Some Ghanaians join the fight against the military

Three Ghanes have told the BBC of their participation in the struggle between Islamist and military insurgents in neighboring Burkina Faso, who describe scenes of violence sometimes indiscriminate and bloody battles.

“We are always with the dead. In some battles, I have seen 40, 50 or 100 dead people,” one of the men told the BBC.

The three, all in their thirty years or thirty and forty, said they had fought in Burkina Faso several times since 2018. They crossed the porous border of 550 km (340 miles) between the two countries, without being detected by the security forces.

Negan have been mainly motivated by religion or have been trained by jihadists, saying that they went to fight to defend civil communities with which they had strong family and ethnic bonds.

“My older brother, his wife and children were killed by the army (Burkinabe). It hurts a lot. The military came to their community in the forest. They killed everyone, an entire home, including 29 people.” One of the men said.

But another of the men articulated the religious zeal, saying: “If you die while you fight with the jihadists, then you are leading to Jannah (an Islamic word for paradise), on the path of the righteous.”

Challenged in case they had participated in civil attacks, the men were divided.

One denied doing it, but another acknowledged that he did.

“Some local people support the military to attack ourselves, so we have to kill them too,” he said.

“You know … I’m not happy to fight like this. The number of people we kill, the people who kill the military, is very bad. But this fight has entered our blood,” he added.

The three spoke on anonymity.

The BBC could not confirm their statements, but they showed us photos of weapons, described the location of recent conflicts and called jihadist commanders in Burkina Faso.

The BBC contacted men through contacts in cattle markets in northern Ghana, where it is alleged that jihadist groups are recruiting combatants.

In 2022, an NGO based in France, averance, said that his research showed that jihadists had recruited between 200 and 300 young Ghanes.

And the group of experts from the Institute of International Relations of the NetherlandsIn a report published last JulyHe said the jihadists had a “minimum success” of recruitment in Ghana.

However, the men offered a different perspective, telling the BBC, in statements that could not be verified, that the people of “all parts of Ghana” and “many” ethnic groups joined the insurgency in Burkina Faso.

“Some are fighting for jihad. Some are doing it for business,” said one of them.

The financial incentive comes in the form of the abundant livestock that jihadists steal from the communities expelled from their villages.

“When we attack a community, we take their animals: sometimes 50, sometimes 100,” one of the men told BBC.

Cattle is supposedly taken north of Ghana and are sold in the markets.

Traffic through the border was confirmed to the BBC by cattle merchants.

It is believed that it has become an important income flow for groups such as Jama’at Nusrat Ul-Islam Wa al-Muslimin (Jnim), an affiliate from Al-Qaeda that is the most active jihadist group of Burkina Faso. It also operates in Niger and Mali.

The Western Africa Region was described by the UN last year as the epicenter of global jihadist violence.

Help agencies say During the last decade, about two million people have been displaced by insurgency in Burkina Faso and tens of thousands killed.

Ninpoa Nasuri is one of the thousands who have fled to Ghana to escape violence.

She told the BBC that her husband was killed in front of her in 2024 during a raid in her town in the east of Burkina Faso by Jnim.

“They grabbed men and hit them until death. My husband was a farmer. It had nothing to do with the government militia or conflict,” he told the BBC.

Other refugees described similar acts of violence by Burkinabe’s army.

“Some of the people who were killing were 80 years old, at 90. These people cannot sustain a gun, they cannot fight with anyone. They killed them without any reason,” said Saafiya Karim.

Until now, Ghana has remained largely intact by the insurgency, although some attacks have taken place in neighboring Togo and Ivory Coast.

In a recent statement to the journalist Ghanés Mohammed Eliasu Tanko, a man called himself a Jnim representative said the group had no interest in launching attacks in Ghana.

“To them (to the fighters of Jnim) they cannot take any measure against Ghana. This is a clear and true statement. Jnim does not seek the war against Ghana,” said the man, known as Ansari, in the statement, that the BBC You have seen.

However, an increase in community violence in a part of North Ghana has expressed concern that jihadists are trying to exploit the conflict in their favor.

The city of Bawku is wrapped in a decades struggle between different ethnic groups for the control of the local headquarters. It is believed that more than 100 people were killed in clashes since they intensified last October.

“The night in Bawku is always (one of) fierce shots and exchanges. People use AK47, M16, all kinds of automatic rifles,” a resident told the BBC.

Jnim’s smuggers are accused of selling weapons on both sides.

“We understand that they are providing weapons that have taken the army in Burkina Faso. They do this trusting the trucks that travel to Niger and return with onion. They hide the weapons inside those trucks,” Tanko told the BBC.

“An intelligence officer confirmed that this was the new way they are attracting firearms. And Ghana’s security is poorly equipped to detect these vehicles that appear, putting Ghana in a very critical situation,” he added.

Ghana’s Minister of Defense, Edward Omane Boamah, did not respond to a request for BBC comments.

President John Mahama, who assumed the position in January after winning the December presidential elections, visited Bawku last month in an effort to promote peace among rival groups. However, weapons are continued.

Ghana’s ruling party spokesman Sammy Gyamfi told the BBC that putting an end to violence in Bawku was the “number one priority” of the government.

“Violence is already spreading and if you are not careful, it is likely that insurgents of the region in general can take advantage of this conflict,” he said.

The three men with whom the BBC spoke said they did not rule out the possibility that the insurgency extends.

“This can go anywhere or any country. It did not exist in Togo, but now the attacks are happening there. If they can go to Togo, they can get to Ghana. This is strong, it is powerful,” one of them said.

But another of the men took a cynical perspective, saying that the insurgents in Burkina Faso were no longer fighting an “Islamic struggle.”

“They simply kill people and steal their cattle. What is happening is not jihad, so I don’t like it,” he said.

You can listen to Ed Butler’s report on the BBC World Service allocation program.