Ouagadougou — "The refusal to negotiate has increased the suffering of the populations."
On the day that a new junta seized power in Burkina Faso two years ago, community leader Ibrahim Zongo* was in a remote jihadist bush camp. He was holding a dialogue with the fighters, hoping it might help restore security in his volatile area.
Previous administrations had given Zongo clearance to negotiate with the fighters, but when he travelled to Ouagadougou, the capital, to brief the new rulers on the latest talks, the junta's message to him was clear: no more dialogues, no more accords.
From that moment onwards, Zongo said community leaders like him have been powerless to speak to - and strike agreements with - the insurgents, a shift that has removed a key lever they had developed to mitigate violence following a decade of armed conflict.
"The end of the dialogues has of course increased the suffering, especially among local populations," Zongo told The New Humanitarian. "This has greatly increased the crisis, because when so many people [were talking to jihadists] there was hope for peace."
Thousands of people have been killed and over two million displaced since jihadists began waging war in Burkina Faso in 2016. The groups are aligned to al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State, though many fighters joined from positions of social and economic exclusion.
As heavy-handed army operations worsened the situation over recent years, some community leaders sought to negotiate with the militants directly. They wanted to understand their demands, find common ground, and reduce humanitarian suffering.
First documented in depth by The New Humanitarian, the dialogues began in 2020 and had some breakthrough - if brittle - successes, from farmers being allowed to return to their fields to jihadists moderating their behaviour in small but valued ways.
Yet these successes were reversed after Traoré, a bellicose army captain, seized power from a different junta in a late 2022 coup and then proceeded to call for a "total war" against the jihadists.
Traoré enjoys a measure of local popularity for his aggressive military position and his anti-colonial rhetoric, yet his combative approach has seen him discard previous government initiatives aimed at supporting local negotiations, and his administration has also arrested several community leaders who were involved in the talks.
Though some informal local discussions have continued out of necessity - the army has also privately contacted jihadists for some ad hoc talks - the space for dialogue has greatly shrunk, according to local negotiators and security service sources.
Burkina Faso and its Sahelian neighbours are now home to some of the most active jihadist movements in the world - albeit ones that draw on deeply local grievances - and are the site of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises too.
"All we can do is sit and observe him," said Zongo, referring to Traoré's government. "None of us are brave enough to go and tell him we must dialogue. And yet we are convinced that it is only through dialogue that we can help resolve the problem."
Negotiators behind bars
The New Humanitarian interviewed three community leaders who were intimately involved in talks with senior jihadists for this story. Reporters also spoke to researchers and analysed government statements to explore how its posture on dialogue has changed.
Ahmed Diallo, one of the three community leaders, said arranging dialogues wasn't easy under the two previous administrations - the elected government of Roch Kaboré and the military junta of Paul-Henri Damiba.
Diallo said leaders grew accustomed to feeling "great distrust" from the government, often fearing it more than the militants. He said they were especially worried about being accused of supporting or collaborating with jihadists.
Still, the negotiators all said their standing improved over time, peaking in the short period of Damiba rule, from January to September 2022. Local dialogue committees were set up under Damiba, and some negotiators received motorbikes and money.
Dialogues were held nationwide, the negotiators said, and dozens of pacts were struck. Jihadists pledged to lift blockades and allow people to move more freely, while civilians agreed to respect the jihadist's version of sharia law and not to collaborate with the army.
Editor's note: Important context on Burkina Faso Burkina Faso's first homegrown jihadist group was formed in 2016 in the north. Its leader, Malam Ibrahim Dicko, was known for delivering political sermons on how the state had abandoned people, and for critiquing inequality between social classes.
However, the social and local roots of the crisis became overlooked as narratives centred on the transnational nature of jihadism, and as the government and its external partners focused on military campaigns.
Like most colonised countries, Burkina Faso was integrated into the global economy on subordinate terms as an exporter of cheap labour and raw materials. External constraints have made that legacy hard to overcome.
A pro-poor government did emerge in the 1980s under the pan-African revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara. He tried to sever the country from exploitative global capitalism but was assassinated in a coup that France, the former colonial power, is suspected to have supported.
Authoritarian coup leader Blaise Compaoré ruled for the next 27 years, usually in close concert with Western governments and international financial institutions leery of Sankara's socialist policies.
A popular uprising eventually brought Compaoré down in 2014, but the dismantling of his intelligence and security network weakened the state and partially contributed to the insurgency that followed.
The negotiators said they became aware of Traoré's contrasting position soon after he came to power. They stopped receiving calls from government officials, and watched Traoré give speeches where he criticised the negotiations and vowed to ramp up military operations.
Zongo said he learnt of Traoré's anti-dialogue politics through more direct encounters with junta officials in Ouagadougou, and from speaking with community leaders who have also engaged in discussions with the army officer.
