Several in-depth reports have come out recently looking at jihadism in central Mali and Burkina Faso, as well as a much-discussed article that focuses on Peul/Fulani identity in those areas and across West Africa. Here are some excerpts:
Philip Kleinfeld, IRIN, “In Central Mali, Rising Extremism Stirs Inter-Communal Conflict.”
Before the emergence of jihadism, the social fabric in central Mali was already fragile. For decades weak governance and competition over land and water caused lingering conflicts between the Fulani pastoralists, who move their herds across the region, and largely sedentary Dogon, Bambara, and Songhai farming communities.
[…]
Convinced the state cannot protect them, traditional Dogon hunters, known as Dozos, have decided to fill the void themselves, forming a new self-defence militia they call Dana Amassagou, which translates roughly as, “hunters in God’s hands”.
The group is responsible for a string of indiscriminate attacks on Fulani civilians and is alleged to have received weapons and training from the Malian government. Fellow Dozos from the Ivory Coast and Niger are also believed to have joined their ranks.
Support from the Dogon community itself is mixed however, with many accounts of Dogon chiefs and civilians protecting their Fulani neighbours against the hunters.
France24: “In Burkina Faso, the Terrorist Threat Is Spreading to the East.”
A forest region bordering Ghana, Togo, Benin and Niger, eastern Burkina Faso has long been regarded as a bastion of organised crime. Thanks to the central government’s neglect of the region, self-defence militias known as “koglweogo” have become the guarantors of security for the local population. And thanks to the dense forests and the lack of adequate road networks, the area is practically inaccessible for national security forces. Thus, eastern Burkina Faso is fertile ground for jihadists.
[…]
A response from the Burkinabé government is long overdue. In a memo on the security situation in the east, relayed by local media, the regional police chief Commissioner Karim Drabo warned that “if security forces do not respond vigorously, the attackers will have time to settle and to spread IEDs throughout the areas they have occupied […] and they are gaining ground”.
And, finally, Dougoukolo Alpha Oumar Ba-Konaré of the human rights organization Kisal recently published a commentary piece at The Conversation (French). I’ve translated the first paragraph below.
The Peul are currently attracting attention because some of them are instrumentalized by fundamentalist groups seeking to implant themselves at the local level in the Sahel. The jihadist terror creates social distress among the other communities in the affected zones, making the Peul the scapegoats due to their supposed historical affinities with radical Islam. Peul identity thus appears as a bogeyman symbolizing the jihadist threat. However, this identity is too heterogeneous to create such a simple link.
Sahel Blog 