Daily Brief Audio Series
Facing Terror in Burkina Faso
The armed men arrived in the village on motorcycles and surrounded the Catholic church at about 9am. They stormed inside, ordered the women out, and started shooting at the men and boys who remained. Survivors say at least 12 were killed amid the gunmen’s shouts of “god is great.”
That day in February, the village of Essakane in the Sahel region of Burkina Faso joined a growing list of communities in the country terrorized by increasing Islamist violence.
A group called the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) later claimed responsibility for the Essakane attack. Witnesses from the village believed it was carried out in retaliation against Christians who refused to abandon their religion, despite an ISGS warning.
The ISGS is not the only armed Islamist group wreaking havoc in Burkina Faso. There’s also the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, known by the Arabic-derived abbreviation, JNIM.
Since entering Burkina Faso from neighboring Mali in 2016, the two Islamist groups have come to control large swathes of territory in Burkina Faso. In their fight against the government and each other, the two groups have committed rampant abuses, including summary executions, sexual violence, abductions, pillaging, and cutting residents off from food, basic services, and aid.
This year, they have escalated their attacks on civilians, massacring villagers, displaced people, and Christian worshipers.
More than one thousand civilians have been killed in more than 250 attacks by Islamist groups since January, according to the monitor Armed Conflict Location & Event Data.
Civilians can’t rely on the authorities to protect them either. Since the coup in September 2022, the areas of Burkina Faso not under Islamist control have been run by a junta whose military forces and associated vigilante groups also commit abuses. As one survivor of a military atrocity summarized the situation: “our own soldiers massacre us.”
Caught between Islamist groups slaughtering them and junta forces also slaughtering them, civilians in Burkina Faso have no one to turn to inside the country.
Their best hope right now lies in those outside the country, specifically the African Union. It needs to start dealing with the deteriorating situation more seriously and take steps to help protect civilians and help them seek justice for the abuses they have been suffering.
Otherwise, what’s to stop the deadly terror and lawlessness spiraling even further out of control?
Aizada Kanatbekova was abducted in broad daylight in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Two days later, the 27-year-old woman was found strangled to death outside the city.
She’d been snatched by a group of people led by a man intent on forcing her to marry him.
The police response was rotten, as it too often is in these cases of “bride kidnapping” in Kyrgyzstan. A witness told police about the abduction, and police also had access to street camera footage. The Bishkek city police claimed they were conducting a nonstop search, but regional police offices outside Bishkek knew nothing about it.
This was all more than three years ago, but to this day, police officials continue to evade accountability for inaction that may have contributed to the death of Kanatbekova at the hands of her “bride kidnapper.” Just last week, the Bishkek City Court upheld the acquittal of the police chief at the time, rejecting charges of negligence in Kanatbekova’s death.
Bride kidnapping – that is, abducting women for forced marriage – is illegal in Kyrgyzstan. However, like so much gender-based violence in the country, it continues to be a grave problem, because the authorities are not taking it seriously enough.
The national security agency has pledged to address it, but law enforcement officers are generally indifferent to cries for help from women facing horrific abuse. Officials have ignored shocking cases of women being kicked in the head, burned, having their ears and nose cut off, or stabbed to death in police stations after being left alone with their kidnapper.
I remember hearing about these “bride kidnappings” when I first went to Kyrgyzstan 30 years ago. I expressed shock, but people told me it was “tradition.” I fear some still think this way.
The word “tradition” is so often used to try to defend human rights abuses – not just in Central Asia – and it unfortunately sounds convincing to some people.
To some brought up inside the culture, it enforces the idea things are timeless and can’t change. To many outside the culture, there’s a fear of appearing like you’re criticizing the customs of others and opening yourself to charges of xenophobia.
So, many keep silent, pretending to believe what’s clearly wrong is perfectly normal in the local context. And referring to “tradition” becomes the standard excuse for horrific abuses to continue.
But, as with many such issues, you start to understand things clearly when you listen to the victims. Ask the person who’s been tortured for their beliefs. Ask the person thrown in prison for being who they are. Ask the family and friends of the person abducted and murdered.
They’ll tell you it’s not their “tradition.” It’s a crime. And authorities should be taking it seriously.
The Egyptian people are suffering brutal repression by the authorities. The country has been under one of its worst human rights crises in many decades. Thousands of critics, journalists, peaceful activists, and human rights defenders have been imprisoned in dire conditions. Torture is commonplace.
Washington now finds this all perfectly acceptable.
The Biden administration officially sent a message of approval last week, when it announced its decision to waive all human rights conditions on military assistance to Egypt.
The US government currently gives Egypt US$1.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing. About a quarter of this, US$320 million, comes with human rights conditions the US Congress put in place. Egypt has to meet certain human rights benchmarks to receive this chunk of the money.
Washington makes an annual human rights assessment. It’s looking to see if the Egyptian government has shown “sustained and effective” steps to improve a range of rights and freedoms, such as protecting freedom of expression and association. Depending on the results of this assessment, the US can hold back up to US$225 million.
Another US$95 million is specifically tied to Egypt showing progress on releasing political prisoners.
For the past three years, the Biden administration has at least partially recognized the grim, no-progress reality in Egypt by withholding some of its military assistance based on human rights concerns.
This is the first year the entire conditional amount will be granted – ignoring the ongoing human rights crisis in Egypt. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken waived human rights conditions in the “US national security interest,” a State Department spokesperson said.
