Burkina Faso use it as hide-out and smuggling route

A man from Ghana has told the BBC how he was seized at gunpoint by jihadists in neighbouring Burkina Faso, before being taken to their vast desert camp where he gained a rare insight into their lives – from the children he believed were trained as suicide bombers, to the tunnels they had dug to shield themselves and their armoured tanks from air strikes.

In his first media interview since his 2019 ordeal, the man – whom we are calling James to protect his identity – said his first day at the camp was terrifying as a huge number of Islamist fighters returned from an operation, firing shots in the air.

“I thought that was the end. I was just sweating,” James said, adding that he also ended up wetting his pants when some fighters hit him with their guns – and laughed.

James, who is in his 30s and follows a traditional African religion, said the insurgents later attempted to recruit him, enticing him with the allure of power by saying he could one day become the commander of a battalion.

“The commander brought out a sack. It contained different weapons, AK-47, M16, and G3 [rifles]. So he asked me which of them I could operate, and I said I had never operated one before. He said: ‘We have bigger weapons, so if I give you a battalion to handle, no-one can harm you’,” James added.

He said he was lucky to be released about two weeks later after he begged for his freedom, claiming that he had a sick child at home and promising the camp commander that he would become his recruiting-sergeant in Ghana – a promise he says he never kept.

Ghana’s National Commission on Civic Education, a government body which is spearheading a public campaign to prevent young people from joining the jihadists, told the BBC that it was aware of James’ experience.

“I met him in an attempt to sensitise tertiary-level students,” said Mawuli Agbenu, the commission’s regional director in the capital, Accra.

“We will definitely have a way of engaging with him so that he will be an ambassador or an influencer within his community,” Mr Agbenu added.

Long a stable democracy, Ghana has so far been spared the violence that has seen the insurgency spread, causing havoc in Burkina Faso and its West African neighbours.

The insurgents who kidnapped James belonged to Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), or The Support Group for Islam and Muslims. An affiliate of al-Qaeda, it was officially launched in 2017 as an umbrella body for various jihadist groups in the region.

In Burkina Faso, they are strongest in the north, where they control large areas, but they have also expanded to the south, along the porous 550km-long (340 mile) border with Ghana.

More than 15,000 people from Burkina Faso have fled into northern Ghana to escape the conflict, aid agencies say.

Apart from Burkina Faso, the jihadists have also gained territory in Niger and Mali, and have carried out attacks in Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo – all former French colonies – raising fears that the insurgency was spreading south towards the coast.

In April, a senior UN official said that “the epicentre of terrorism has shifted from the Middle East and North Africa into sub-Saharan Africa, concentrated largely in the Sahel region [which includes Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger]”.

Jihadists linked to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group operate in the region.

A Ghanaian security officer stationed along the border with Burkina Faso told the BBC that the jihadists often crossed over to regroup when under pressure from Burkina Faso’s military – and they also used the country to smuggle weapons, food and fuel.

“It’s not safe for Ghana. They hide in towns like Pusiga. Residents of border communities are worried because there’s no tight security,” he added.

In a report released in July, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations think-tank said the “absence of real attacks on Ghanaian soil seems to result from JNIM’s calculus of not disturbing supply lines and places of rest as well as not provoking a relatively strong army”.

“Examples of people who are spared by JNIM by showing their Ghanaian identity cards fits this reading,” it added.

Most Ghanaians are Christians, but the population near the border with Burkina Faso is mainly Muslim – and parts of the region have also been riven with ethnic tensions, raising fears that the jihadists could exploit them to their advantage.

The think-tank said that JNIM had attempted in a “very small number” of instances to recruit or incite Ghana’s small, largely Muslim Fulani community to carry out attacks.

JNIM claimed that they were marginalised, but its recruitment efforts had “minimal success” as the Fulani were “aware of the chaos that has enveloped the Sahel due to familial networks” and did not want it to occur in Ghana, the think-tank added.

A Fulani Muslim preacher in Burkina Faso, Amadou Koufa, is the co-founder of JNIM and is its second-in-command. He recruits most of his fighters from the Fulani community in Burkina Faso.

