Burkina Faso is a West African country and former French colony. It has been ruled since 2022 by Ibrahim Traoré, who seized power in a coup. The country is struggling to quell a jihadist insurgency.
Russia is a close ally. The Africa Initiative, a Kremlin-linked media outlet staffed by ex-Wagner Group operatives, has an office in the country. Russia is suspected of running troll farms that boost Traoré's image online, using a mix of authentic and AI-generated deepfake video clips to portray him as a pan-Africanist revolutionary. Wagner once had a budget of $35,000 per month for social-media influencers in the Sahel.
Traoré's face appears on T-shirts and flags in neighbouring countries such as Ghana. His criticisms of the West, particularly of France, resonate widely across the continent. General disillusion with democracy and rising support for military rule can be seen across Africa, according to Afrobarometer.
The country has a population of 24m. The first jihadist attacks on Burkinabè soil came in 2015. Under Ibrahim Traoré, who launched a "total war" against the jihadists after seizing power, targeting civilians has become an essential component of the counter-insurgency strategy, according to a report by Human Rights Watch published on April 2nd 2026. The report documents 57 attacks between 2023 and 2025, with more than 1,800 civilian victims, the majority killed by government forces rather than by JNIM. HRW concluded that the events amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
A greatly expanded role for the Volunteer Defence Forces (VDPs) is central to the strategy. In 2022 some 50,000 new recruits joined these militias—more than double the number of troops in the official army. Poorly trained and drawn mostly from the Mossi, the most populous and powerful ethnic group, the VDPs have accelerated the ethnicisation of the violence. Reprisal killings have proliferated: villages spared by jihadists are targeted by VDPs, and villages with VDPs are targeted by jihadists.
The junta also stands accused of a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Fulani, a nomadic and often marginalised group scattered across west Africa. In 2023 Traoré met Fulani leaders and called on them to "acknowledge that the epicentre of terrorism is in Fulani localities", warning the alternative would be "a lot of deaths". Since then the army and VDPs have attacked Fulani communities, forcing residents from their homes and looting their property. Social media are awash with anti-Fulani vitriol.
Mali and Niger, Burkina Faso's neighbours, are also run by juntas that have enlisted civilian militias against JNIM. But since 2022 the worst massacres against civilians have been in Burkina Faso, perhaps because it is the most densely populated of the three, meaning civilians are more likely to be caught in the crossfire. The government says the HRW report is false and its only purpose is to "demonise" the army.
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which quit ECOWAS in January 2025, are among the worst offenders in Africa's turn to protectionism. The government forces traders to source food such as fish locally before they are allowed to import. Restrictions on shea-nut exports, designed to boost domestic nut-processing, have closed factories in Ghana and Ivory Coast.
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