What does the end of the French Barkhane mission mean for Burkina Faso? | New conflicts

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso – Boubacar Dialo * says that he remembers visiting French troops in the town of Tin-Akof only once, in December 2020.

“They spent the whole day touring the market there,” says a official from the northern town of Burkinabe. “They got into an armored vehicle and went into the shops. They went to the cattle market. ”

With a population of about 9,000 in peace, it is located on the banks of the Tin-Akof Beli River, which joins the Burkina Faso border with Mali and Niger. The three borders, as the region is known, are the epicenter of a years-long conflict between the forces of Western states in the Sahel region of Africa and ISIL (ISIS) and armed groups linked to Al-Qaeda.

June 10, French President Emmanuel Macron he announced Operation Barkhane, which would mark the end of a seven-year military operation in the Sahel in his home country, would be a retreat from troops and a restructuring of his presence in the region.

The vast majority of Barkhan’s 5,100 soldiers operate in the three-border region. But France has no military base in Burkina Faso, so the country’s military patrols tend to run out of Mali.

Dialo says security in Tin-Akof had improved a few weeks after a visit by French forces, but then it got worse again and was worse than ever.

“Things in Tin-Akof have gotten a lot worse lately,” Dialo told Al Jazeera by phone from Gorom Gorom, the main town closest to Tin-Akof, where he fled three months ago.

Tin-Akof was left without law when government officials fled. Dialo says he suffered from “fear and psychosis.”

“Terrorists have a choke around them. There are no more markets, so vehicles are no longer coming and there is no work. Before, [fighters] he came to steal our animals, to kidnap the people who were looking for him, and to flee. Now it’s time to burn the whole town. “

Asked what the French think about the possibility of leaving, he said: “I think it’s not good for the people here. We are just three kilometers from the Mali border and if the French are no longer in Mali, that could mean we will get even closer to terrorists.”

Earlier this month, Macron disrupted joint operations between French and Malian soldiers in response to a military coup in Bamako, the second in nine months.

Statistically, Barkhane has done little to calm the violence in the Sahel.

Data from the Armed Conflict and Incident Data Project show that since the start of Operation Barkhane in 2014, after French forces helped delay fighters advancing in Mali, the death toll in the conflicts in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger rose from 456 in 2014 to 6,276 in 2020. – an increase of 1,376 per cent.

Burkina Faso the biggest attack since the conflict began earlier this month in the town of Solhan, leaving dozens of people dead and consolidating the perception of people in the country that security is increasingly serious. Several protests against insecurity took place last weekend.

‘More questions than answers’

Analysts say it is still unclear exactly what the end of Operation Barkhane means. While it may be an exercise in French renewal, it can lead to much deeper changes.

“There are more questions than answers right now,” says Judd Devermont, program director for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S.-based think tank. “France’s footprint will be reduced, but it will remain with its Sahelian partners and as part of the G5 Sahel Union Union Force or European partners under Operation Takuba.”

Leaders in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger created a G5 Sahel force in 2014 to help meet a variety of challenges, including the growing threat of armed groups. France, meanwhile, expects Takuba to believe that it will unite European Union troops to provide security in the Sahel, filling the gaps left by its withdrawal from the region.

Yet European partners have had little enthusiasm for Takuba.

Devermont suggests that the U.S. is unlikely to increase its commitment to the Sahel, despite a recent change in administration in the White House.

“The French will take part in the fight against terrorism, even if they are behind the curtain and only take the lead in extremis,” he predicts.

Andrew Lebovich, a member of the European Council for External Relations (ECFR) and an expert on the Sahel conflict, expects “significant changes” to take place, but added that they will be “gradual”.

“All of this will have an impact … but France is less involved in Burkina Faso than in Mali or Niger.”

Some Burkinabes spoke to Al Jazeera, saying that if the French left, they would see Russia fill the gap. Lebovich says he thinks “this is a little red herring”.

“Russia certainly has a presence in the Sahel, but it’s not so consistent. There’s no such interests as the Central African Republic … I certainly don’t see Russia wanting or wanting to occupy the space that France does.”

Other displaced citizens of Tin-Akof, which has no mobile network, told Al Jazeera that the French presence in or around the town had not made much of a difference and that the news of Barkhane’s completion would hardly change.

Before fleeing the village, one of Tin-Akof’s top administration officials said: “Things have been reasonable since Bakhane was established. There is security when the French are there. It’s when they let the attacks multiply. They kill a lot of terrorists. “

French officials will provide more details this week on how Barkhane will be restructured or downsized.