Soldiers riding in a military vehicle on a dirt road in Africa, surrounded by sparse trees and dry terrain.
A damning new report reveals that government forces in Burkina Faso and Mali are killing civilians at rates far exceeding the jihadist groups they claim to be fighting. Human Rights Watch documented 1,255 civilian deaths attributable to Burkinabe forces between 2023 and 2025—more than double those caused by militants. In Mali, the military and Russian Wagner/Africa Corps partners killed nearly four times more civilians than jihadists in 2025 alone, with drone strikes surging from four incidents in 2022 to 66 in 2025. The situation provides jihadist groups like JNIM with political legitimacy and fresh recruits as it allows them to position themselves as protectors of marginalized communities facing state-sponsored violence. In contrast, Sahelian governments lose local trust and the potential for improved diplomatic relations with Western nations. In the long term, these extrajudicial counterinsurgency tactics prove fundamentally counterproductive, fueling endless insurgencies and cementing the Sahel as a highly destabilized global terrorism hotspot.
Reuters