It is no secret that Africa has seen a rise in extremism in the last twenty years, and legacy media accept the threat of terrorism as a justifiable reason to conduct military actions across Africa and the Middle East. African nations faced a rise in extremism after international powers collaborated to overthrow Gaddafi and turn Libya, one of Africa’s most prosperous nations, into a cesspool of violence and turmoil. After Libya fell, extremist groups that got weapons and funding from the West to overthrow Gaddafi trickled back to their home nations with all the military vehicles and arms salvaged from battles in Libya, setting up individual Salafi extremist groups throughout Africa.
Earlier this week, thousands of Burkinese marched to the United Nations office in Ouagadougou, protesting a report produced by Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, accusing Burkina Faso government troops of massacring civilians in February of this year. Protesters carried banners and chanted in support of government troops and the local volunteer militia group known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland. Ghislain Dabiréa, a spokesperson for Burkina Faso’s National Coordination of Citizen Watch Associations, joined protesters and told a reporter from Weafrica 24 while marching to the UN office, “How dare they accuse our soldiers of massacring their own brothers and sisters whom they are protecting?” These protests come on the heels of similar protests back in May when Burkinese people marched to and surrounded the U.S. Embassy in downtown Ouagadougou; they were protesting Human Rights Watch’s report accusing government troops of slaughtering over 200 civilians.
In April 2024, Human Rights Watch published a report claiming that Burkina Faso soldiers executed 223 civilians, including 56 children, in the villages of Nondin and Soro, in northern Burkina Faso, on February 25th and 26th. Human Rights Watch alleges that they have verified this massacre by talking to 23 different people on the phone and verifying videos and images from witnesses. Human Rights Watch did not release any of the phone calls, videos, or pictures they are claiming as proof that Burkina Faso soldiers executed 223 people. Human Rights Watch’s own report states that Aly Benjamin Coulibaly, prosecutor of the high court in Ouahigouya, along with two members of the judicial police, visited the “sites of the incidents along with the judicial police on February 29, but indicated that he was not able to locate the dozens of bodies he had been told were there.” Western media outlets chose to ignore the fact that there was no evidence of a massacre in any of the villages that were inspected, choosing instead to demonize Ibrahim Traoré with eye-catching headlines accusing his government of killing over 200 civilians.
What has perplexed me is that there was a well-documented string of terror attacks carried out by Salafist extremist groups in Burkina Faso the same week that government forces allegedly killed 223 innocent civilians. The Human Rights Watch report states clearly that military troops chased the terror group back to their villages after the group attacked an army base and then massacred civilians in these villages because of their presumed affiliation with the terror group. Why would this group lead Burkina Faso’s military units directly to their home villages? Isn’t it more likely that the civilians massacred in these horrible attacks were killed in the terror spree that shook the northern region of Burkina Faso that same week?
Telling Western audiences that government forces are brutally killing civilians is the number one way the masses are duped into supporting conflicts. The examples of this are endless and far too abundant to put in this article. The United States and Europe will often support dictators and oppressive governments as long as they do their bidding. As soon as they step outside of the colonial dotted line, western powers stand at their podiums of feigned democracies and call them a threat to world peace. What they really mean is that these leaders have become a threat to their pockets; maybe they try to nationalize their oil, seek economic deals with the East, or the global establishment’s least favorite, abandon Western currencies for a national currency.
Ibrahim Traoré’s government has been in power since 2022, and despite what Western media outlets want to convey, there have not been brutal crackdowns on civilians; on the contrary, civilians recently took to the streets and protested when reports surfaced that Ibrahim Traoré was stepping down. Suppose Ibrahim Traoré is the oppressive dictator of a military junta that violently took control of the country, as media outlets claim. Why do the people of Burkina Faso want Ibrahim Traoré to continue to lead their small African nation?
The answer lies in the actions Ibrahim Traoré has taken since becoming the president of Burkina Faso, like cutting the salaries of government officials to fight poverty in the country, building and nationalizing their only gold mine to bolster their economy, and ridding the Burkinese of CFA franc, an economic handcuff long used to control and stifle the development nations forced to adhere to its financial system, to which France, has full control of.
Ibrahim Traoré, like many of the other new leaders in Africa, has become a thorn in the side of Europe and the United States. Assimi Goïta Mali’s new president and Ibrahim Traoré have hinted at a plan to ween both nations off the CFA franc, which both leaders see as the residual chains of colonization, arguing that freeing themselves from the CFA franc is the only way for West Africa to rid themselves from the barriers the western world has imposed on them for decades.
Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met leaders from multiple African nations to announce military training partnerships with Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, to name a few. Speaking on the collaboration with Burkina Faso, Lavrov announced, “We have supplied and will continue to supply military equipment to help strengthen Burkina Faso’s defense capability and allow it to eliminate the remaining terrorist groups.”
However, Western media outlets like the AP and CNN published articles claiming that Lavrov’s visit to Africa was to “sure up support for the war in Ukraine.” Even if we were to believe that Lavrov was in Africa to gain support for the war in Ukraine, how would West African nations like Burkina Faso and Mali help Russia in any way? Are they saying that Russia is trying to garner more support for the war in the international community, if so, how do these West African nations help Russia in that aspect when they have very little pull at the United Nations?
The pattern by the West is easy to identify: Europe and the United States send their intel agencies disguised as NGOs, like USAID, for example, to set up shop in African nations under the veil of assisting with infrastructure projects and fostering the selected countries’ economic development. After African nations sign economic deals with Western nations, a terrorist attack will happen in that country, and the reason for the terror attack will be because of the selected nations’ relations with the West. The attack will be covered by Western media outlets who will be sure to say that the attack happened because of this country’s new relations with the West.
Diplomats from the West will then go to the leader of whatever nation they signed the deal with and say; you have a terror problem; we cannot move forward with our economic and infrastructure deals until this terror threat is addressed. Soon, airports in this African nation are being converted into certified United States Airforce Bases, and whole swaths of land are deemed to be United States property. Military agreements between the countries are signed for training and weapons deals. Most countries don’t complain because the United States pays them millions of dollars in rent per year. The United States offers to help develop the country’s natural resources; everything from building stones and rare earth minerals to oil and natural gas are surveyed throughout the country. As long as America pays certain corrupt people in their target nation, they are allowed to excavate and remove natural resources at will with no oversight.
Journalist Max Blumenthal perspicaciously coined the term NGOification, which truly encapsulates the tactics used by the West to be both the problem and the solution for the Middle East, Asia, South America, and Africa. Nation-building is a multinational conglomerate that employs millions of people at thousands of different NGO firms across the globe. Global powers use their wealth and influence to perpetuate their vision of a unipolar world while stifling and waging conflicts against nations that seek a multipolar world, leaving innocent people to suffer in the ideological crosshairs of their maniacal puppeteers.
By Joziah Thayer
Follow me on X @joziah_thayer
Dissentopia 