The spokesperson claimed the decision was important to both “advancing regional peace” and in recognition of Egypt’s contributions to various US national security priorities, including “to finalize a ceasefire agreement for Gaza, bring the [Israeli] hostages home, and surge humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in need.”
Many will see these as worthy foreign policy goals, but it’s not at all clear why the suffering of Egyptians should be ignored in the diplomatic push to end Israel’s atrocity-ridden military campaignin Gaza.
And, in fact, Washington is making a similar mistake in both situations.
Sending the message that serious human rights abuses will be tolerated if it’s considered politically useful in the moment has proven counterproductive again and again. Telling military and security forces their crimes ultimately don’t matter, encourages them to commit more such crimes.
Egypt and Israel are the two largest recipients of US military aid, and this kind of unprincipled approach has only helped fuel additional abuses and atrocities by both governments.
One new low follows another in Hungary under authoritarian ruler Viktor Orbán, who seems determined to turn his country into the EU’s largest per capita exporter of embarrassment.
Dominating the headlines here in Brussels at the moment is the Hungarian government’s threat to put migrants and asylum seekers on busses and send them to the European capital. It’s sparked yet another diplomatic spat between Hungary and its EU partners.
If the threat were carried out, Hungary would weaponize migrants and asylum seekers in a way reminiscent of the dictatorship of Belarus.
The Hungarian government claims it is protesting a June ruling by the European Court of Justice, the EU’s top court in issues of EU law, that Hungary had committed an “unprecedented and exceptionally serious breach of EU law” when it introduced restrictions on the right to asylum.
The court’s decision came with a €200 million fine, due next week, in addition to a daily fine a €1 million as long as Budapest refuses to comply with EU law.
Being in breach of EU law is something of a habit for this Hungarian government, maybe even a kind of addiction – to international attention seeking? – especially when it comes to migration and asylum policies.
In another recent move, the government issued a draconian decree cancelling state-funded shelter for refugees from western Ukraine, leaving some 3,000 Ukrainian refugees homeless.
The new decree cuts housing support for refugees from parts of Ukraine the Hungarian authorities deem safe to return to, even when Russia is lobbing missiles into these areas all too frequently. Just days ago, for example, Russian forces attacked the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, killing seven civilians, including two children, and injuring 66.
The Hungarian government apparently regards this as safe.
In terms of EU law, the decree breaches the 2001 EU Temporary Protection Directive, which was triggered in March 2022 following Russia’s full-scale, atrocity-ridden invasion of Ukraine. It requires EU member states, like Hungary, to grant temporary protection and assistance to all refugees from Ukraine.
The Hungarian government has an abysmal track record on refugees’ and migrants’ rights, and not only for Ukrainians. These latest moves and threats are part of a long-running effort by Orbán’s ruling party to use vulnerable people as a political scapegoat, trying to hoodwink Hungarians into believing their problems are caused by the powerless, rather than by those in power.
But this decree is truly a new low for Orbán and his crew. As my expert colleague, Lydia Gall, summarizes it: this is a “cruel law that is putting thousands of people who fled the war in Ukraine on the streets.”
Lies about immigrants have again become a focal point of an election in the US – a country paradoxically founded on immigration. But to call the anti-immigrant nonsense blurted out by some politicians and commentators simply “ridiculous” or “absurd” would be to dismiss the very real dangers their ugly words produce.
The truth is, the anti-immigrant atmosphere in the US has been heating up for years now, and it’s led to poisonous policies by both Republican and Democrat administrations. The partisan political theater masks bipartisan cruelty.
The US approach has impacted not just people legally trying to cross the US border with Mexico but also many further along the trail of migration.
The situation in the Darién Gap, a roadless, swampy jungle at the Colombia-Panama border, is one especially horrific example.
Over the last year-and-a-half, almost 700,000 people have crossed the Darién Gap on their journey north, often hoping to ultimately reach the United States. During their journey across this difficult terrain, many have experienced serious abuses, including sexual violence. Dozens, if not hundreds, have lost their lives or gone missing in the Darién Gap. Many have never been found.
Why people take such risks says everything about where they’re coming from. Migrants and asylum seekers leave their countries of origin driven by violence, persecution, humanitarian disasters, and other reasons, in search of protection or economic opportunities abroad. Significant numbers of these people are fleeing crises in Venezuela and Haiti, which we’ve highlighted here before.
But the appalling situation in the Darién Gap is also the result of a range of failed policies across the Americas.
Movement restrictions like visa requirements by Mexico and Central American countries, often promoted by the United States, and limited pathways to regularize status and integrate in South America push many to cross the Darién Gap. As a new report docments, this exposes them to unchecked abuses and empowers organized crime.
What’s more, a recent US-Panama agreement under which the US will pay Panama to “remove foreign nationals who do not have a legal basis to remain in Panama” is likely to worsen access to asylum in the Americas. The US is essentially shirking its responsibilities by outsourcing its migration controls.
Dramatic political debates in the US never get into this level of detail, of course. They often tend to hover around attempts to scapegoat vulnerable people, especially those who can’t defend themselves by voting. Hateful, attention-seeking language can sound bizarre and absurd, almost as if it’s supposed to be entertainment.
But the environment it creates is deadly dangerous, when politics turns into policy.