Adama Diallo, out of bed and into their courtyard.

Without a word, the men shot Adama Diallo dead. As Rainatou Diallo fled the village, one of many engulfed by violence in Burkina Faso, she recognised her husband’s masked killers: They were neighbors.

Burkina Faso, a nation that once prided itself on tolerance and peaceful interethnic relations, is now home to one of the deadliest conflicts in West Africa. Since the current military leader, Capt Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in a coup in 2022, he has escalated a war against Islamic insurgents that has now killed tens of thousands of people and displaced nearly 3 million others.

To beef up the ranks of his embattled military, Traoré’s government recruited tens of thousands of men into a civilian militia, known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. The militia was created by a previous leader to protect communities against the insurgents. But under Traoré, it has spread unchecked violence and pitted local populations against one another, with minority ethic groups being brutally targeted in what some analysts fear will lead to a civil war.

Acts of violence against local populations involving militiamen have more than doubled since Traoré’s coup, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. The militiamen have carried out executions, forced disappearances or looting every six days on average, the data shows.

Arming civilians who have poor training and little respect for human rights and then giving them near total impunity is not unique to Burkina Faso.

In northeast Nigeria, members of a civilian militia assisting the country’s fight against Boko Haram have been accused of sexual violence, child recruitment and summary executions. In Sudan, the militia known as the Rapid Support Forces triggered a war that has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

In each case, the strategy of using a civilian militia to augment military power has backfired, deepening a spiral of violence that further endangers the local population and fuels interethnic tensions.

Like Rainatou Diallo, most of the three dozen refugees interviewed by The New York Times during a recent 500-mile trip in neighboring Ivory Coast, near the Burkina Faso border, said that the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, or VDP, had forced them to flee by evicting them or killing their relatives.

“They had been attacking other villages, so we knew our turn would come,” Diallo, 32, said on a recent morning in the town of Ouangolodougou, in northern Ivory Coast.

Burkina Faso’s government did not respond to a request for comment.

Nearly 150,000 people have fled Burkina Faso to four neighboring countries since last year. Ivory Coast has accommodated the largest number of them, about 65,000, in government-run asylum centers and host communities.

Because most of the al-Qaida-affiliated insurgents waging a war in Burkina Faso are from the Fulani ethnic group, Fulani civilians have often been accused of collaborating with the jihadis and are disproportionately targeted by the militia. Researchers have described the militia’s violence — and the state’s complicity in it — as “a public policy.”

There is a direct connection between the scaling up of the VDP under Traoré and the “targeting of Fulani populations and the massive influx of refugees in Ivory Coast,” said Jean-Baptiste Zongo, an independent security analyst from Burkina Faso living in Ivory Coast.

Refugees in Ivory Coast shared memories of abuses they faced “on the other side,” speaking in whispers that were muted by rain battering iron roofs. Housseinou and Hassan Ly, twin brothers and teachers of the Quran, said they had fled northern Burkina Faso in September 2023 after civilian militiamen abducted their uncle and killed their brother on the side of the road.

“Our country is in crisis, and the current authorities think that giving people weapons to kill an entire group is the solution,” said Ali Barry, 30, a Fulani nurse who said he fled his village in December 2022 after militiamen executed several neighbors and his brother.

Leaders of host communities, humanitarian workers and local authorities in Ivory Coast have corroborated the testimonies of the refugees. But the influx in northern Ivory Coast, the country’s poorest area, is testing its celebrated spirit of “Akwaba,” or hospitality.

“Right or wrong, the asylum-seekers, who are mostly Fulani, are stigmatized,” said Paulin Yéwé, a security and defense adviser in Ivory Coast who works for the president and oversees the accommodation of refugees in the north.

Even in the relative safety of Ivory Coast, refugees live in dire conditions. The World Food Program has halved a monthly stipend — to $7.50 from $15 per registered refugee in Ivory Coast — because of dwindling funds. Most refugee children do not go to school.

“We were initially afraid because there were so many of them,” said Fabaraka Ouattara, chief of Linguékoro, a village in Ivory Coast that has accommodated about 300 refugees. “They said they were fleeing war, but we didn’t know whether they were coming with weapons.”

On a recent morning, Diallo prepared okra and cassava dough in a home in Ivory Coast rented by her father, who fled Burkina Faso this year with 12 other family members. He rents the home for about $20 a month.

“We lived together, our kids were going to school together,” Diallo said about life in Burkina Faso before local men began joining the militia. Once they joined the VDP, she said, neighbors stopped greeting Fulani families. Then the raids and the killings started.

Diallo’s father, Sékou Diallo, said the militiamen were increasingly targeting other ethnic groups, too, such as the Mossis and Lobis. “They would come at night. We’d wake up in the morning and a man would have disappeared — Fulani or not,” he said.

Rainatou Diallo lowered her head as her father spoke. She did not bury her husband because she could not go back to her village without risking death. She touched a delicate ring, the only remaining token of their love, she said.