Reports of his death during the spring 2017 military operations have not been confirmed and in any case would not end the crisis.Ī product of local socio-political and cultural conditions, Ansarul Islam is at least as much a social uprising as it is a religious movement. His turn to violence lost him many followers, but his movement retains enough support to continue a low-intensity insurgency against local and national authorities. This rhetoric earned him a wide audience, especially among young people and socially disadvantaged sectors of the population. For years, Malam promoted equality between classes and questioned the dominance of traditional chiefs and the monopolisation of religious authority by marabout families – religious leaders – whom he accuses of enriching themselves at the population’s expense. In its early stages, Ansarul Islam, founded by Malam Ibrahim Dicko, a preacher from Soum, is a manifestation of widespread discontent at the province’s social order. However, their approach needs to better take account of the local and social roots of the crisis, which are more profound than its religious and security dimensions. Ouagadougou and its foreign partners recognise that their response requires more than military offensives and that a definitive resolution of the crisis hinges in part on the situation in Mali. While military operations reasserted the state’s control in the spring of 2017, the crisis is far from over. Ansarul Islam, the group behind much of the violence, which often is portrayed as tied to jihadists elsewhere in the Sahel, is first and foremost a movement challenging the prevailing social order in Soum province, in Burkina’s Sahel region. Although this insecurity in large part is an extension of the Malian conflict, the crisis has strong local dynamics. Long spared by the Sahel’s armed groups, Burkina Faso now faces increasingly frequent and lethal attacks in its north.
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