This dyad belongs to the conflict Burkina Faso: Islamic State
Summary of conflict Burkina Faso: Islamic State
After Islamic State (IS) leader al-Baghdadi declared the establishment of a caliphate in 2014, and announced the group’s intentions to expand its territory across the globe, numerous already existing organizations pledged allegiance to the core IS leadership and new IS groups sprung up word-wide. This spawned a range of new conflicts, one of which was the one between the so-called Islamic State Greater Sahara (ISGS) and the Burkinabe state.The Greater Sahara section of IS was created already in 2015, but not accepted into IS proper until late 2016. Based mainly in the “tri-state border area” (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) known as Liptako-Gourma, the group was initially relatively small but built up its strength over the following years. With an increased presence in Burkina Faso, ISGS stepped up attacks on military targets and the conflict against the Burkinabe government became active for the first time in 2019. In March 2022, the Greater Sahara section of ISWAP was declared its own province, thus becoming IS – Sahel province (ISSP).
Even though the conflict escalated somewhat in 2025, it remained at a low-intensity, both compared to the 2022-2023 period and to the other conflict active in Burkina Faso; that between the Burkinabe government and JNIM. For most of the year, IS remained confined to Oudalan and Seno provinces, remote rural areas with weak state presence. As such, it did not constitute as big of a threat to the state as JNIM, and subsequently received less attention in terms of drone strikes and operation.
Background to the conflict: external origins
The conflict that eventually came to play out between the Burkinabe state and IS commenced in two other countries many years prior.
From 2012 onward, Burkina Faso’s northern neighbor Mali was the scene of two bloody conflicts, and it was developments in one of them that spawned the onset of new conflicts, both within Mali, and in Burkina Faso. Aside from a conflict over territory, a range of islamist groups fought the Malian state in a conflict over government, with the aim of installing sharia laws. Two of these groups, Signed- in-Blood Battalion and MUJAO eventually merged, creating al-Murabitun in 2013. It was here that one leg of the process towards the conflict between the Burkinabe government and the Greater Sahara section of the Islamic State commenced.
A little over a year later, In Iraq, in 2014, the Islamic State (IS) – a Salafi jihadist militant group – announced that it had established a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq. Furthermore, it demanded the allegiance of all devout Muslims worldwide, and declared that it would continue to seize land to expand its territory across the globe. When the caliphate was proclaimed, IS stated: "The legality of all emirates, groups, states and organisations becomes null by the expansion of the khilafah's [caliphate's] authority and arrival of its troops to their areas.” This declaration set off several chains of events world-wide, with already established groups pledging allegiance to IS-leader al-Baghdadi, and new IS organizations springing up around the globe.
In the Sahel, in June 2015, al-Murabitun fell apart when its senior spokesman and self-proclaimed emir Adnan Abu Waleed al-Sarhawi pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. While stating that the pledge was on behalf of al-Murabitun in its entirety, Signed- in-Blood Battalion-leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar quickly announced that he and his organization remained a staunch ally of al-Qaida.
Islamic State in the Greater Sahara becomes part of Islamic State proper
While al-Sarhawi began calling his group the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) soon after the pledge, the core IS leadership failed to acknowledge it for more than a year. It was not until 30 October 2016, when ISGS had conducted a series of cross-border attacks in Burkina Faso and Niger, and IS core was under pressure in Syria and Iraq, that the group officially recognized the pledge via its Amaq news agency, hailing the integration of al-Sahrawi’s faction of al-Murabitun into the “Islamic Caliphate.” With that, what had previously been ISGS became integrated into IS.
Two and a half years later, in March 2019, an organizational restructuring incorporated ISGS into IS West Africa Province (ISWAP), with the former serving as the latter’s Greater Sahara faction. This modification probably indicated an increase in communication between what was previously two distinct groupings within the IS umbrella, and analysts have argued that what was earlier ISGS received increasing technical support from ISWAP. However, there were few signs of close cooperation between the two, and their areas of operation remained far apart, with ISWAP proper focusing its actions on north-eastern Nigeria, south-eastern Niger, northern Cameroon and The Lake Chad area of Chad. The Greater Sahara section of ISWAP, in turn, was based in the “tri-state border area” (Mali, Burkina, Niger) known as Liptako-Gourma, and as such had a presence in all these countries.
In March 2022, the Greater Sahara section of ISWAP was declared its own province, thus becoming IS – Sahel province.
