“The security failure of the three Sahelian juntas”

A terrible human tragedy occurred on Saturday, August 31, 2024, in a large, isolated African village called Barsalogo, without much discussion of it in the globalized world of television news.

While they were digging a trench on the orders of their government, some 300 Burkinabe farmers were massacred by a swarm of jihadists who arrived in the morning, two atop off-road motorcycles – one to drive, the other to shoot. This massacre took place in the north of Burkina Faso, the former Upper Volta, formerly part of FWA (French West Africa), a poor and landlocked country located south of the Sahel strip. The massacre was claimed by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the Sahelian affiliate of al-Qaeda. Is it because this massacre only affects Africans that the world’s major media have given it only moderate attention?

A heavy decision

Beyond the sometimes appalling relativism of emotion…