On a Friday earlier this month, just as Dr. Daouda Diallo was leaving the passport office in the capital of the West African nation of Burkina Faso, four men grabbed him from the streetHe put him in a vehicle and left.
Dr. Diallo, a pharmacist turned human rights activist who had recently been received a prestigious award for his work in human rightsNothing has been heard from him since that day, December 1.
But four days later, a photograph of Dr. Diallo, 41, wearing a helmet and holding a Kalashnikov rifle, was posted on social media, apparently confirming his family and colleagues’ fears that he had been forcibly recruited into the army. Security forces had notified Dr. Diallo and a dozen other people active in public life in November that they would soon be recruited to help the government protect the country, according to local and international rights groups.
Then, on Christmas Eve, two men in civilian clothes rang the doorbell of Ablassé Ouedraogo, former foreign minister and opposition leader. They took him away and his whereabouts are unknown. according to Faso Autrement, his political party.
Burkina Faso, a previously stable, landlocked nation of 20 million people, has been torn apart over the past eight years by violence from extremist groups loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
In the chaos that followed, the country suffered two coups in just 10 months, the second last year by a military junta that vowed to contain militant groups by any means.
Dr. Diallo and Mr. Ouedraogo are among at least 15 people who have recently disappeared or been forcibly recruited, according to lawyers and human rights groups. The list includes journalists, civil society activists, an anesthesiologist and an imam, all of whom had criticized the junta for failing to defeat the insurgents and for abuses against the populations it was supposed to protect.
The military government, led by Captain Ibrahim Traoré, 35, has failed to deliver on its promise to restore stability. Violence has increased under his rule, diplomats, aid workers and analysts said. Burkina Faso has become the focus of the crisis in the Sahel region, a huge swath of land south of the Sahara that has been shaken by extremist uprisings and military coups.
About half of the country’s territory is now outside government control. Nearly five million people need humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations and aid agencies, and more than two million more have lost their homes and belongings. Local and international aid groups have accused both extremists and government-affiliated forces of massacring civilians.
“Burkina Faso is the epicenter of security challenges in West Africa,” Emanuela Del Re, the European Union’s special representative in the Sahel, said in an interview. “The situation is desperate and the population is paying the price.”
Burkina Faso, a former French colony, had long relied on the support of French troops to fight the insurgency. But after last year’s coup, Captain Traoré pledged to cut all ties with France, seen as a neocolonial power that has failed to contain extremists. Hundreds of French troops withdrew from the country earlier this year and the government has instead sought to forge an alliance with Russia, leading to speculation that the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group could begin operating. in the country.
Faced with a lack of resources, the military-led government issued a broad appeal to civilians to join the volunteer defense forces, promising them a stipend and two weeks of military training. He also announced an emergency “general mobilization” law, which gave the president broad powers, including recruiting people, requisitioning property, and restricting civil liberties.
“Burkina Faso’s military junta is using its emergency law, which gives them the ability to recruit and relocate people and assets, to silence and even punish their critics,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights. Watch. “This practice violates fundamental human rights.”
Burkina Faso’s military government did not respond to interview requests and declined to comment on the practice of forced recruitment.
The US State Department said in a statement on December 12 that he was concerned about the recent actions of the military government of Burkina Faso, “such as the increasing use of selective forced recruitment, the reduction of civic space and restrictions on political parties.”
He added: “These actions have the cumulative effect of silencing people who work on behalf of their country to promote democratic governance.”
While the emergency decree allows the government to recruit civilians over the age of 18, human rights groups said the selective application of the law violates fundamental human rights.
Three of the people who received recruitment notices at the same time as Dr. Diallo sued the government. In early December, a court in the capital Ouagadougou sided with them and said the orders were illegal. Despite the ruling, the three (two human rights activists, Rasmané Zinaba and Bassirou Badjo, and journalist Issaka Lingani) remain in hiding, fearing for their lives.
“We saw it coming for Daouda,” said Binta Sidibe-Gascon, president of Kisal Observatory, a human rights group, which comes from Burkina Faso but is now exiled in Paris, referring to Dr. Diallo, the pharmacist. “We told him: it is not safe for you to stay in the country. But he said the people there needed it.”
Earlier this year, Arouna Louré, an anesthesiologist from Ouagadougou, was recruited and sent to work as a military doctor in one of the most dangerous areas of the country after being criticized in a Facebook post. The army’s response to a jihadist attack..
“It is not only illegal, but cruel,” said Allegrozzi of Human Rights Watch. “It’s like: you have criticized the army. Now you will see for yourself what it is like and what it feels like to be a soldier.”
Several residents of Burkina Faso, including activists, journalists and analysts, refused to be interviewed, citing fear for their lives. “Whoever speaks against the junta disappears,” said one of them.
Most of the missing had been making data-supported criticisms about how the government’s reliance on an exclusively military strategy to defeat insurgents has backfired, analysts and aid workers said.
“Violence in Burkina Faso has reached an all-time high,” said Heni Nsaibia, senior analyst at Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks data on conflicts in Africa. “The number of fatalities from the conflict has skyrocketed.”
In places like the city of Djibo in the north, which has swelled from 60,000 to 300,000 people and has been under an ongoing lockdown for the past two years, residents have relied solely on supplies brought in by U.N.-operated humanitarian flights.
Many people, exhausted by the endless cycle of violence, have welcomed Mr Traore’s promise of safety. The streets of Ouagadougou have been decorated with Russian flags. The posters show images of soldiers and patriotic messages. The roundabouts are being patrolled by unofficial militias, nicknamed “Irissi, irissi”, or Russian in Moore, the local language of the main ethnic group, following rumors that they are being paid by Russia.
Fifty thousand people heeded the government’s call to volunteer for the military, which pays a monthly stipend of about $107, which is above the minimum wage and highly desirable in a country where regular income is rare. Some said they were also eager to contribute to the war effort.
Ouattara Fadouba, a musician, said he joined the volunteer forces earlier this year but has not yet been sent to the front. Instead, he is recording songs that praise the government.
“The country has been attacked by terrorists and I put myself at the disposal of the nation,” he said in a telephone interview from Ouagadougou. “If they call me to the front, I will go.”
But critics of the government’s all-military strategy refuse to be silenced. Mr. Louré, the anesthesiologist, was released from duty and returned home last week, after spending three months in military camps and on the front lines. The experience only reinforced his view that relying solely on the military to fight insurgents is the worst option.
“The more the state perpetuates violence, the more people will become frustrated and want to join terrorist groups,” he said.