Zongo cited one meeting between Traoré and a delegation of leaders from the country's Fulani communities, whose members have been unfairly blamed and collectively punished because jihadists frequently recruit among them.
The community leaders wanted to broach the issue of dialogue with the government, but Traoré wasn't interested in the subject, according to Zongo, who didn't attend the meeting but said he was in close contact with somebody who did.
"Traoré told them to order their children to lay down their arms and return to the community," Zongo told The New Humanitarian. "That was the only thing he said to the team and he then got up and left."
Zongo said he is aware of several negotiators who are being held in high-security prison, while The New Humanitarian is aware of further cases involving mediators who were arrested for reasons that are unclear to their family members.
Other media reports have covered the disappearance of prominent figures involved in actual or proposed discussions with jihadists, including the case of Django, a vigilante militia leader who was kidnapped in April 2023.
The New Humanitarian has viewed videos of Django - posted on social media before he was kidnapped - in which he suggested the jihadists were sons and daughters of the country, and that a different approach to managing the conflict was required.
None of the leaders interviewed for this story said they fully understand Traoré's position. However, the willingness of past governments to support dialogue efforts is thought to have irked soldiers who were risking their lives to fight the insurgents.
In addition to the local dialogues, the security services under Kaboré brokered a short-lived truce with al-Qaeda fighters to stave off attacks during elections in November 2020. The ceasefire was first reported by The New Humanitarian.
Unofficial dialogues
Amadou Drabo, a community leader from a northern city that has been under blockade by jihadist fighters for several years, said the suffering of communities has increased because of their inability to engage in dialogue with jihadists.
Drabo was part of a delegation in 2022 that met Jaffar Dicko, Burkina Faso's top jihadist leader. He said a day spent with the fighters resulted in an agreement that they would liberate key roads, and remove mines buried in the ground.
In exchange, Drabo said the jihadists requested male residents of his city taper their trousers and that women wear veils. They also asked that schools stop teaching French, though the delegation told them only the state could enforce such a thing.
The mediation resulted in a temporary lifting of the siege, though further conversations have not taken place under Traoré, who does enjoy a measure of local popularity for his aggressive military position and anti-colonial rhetoric.
"Of course the refusal to negotiate has increased the suffering of the populations," Drabo said. "People are suffering from lack of food because of the blockade. Traders have increased the price of products and it has become difficult."
Zongo said the dialogues were halted at a moment where genuine progress was being made and just as jihadists had shown more willingness to engage in discussions with the national government.
"They told us to go and tell the authorities to send their emissaries to meet them," Zongo said. "They told us that if they met the emissaries of the state, they would find common ground. This is something I witnessed."
Though formal dialogues conducted with the government's blessing have ended, Zongo said more ad hoc discussions have continued in communities located in areas controlled by jihadist groups.
"All the populations who continue to live in the occupied zones have in one way or another an agreement with the men of the bush," Zongo said. "That is why they continue to live there... and go about all their other activities in peace."
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Zongo said he was also aware of government representatives reaching out to negotiators last year to ask for their help in contacting jihadists who were operating in an area close to the border with Niger.
Zongo said the government had wanted to send supplies to neighbouring Niger - which was under regional sanctions after a coup - and needed to negotiate safe passage. Two civil society sources near the border also described the same story.
The New Humanitarian has also learnt of another occasion in which the Traoré government privately negotiated with jihadists earlier this year so that the army could bring food to an eastern town that has been under blockade by the militants.
A member of the security services briefed on the matter said the government gave some money to the fighters in exchange for them demining roads and agreeing not to ambush the military convoy.
Several pro-government volunteer fighters who were part of the same convoy said they were not aware of the talks but were surprised to find empty roads that jihadists usually had checkpoints on.
Ready and waiting
All three community leaders called for the government to reconsider its position and allow them to restart the official local dialogues, though none said they felt empowered to lobby Traoré directly.
Drabo, the community leader from the north, said he is "certain" that the war will only end at a negotiating table, even if the current junta is able to reduce the jihadists' strength through military operations.
"The jihadists have stated that even if they were reduced to one person, they would continue to fight," Drabo said. "Even when one or two jihadists decide to block a road, they can do it."
Diallo said dialogues with jihadists are "complex" but recalled how the fighters "responded favourably" to the grievances that he tabled during discussions in recent years.
"If you do it and you succeed, so much the better," he said. "When you try and it fails, you have to wait a little and then you relaunch again, and so on until the day it succeeds for you."
Zongo said that if the government changes its mind and calls on negotiators for their support, they will be happy to accept so long as the communication they receive is clear and official.
"We are ready to help, because we really want the country to have peace," Zongo told The New Humanitarian. "We want all displaced people to be able to return to their villages of origin."
*The names of all these community leaders have been changed to prevent reprisals.
Edited by Philip Kleinfeld.
