Burkina Faso: crisis over crisis
A month ago, two peul villages, Barga and Dinguila, in northern Burkina Faso, were attacked and more than 40 people died. The attackers were not identified, but could belong to self-defence groups who are against the Peuls, often linked and confused with Jihadists. In February, a terrorist attack killed 24 people attending a Protestant church service in the north of the country. A month earlier, in January, several armed men broke into another northern town and killed 39 people. And earlier that month, in another cycle of retaliatory attacks, again involving terrorists, self-described “self-defence” groups and peuls, the official death toll reached 46 - although some NGOs put it at more than a hundred. If you look, you find similar examples in November - an ambush on mine employees -, in December - a collective execution of women - and as many others.
In 2016, a violent jihadist group attacked a café-restaurant in Ouagadougou. Since then, the country has ceased to be the peaceful place it seemed to be five years ago, to face terrorist violence and others of different nature; especially in the north of the country, where the weakness of the State, poverty, and different groups with varied interests coexist. Attacks by terrorist groups have become all too frequent in Burkina Faso: against the army, against imams who oppose radical currents, in the villages... The radical Islamists began to take advantage of the discontent in the northern regions with ideas that were especially relevant to young and disadvantaged people. Interwoven with the issue of religion, the social discontent was and is that of the ethnic groups; at the center of the target, the Peul, a seminomadic village, mostly Muslim, burdened with ancestral conflicts with farmers over the use of land.
Clashes between enemy groups, the Army and its allies are causing many people to flee. While there were nearly 50,000 internally displaced persons in 2018, the recent upsurge in violence has led to many more people leaving their homes. UNHCR speaks of a “scenario of massive displacement of more than 838,000 people since January 2019” in Burkina Faso, contributing to a supply crisis in places that cannot support so many people. The UN agency reports the return of Malian refugees, not because the situation has improved in their places of origin, but because it is worse in Burkina Faso. According to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in some areas there is no longer enough water for everyone, medical systems are collapsed and there are food deficiencies. The problem is compounded by the fact that the Sahel region often experiences cyclical difficulties during the season beginning in June. The World Food Programme has warned that the jihadist and intercommunal violence that is hitting Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger will lead to a “dramatic increase” in the number of people suffering from hunger. It puts particular emphasis on Burkina Faso where 2.1 million people are expected to be food insecure compared to 680,000 last year.
And in this context comes the coronavirus, whose consequences and extent are uncertain in the country. The official figures remain at less than thirty deaths in mid-April caused by COVID-19, although given the difficult tracking of this disease, it is difficult to know whether or not they are in line with reality. The measures taken at state level are not few: closure of airports and borders, quarantine in the most relevant populations, suspension of school activities, prohibition of demonstrations, suspension of public transport... Another impact that has not been underestimated is the economic one. President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré has announced that the average growth rate of 6.3% in recent years will fall to 2% in 2020 because of the coronavirus. But the warning from humanitarian organizations is more heartbreaking: “The country lacks personnel trained in respiratory care, has inadequate supplies of protection for health personnel and insufficient health checkpoints at its land borders,” Norwegian Refugee Council spokesman Tom Peyre-Costa told Europa Press, where he also noted that there are only 500 beds and a small clinic to care for patients with COVID-19.
Attacks, whether in the name of jihad or not, continue, the number of displaced persons increases and conditions in displacement camps where water, space and health care are scarce providing the perfect storm for overlapping humanitarian and health crises.
