Islamic militant attacks intensifying in region

DAKAR, Senegal — Assaya Ngweba says Islamic extremists transformed his oncepeaceful village in Burkina Faso, near the border with Mali, into “a place of misfortune and death.”

Now the 78yearold is among half a million people who have fled the area this year as the extremists linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State increase attacks and expand their range in West Africa. Concerted military actions by five regional countries, along with a French operation, have failed to stem the violence.

The border between Burkina Faso and Mali is the latest flash point in the vast, arid Sahel region that stretches across Africa south of the Sahara Desert. In the past week, at least 19 civilians have been killed by suspected extremists in Burkina Faso’s north.

The extremists have launched deadly assaults against the regional G5 Sahel counterterror force set up in 2017 with soldiers from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

The worst occurred earlier this month when al Qaedalinked fighters attacked two army bases in central Mali, killing at least 38 soldiers and leaving more than a dozen missing.

The attack in Boulikessi “was devastating for the military in terms of morale and strategic impact because it laid bare the jihadists’ strength in that crucial border region which is a bridge to Islamist expansion further south,” said Human Rights Watch’s West Africa associate director, Corinne Dufka.

Mali’s military had been trying to repair relations with Boulikessi’s wary population after a 2018 incident in which soldiers opened fire and killed civilians, a common abuse of power in both Mali and Burkina Faso, Dufka said.

Such actions by security forces push disaffected youth into the arms of extremists, experts say. Human Rights Watch has documented at least 200 executions since 2017 by Burkina Faso’s forces of civilians suspected of supporting or harboring extremists.

The U.N.Development Program has said 71% of former recruits to extremist groups interviewed across Africa for a 2017 report pointed to the arrest, detention or killing of a family member or friend as a key driver of their path to extremism.

Mali’s security forces leave many responsibilities in the central and northern regions to international forces including the United Nations peacekeeping mission and France’s Operation Barkhane, while turning a blind eye to armed militias, said Judd Devermont, Africa program director with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Extremists then exploit intercommunal conflict.

The most formidable of the extremist groups is Jama’at Nusrat alIslam wal Muslimeen, the Malibased branch of al Qaeda and a multiethnic coalition, Devermont said.