The military has been accused by rights groups of retaliating by stigmatising Fulanis, and carrying out indiscriminate attacks on their villages in Burkina Faso.

In 2022, a France-based NGO, Promediation, said its research showed that the jihadists had recruited between 200 and 300 young Ghanaians.

Although some were operating in insurgency-hit countries like Burkina Faso, others had been sent back to their villages in northern Ghana to preach their “radical faith”, it added.

This could eventually lead to the jihadists gaining “a sustainable foothold in remote and peripheral areas in the north”, the NGO said.

Since 2022, Ghana has been at the forefront of efforts to create a new Western-backed, 10,000-strong regional force to combat the Islamist insurgency.

Tamale – the biggest city in northern Ghana – is supposed to be the force’s headquarters.

However, the headquarters has not yet opened, and the fate of the initiative is unclear after the region split between pro-Western and pro-Russian states.

Burkina Faso – along with Mali and Niger – have pivoted towards Russia. The three countries have formed their own alliance to fight the insurgents, and have also relied on help from Russian mercenaries.

Ghana and other regional states have remained allied with the West.

Ghana’s military has established bases in the north, but newly installed border surveillance equipment was not yet working, the security officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the BBC.

However, more troops have been sent since JNIM carried out two attacks, late last month and earlier this month, on the Burkina Faso side of the border, the officer added.

Ghana’s government did not respond to a BBC request for comment.

However, its ambassador to Burkina Faso, Boniface Gambila Adagbila, told the BBC the two countries were helping each other to fight the insurgents, warning that if Burkina Faso fails “Ghana may likely to be the next place”.

Ghana’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) party – which will form the next government after winning elections on 7 December – promised in its campaign manifesto to “enhance” border security with “international partners”, as well as improve the country’s intelligence capabilities.

In August 2023, the European Union announced that as part of a 20m euro ($21.6m; £16.6m) aid package it would supply Ghana with about 100 armoured vehicles, as well as surveillance equipment such as drones.

Many civilians and refugees cross the Ghana-Burkina Faso border through footpaths and back roads to work, trade or visit relatives despite the security risk – and James said he was one of them. He was travelling all the way to Senegal on his motorbike when he was taken captive.

After riding for nearly a day, he said he encountered the insurgents in north-western Burkina Faso, as he was nearing the border with Mali.

A handful of jihadists, also on motorbikes, stopped him and took him to their camp where he was interrogated until their commander was convinced that he was not a spy, James said.

He added that his blindfold – the trademark black jihadist flag – was then removed.

James said he found about 500 insurgents – mostly young men, including one who identified himself as a doctor – living in the camp.

Located in desert-like terrain, it was made up of thatch-roofed huts, with small electricity-generating solar panels, he said.

He added that the camp was divided into three sections – for commanders and their families, lower-ranking jihadists and captured villagers and soldiers.

James said he was detained in the latter section, but got “closer” to the jihadists in the second week as he increasingly acted as though he had become a sympathiser of their cause.

They sat around in groups of five or 10, and listened to the songs of Salif Keïta, the Malian musician known as the Golden Voice of Africa, James said.

Other jihadist groups have banned music, saying it is un-Islamic.

James said that while the atmosphere at the camp was generally relaxed, groups of jihadists regularly went to fight, firing celebratory shots when they returned, claiming to have achieved battlefield success.

James said he realised that this was the gunfire he had heard on the first day, and got used to it.

He added that the insurgents parked their tanks and pick-up trucks in two inter-connected tunnels to ensure they were not destroyed if there was an air strike, while only a few vehicles remained outside “on stand-by, for an emergency”.

He said the jihadists also revealed their darkest sides – telling him they captured women during raids on villages and sold them to each other.

“They trade the women they’ve captured. Others sell wives that they are fed up with. Those who resist are gang-raped into submission by two or three fighters,” James added, though he did not see them do this.

James said the women at the camp included the wives of jihadists who performed domestic chores like cooking and cleaning, while those who were captured were either sex-slaves or were forced to become fighters.

