More than 210 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in Niger since General Abdourahamane Tchiani's putsch on July 26; 4,100 in Burkina Faso since Captain Ibrahim Traoré's own putsch in September 2022; and almost 5,000 in Mali since the coup d'état in May 2021 that brought Colonel Assimi Goïta to power. The findings of the NGO The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) are alarming.
In the Sahel, the growing number of attacks carried out by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (or Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, JNIM) and its rival The Islamic State – Sahel Province (ISSP) have brutally contradicted the putschists' propaganda on the growing power of their respective armies, and brought them face to face with their unfulfilled promises. The three officers in power in Bamako, Ouagadougou and Niamey had ousted their predecessors by denouncing their incompetence in the fight against the jihadists. Since their respective arrivals at the heads of their States, it has to be said that they have done no better than the civilian or military powers they replaced.
In Niger, where the junta had succeeded in securing the withdrawal of the French army, with which it was fighting the armed Islamists, at least 60 soldiers were killed on October 2 in the Tahoua region (central Niger) by ISSP, according to several sources. In Mali, where the transitional government had launched an offensive against the separatist ex-rebels in the north of the country in August, JNIM has been attacking army positions every week. The latest attacks were on October 4 and 6 in the vicinity of Tabankort and Anefif, on the outskirts of the Kidal region, where, according to a communiqué from the jihadist group, a number of members of the Malian Armed Forces (FAMA) and their allies from the paramilitary group Wagner were killed in two explosive attacks.
Burkina Faso, which has enlisted tens of thousands of auxiliaries, Volontaires pour la Défense de la Patrie (Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland) (VDP), has managed neither to regain territories lost to the jihadists, nor to stabilize the situation in Ouagadougou, where Traoré has been challenged within the ranks, as witnessed by the recent arrests of several officers suspected of fomenting a coup d'état. One of them was even fatal: on October 8, Major Ismaël Touhogobou was killed at his home in the capital, following an "arrest that went wrong," according to the military prosecutor's office.
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