On January 12 and 13, the government of Burkina Faso reported that Islamist militants kidnapped approximately 50 women who were foraging for food in the province of Soum in the country’s north.
Despite expensive international military efforts to contain the insurgency, it spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso from Mali in 2015. The mass kidnapping is a first for the insurgency.
Occasionally locals or Westerners are taken hostage, but abductions of women at this scale were unprecedented. The separate Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria has been responsible for a number of kidnappings.
Outside the village of Liki, roughly 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the town of Aribinda, and in another location in the same district, armed men kidnapped women who were picking wild fruit.
“Searching has started with the aim of finding all these innocent victims safe and sound,” the government said.
A violent insurgency with ties to al Qaeda and Islamic State has seized large swaths of territory over the past decade, and Burkina Faso is just one of several countries in West Africa fighting against it.
The United Nations reports that insecurity in the Sahel has led to a decline in agricultural production and an increase in the number of people going hungry.
The women who went missing, according to Reuters’s reporting, had begun searching the nearby bush for sustenance after learning there was no longer enough to feed their families in the village. They were on the lookout for kid-friendly powder ingredients like fruit, leaves, and seeds.
It has become increasingly dangerous to deliver supplies to citizens trapped in areas of the arid north that have been blockaded by insurgents in recent months, causing severe food shortages.
In September, militants attacked a convoy of 150 vehicles carrying supplies to the northern town of Djibo, the capital of Soum, killing dozens of soldiers.
One Aribinda local, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons, said, “Women can walk up to 4 km (into the bush) to look for food.”
The villager continued, saying that the men feared being shot by jihadists if they left their homes. The villager explained, “That is why the women were kidnapped.”
Two military coups occurred in Burkina Faso last year as a result of public dissatisfaction with the government’s inability to restore security and protect civilians.
The United States Department issued a statement expressing grave alarm over the kidnapping of the women.
State Department spokesman Ned Price issued a statement demanding the safe return of all abductees to their families as soon as possible and without condition. He also demanded that those responsible be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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