SUMMARY
Ansaroul Islam (also Ansar al-Islam) was a Burkinabe jihadist organization, active primarily in the country’s northern Soum province, but also across the border in Mali’s Douentza cercle. While the origin of the group was firmly entrenched in local dynamics and politics, the fact that the area in which it was formed was tightly linked to surrounding jihadist hot spots such as Mali and Niger, also played an important part in its formation.
Focusing first on the regional context, Ansaroul Islam was set up at a time when a range of jihadist groups across the border in Mali fought a prolonged conflict against the government in Bamako, supported by the UN force present in the country. Malam Ibrahim Dicko, the preacher who would go on to create Ansaroul Islam, was inspired by the Malian Islamists and their temporary take-over of northern Mali in 2012, and traveled north to join them. In 2013, he was arrested by French troops in Tessalit in northern Mali, in possession of both firearms and a large sum of money. After serving two years in prison in Bamako, Dicko was released in 2015. He had not given up the idea of an armed struggle, however, and remained in Mali, where he met fellow preacher and Fulani, Hamadoun Koufa, leader of FLM, who went on to become his mentor. This turned out to be an important step in Dicko’s radicalization as he and a group of 40 followers remained with FLM, receiving training and fighting experience. While always aiming to launch an armed conflict in his native Burkina Faso, sources close to him have described how he was convinced by Koufa to first focus on the Mali struggle.
Meanwhile, in northern Burkina Faso’s impoverished Soum province, the climate became increasingly tense, as the security situation across the border in Mali deteriorated and the role of Burkinabe jihadists became known. There had traditionally been little state presence in the region, and there was a clear lack of trust between the security forces and the Fulani population. As the former escalated its search for jihadists, reports started to emerge of alleged human rights abuses and witnesses reported how the military seemed to view all Fulani as potential jihadists. In November 2016, the security forces launched Operation Séguéré, and according to former Ansaroul Islam fighters, it was the humiliation that the population suffered during this operation that pushed Dicko to create his group and commence attacks on Burkinabe state targets, against the will of Koufa. Ansaroul Islam was subsequently formed in Foulsaré forest at the end of November 2016, and carried out its first attack a few weeks later; on 16 December, the group attacked an army base in Nassoumbou, 30 km from the Mali border, killing 12 Burkinabe soldiers.
Ansaroul Islam was an expression of Salafist Islam; an ultra-conservative form of Sunni Islam, which is intolerant of any modification of what is sees as the “pure” Islam of the Salaf, i.e. the first three generations of scholars after the Prophet Muhammad. It is not entirely clear what the objectives of the group were. The organization itself did not make public statements on the subject, and analysts and regional experts have different ideas as to the aims and goals of the organization. A common theme in the sources tackling the issue was the group’s struggle to change the social order in Soum. It is clear that Dicko from the time when he was a popular preacher in the region sought to challenge the authority of religious and traditional chiefs, calling for equality in a province that has what is essentially a caste system. While the fact that Ansaroul Islam struggled for societal change seems uncontroversial, opinions vary as to whether the group also had other, more far-reaching political goals. There seems to be two schools of thought: one claiming that Ansaroul Islam was fighting to re-establish a Fulani caliphate in the Soum region, and the other suggesting that Soum was merely a staging ground for the larger goal of capturing the entire Burkinabe state.
As mentioned above, the group was formed by Malam Ibrahim Dicko. However, in May 2017 he died in the wake of an offensive on the group’s bases in Foulsaré forest. Suffering from chronic diabetes, Dicko was reportedly in bad health and after having been forced to flee his camp, reports indicate that he got lost in the big forest, and was found dead by his followers a few days later, with no trace of injury on his body. In June 2017, it was announced that Malam had been replaced by his younger brother, Jafar Dicko.
In the scattered jihadist landscape of the Sahel, crudely divided between groups supporting al-Qaida and organizations allied to the Islamic State, the role of Ansaroul Islam changed over time. While initially allied to FLM, with which it had ideological, operational and logistical links, this relationship suffered a rift in March 2017. At that time, FLM joined fellow jihadist groups Ansar Dine and AQIM in creating JNIM, an alliance very clearly in the al-Qaida camp. While observers initially believed that Ansaroul Islam would soon follow suit, they were proved wrong when the group at first rejected the al-Qaida alliance. Dicko even went so far as to characterize FLM leader Koufa’s decision to align with al-Qaida as “a clear sign of weakness”, going on to say that he was nothing less than a “hypocrite” who believed he could deceive God. Instead, for a while there were signs that Ansaroul Islam grew increasingly close to the Greater Sahara IS wing, which operates in the tri-state area, on the Burkina Faso-Mali-Niger border. By April, rumors were circulating that an unnamed Burkinabe jihadist group was about to pledge allegiance to either IS central or the group’s Greater Sahara wing, and analysts agreed that this could only refer to Ansaroul lslam. However, no pledge was forthcoming, and the group instead grew closer to the al-Qaida camp again. By 2018, it became clear that Ansaroul Islam had been incorporated in JNIM, serving as one of its katibas. With that, the group ceased to exist as an independent actor in UCDP data.