He explained that he saw fully veiled women, with AK-47 rifles hidden under their clothes, leave the camp to raid villages for livestock to feed people at the camp – or to sell at markets in nearby towns.

James said he also saw dozens of children, including those of jihadists, being trained in the use of weapons and explosives.

“You’ll see a small kid holding a gun and telling you that if he goes to meet some people, this is how he is going to kill them,” James added.

He said he twice saw four children being taken to another location, before returning to the camp with suicide vests.

They wore long, loose outfits over them, and left the camp with begging bowls, James said.

Jihadists told him that when they anticipate a tough battle in a town or military camp, they send children disguised as beggars who then blow themselves up, so the fighters can enter amid the chaos, James said.

He added that three jihadists had told him that they “sacrifice their children as suicide bombers and they get paid after every mission”, though they did not disclose the amount.

He said the jihadists tried to indoctrinate him, preaching that “anything Western is evil” and showing him propaganda videos every night, including one of the US invasion of Iraq and the killing of Palestinians in the current conflict with Israel.

According to James, as the insurgency was being waged in French-speaking countries, all the jihadists were Francophone, but one spoke English with a Ghanaian accent, and always kept his face covered so that he could not see him.

In a sign that the jihadists were also influenced by pan-Africanism, James said some of them invoked the names of revolutionaries like Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and told him that people should “rise up” against “bad leaders” and free themselves from “bondage”.

James said the jihadists also expressed the view that if Sankara and Nkrumah had “lived long”, then “the whole of Africa would have been a better place – nobody would have travelled from Africa to the West. People would have been travelling from the West to Africa”.

James, unemployed at the time, said their rhetoric was powerful, and only “strength of heart” prevented him from joining their ranks.

On how exactly he was captured, James said that two Muslim friends were travelling with him at the time, promising to introduce him to a Muslim spiritual leader in Senegal who could pray for him and improve his fortunes.

All three of them were intercepted by the jihadists as they were coming to the end of the first leg of their trip, he said.

James added one of his friends was shot dead as he attempted to flee, while his other friend was taken with him to the camp.

James said the commander did not release his friend, making him fear that he had been forced to join the jihadists – or was dead.

“The commander told me that: ‘I will let you go if you assure me you will get me more fighters’,” James said.

He added that before driving him to a bus rank and giving him the fare for the trip back home, the insurgents gave him a contact number to keep in touch, but, James said, he never did and changed his number.

According to James, the jihadists also gave him charms, which supposedly had supernatural powers.

Again, many other jihadists reject the use of amulets, believing them to be contrary to the teachings of Islam.

James showed the BBC the amulets, which were made of fowl feathers, animal skins and herbs, covered in leather and cloth.

They included one which the jihadists falsely told him offered protection from bullets.

James said he never got the impression that the insurgents wanted to destabilise Ghana, seeing it as the “safest place” to hide when under pressure from Burkina Faso’s military.

Their focus was on waging an insurgency in countries where France and the US “exists”, believing that these two countries exploit Africa’s resources, to the detriment of its people, James said. This is denied by both countries.

Ghana-based security analyst Adib Saani expressed concern about the growing insurgency in West Africa, and said he did not see a military solution to it.

“We need to go beyond the militarised posture. We must address the socio-economic and geopolitical deficits that are creating the environment for terrorism to strive,” he told the BBC.

Ghana’s National Commission for Civic Education has been carrying out a public awareness campaign dubbed “see something, say something” to encourage residents in the north to report suspicious activity.

The campaign has also been extended to Accra, to educate young people about the dangers of jihadism.

The commission’s Mr Agbanu told the BBC that the campaign was vital as Ghanaians were vulnerable to recruitment.

“There’s a high rate of corruption, unequal development across the country, and huge youth unemployment,” he said.

James, who is now a subsistence farmer, said that he was just relieved to be alive as the jihadist commander had told him that he was making an exception by releasing him because normally it was “either your dead body that will go home or nobody will ever hear of you again”.