Soldiers, auxiliaries, civilians: in Burkina Faso, deadly raids attributed to jihadists are increasing. This weekend, no less than 10 soldiers and 32 civilian army auxiliaries were killed in two attacks in the north of the country. A "military detachment and Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP, civilian auxiliaries of the army) was the target of an attack by unidentified armed men", around 4 p.m., near Aorema, at a fifteen kilometers from Ouahigouya, informs a press release from the governorate of the North region, published on Sunday. "The provisional assessment of this attack" amounts to 40 dead, "including 6 soldiers and 34 VDP", to which are added "33 wounded in stable condition [...] currently being cared for at the Ouahigouya regional university hospital center “, capital of the North region.
The army affirms that "the balance sheet is forty combatants" dead ("eight soldiers and thirty-two VDP") and adds that "at least 50 terrorists" were "neutralized" in a "response" including aerial army. Sunday, "early in the morning", "another attack targeted the military detachment of Kongoussi (Bam province, Center-North region)", indicates the same source, which reports "two soldiers" killed and a "twenty neutralized terrorists".
Last week, 44 civilians were killed in an attack on two villages in northeastern Burkina, near the Niger border. The violence left more than 10,000 dead – civilians and soldiers – according to NGOs, and some two million displaced.
It is in this context that the transitional authorities - who came to power in a coup in September, the second in eight months - have launched the "general mobilization" of the whole country to face the jihadist attacks which are striking and regularly mourn the country of upright men since 2015. This decision opens the possibility of requisitioning people.
After having initiated a massive recruitment of VDP, acquired significant air combat resources, then launched a call for contributions for the war effort, the military in power lacked a legal framework to follow through on their logic of military offensive. Concretely, the authorities will have in particular "the right to require people, goods and services, the right to subject to control and distribution of resources for supply" and "the right to call for defense employment, as individual or collective".
"It is above all through this decree to give a legal, legal framework to all the actions to be implemented to deal with the situation in Burkina Faso", indicates a press release from the presidency. "Faced with the security situation facing Burkina Faso, the salvation of the Nation depends on a national outburst of all the daughters and sons in order to find a solution", affirmed the Minister of Defense and Veterans Affairs, Colonel-Major Kassoum Coulibaly.
“General mobilization makes certain defense measures applicable throughout the territory. It leads to a state of emergency in the parts of the territory concerned," a high-ranking security source told AFP. In the same week, a new army chief, Colonel-Major Célestin Simporé, was appointed and said he wanted to step up the offensive to force the jihadists to "lay down their arms".
In February, the transitional president, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, expressed his "intact determination" to fight the jihadists, despite the increase in attacks. According to the law on the organization of national defense, "in the event of danger threatening the security and territorial integrity, the security of institutions and that of populations, the Head of State may, in addition to the state of exception, decree for all or part of the national territory: warning, state of emergency, general mobilization". In December, Ibrahim Traoré, had seized the Constitutional Council for the taking of this decree and had obtained a favorable opinion. In the referral letter consulted by AFP, Captain Traoré invokes "serious threats to the institutions of Faso, the independence of the Nation, the integrity of the national territory".
The Ministry of Defense has already launched an operation dubbed "Empty Attics", calling on all military personnel in the country, active or retired, to donate their uniforms for the soldiers currently in the field. Attacks targeting soldiers and civilians have multiplied in recent months, mainly in the north and east of the country, bordering Mali and Niger.
