Burkina Faso’s rival armed groups turn on each other as state loses ground

Résumé détaillé

JNIM and ISIL intensify their fight for control as Burkina Faso struggles to contain the wider armed conflict.

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso – Armed fighters from two rival groups have fought a series of increasingly deadly battles along Burkina Faso’s northern border with Mali, as the government struggles to reassert control over large parts of the country.

The clashes between Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate, and the ISIL affiliate in Sahel Province (ISSP) have intensified since early September, with both groups competing for territory and influence across the borderlands. Their latest confrontations have produced competing claims of heavy casualties, although the figures released by the ISIL (ISIS) group remain unverified.

One of the first major confrontations took place near Kacham, close to the Mali border, in early September. ISSP claimed to have killed more than 200 JNIM fighters, captured more than 30 others and seized weapons and motorcycles. The claim has not been independently verified. Heni Nsaibia, of the monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), said that, if confirmed, the reported death toll would make it the deadliest battle recorded between the two groups.

The fighting escalated again on October 9 around Ganadaouri, in Burkina Faso’s northern Oudalan province. ISIL’s weekly publication, Al-Naba, subsequently claimed that more than 400 JNIM fighters had been killed. JNIM has not publicly responded to the claim, and no independent assessment has established the number of casualties.

The scale of the claim came under further scrutiny when ISSP published photographs on November 1 presented as evidence of its victory, showing what it described as the aftermath of the battle.

Regional news outlet i-Sahel counted at least 120 bodies in the images but said it could not independently verify whether those pictured were victims of the reported fighting. The number visible in the photos is considerably below the 400 deaths claimed by ISIL.

The confrontation is part of a rivalry that has persisted since 2019, when the two…

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