Fifty women missing in northern Burkina Faso

Published on : 15/01/2023 – 22:38

Research is still ongoing to find two groups of women from the commune of Arbinda, in the Sahel region, kidnapped on Thursday and Friday, when they had gone into the bush to pick plants and fruits for food.

For now, the exact number of missing women is not known. The figure varies according to the interlocutors. A military source mentions 48 women in search of water, abducted by armed men “, and specifies that four were able to escape and were able to give the alert.

According to local sources, the kidnapping took place in two stages. First Thursday, a first group left to look for water and plants for cooking was targeted, probably by jihadists. Then on Friday, before the alert was given, another group of women also left for the bush with their children for the same reasons, would have suffered the same fate. A few managed to return to Arbinda to raise the alarm. ” There are search operations in the area but these women have not yet been found “, confides a national of the locality.

The supply of Arbinda is not regular because this commune undergoes the blockade of the armed groups. An official of an NGO working in the region explains that kidnappings are part of the strategy of armed terrorist groups, to use hostages as ” human shield ” and like ” sex slaves ».

« It is really analyzed as an instrument of war, in the same way as direct attacks once morest civilians or the planting of explosive devices. It can also be bullying, says Swiss researcher Flore Berger, specialist in the Sahel at the NGO Global Initiative. In other cases where women are abducted, they are told that they must return to their village with a message for their husbands saying that they stop fighting, that everyone and must leave the village. Another reason is the collection of information: sometimes, information is requested from abducted women whose husbands have joined the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland. Finally, there are abductions with a view to forced marriages with Jnim fighters. »

No claim has been made at this stage, but the area is a field of action for the jihadists of Jnim, the Support Group for Islam and Muslims, linked to Al-Qaeda. The Sahelian branch of the Islamic State group also sometimes carries out attacks there.