The conflict erupts
As noted above, what would later become IS – Sahel province, had a presence in the “tri-state border area” (Mali, Burkina, Niger) from the outset. Having been accepted as a part of IS proper, the group soon stepped up operations, initially focusing mainly on Niger and Mali. Subsequently, both countries saw the eruption of new conflicts between the governments and IS in 2017.
In Burkina Faso, IS was slower to begin operations. There was early information of the group being present in the Oudalan province of Burkina’s northern Sahel region, but it was not until in 2018 that the outfit began making its presence felt. IS’ increased presence and activity in Burkina Faso was, in part, an unintended consequence of a successful offensive against the group in Mali, which led many fighters to cross the border. Thus, by 2018, the number of attacks on police and military posts in Oudalan increased slightly, and sections of the group moved even further south to Burkina’s Est region, where violence erupted as a result. In Est, IS was joined by both home-grown islamist group Ansaroul Islam and the al-Qaida-loyal JNIM, which also stemmed from Mali. The chaotic situation in the region meant that it was impossible to separate between the different groups in a vast majority of attacks. Thus, while only a handful of events could be safely attributed to ISGS, this is most likely only a small fraction of the actual number.
The following year, the group had built up its strength substantially and was carrying out large-scale operations against Burkinabe forces, whereby the conflict was recorded as active for the first time in UCDP data, having crossed the 25 battle-related deaths threshold. Aside from developments in Est, ISGS stepped up operations in Sahel region, also moving into Soum province, neighboring Oudalan. It was in Soum that the group carried out one of its most devastating attack to date, when it struck a military base in the department of Kotogou, killing 24 Burkinabe soldiers. The attack was well coordinated and IS used heavy weapons, including rockets.
Escalating levels of violence
In 2020, the conflict escalated further in terms of fatalities. This was due both to more persistent deadly raids on military targets by IS, and to a number of French attacks on IS (France being a secondary warring party to the Burkinabe government via its counter-terrorism Operation Barkhane at the time). However, the year took its toll on ISGS, and by 2021, it was on the back foot, after suffering a number of defeats. Aside from having been the main focus of both Barkhane and the regional force G5 Sahel during 2020, its involvement in a non-state conflict with fellow jihadist group JNIM had been costly. As such, by early 2021 it found itself pushed back from many of its previous areas of operation, more or less confined to the eastern part of Oudalan province and to Seno, further south. The group suffered yet another setback in Mali in August, when France succeeded in killing Abu Walid Al-Saharaoui, the head of the ISGS. Despite this, it was far from defeated, and was able to carry out a number of deadly attacks on Burkinabe forces during the year. The army’s largest setback against ISGS in 2021 came in early August. Having received information of attacks on some villages near the border with Niger, the military detachment of the near-by town Markoye set off to assist, but was ambushed by IS and lost some 19 soldiers.
The following year, level of violence escalated markedly in the conflict, with the number of fatalities more than doubling from below 200 in 2021, to over 400. Despite the escalation of the conflict, the area affected remained roughly the same as the year prior. The number of violent events in that area increased, however, as the year saw numerous mine incidents and complex ambushes carried out by IS, as well as government airstrikes and offensives.
The continued failure of the military to contain the jihadist threat and the subsequent deterioration of the security situation, led to two military coups on 2022. Spawned by escalating violence in both the conflict against JNIM, and against the Sahel branch of IS at the end of 2021, the first coup d’état was carried out on 23-24 January, when democratically elected President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré was ousted from power by a group of soldiers. Calling themselves the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration, the junta gave the president’s inability to contain the Islamist conflicts and as the reason for the coup. A few days later, the junta restored the constitution and appointed Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba as interim president. Only eight months later, on 30 September, Damiba was ousted in a new coup, and Captain Ibrahim Traoré seized power. It is widely believed that a JNIM ambush on the convoy heading to Djibo served as a trigger for the second coup.
While the bold stated goal of the junta that seized power in September 2022 had been to change the tide in the conflicts against the Islamists, and to recapture the 40 % of the country's territory controlled by them, this was far from achieved the following year. Instead, violence in the conflict escalated markedly for the sixth consecutive year, with the number of fatalities more than doubling. The number of armed confrontations between the army and IS increased, and it seemed as if the group penetrated even deeper into the country, with a number of attacks recorded also in Yagha, just south of Seno. The government continued to make frequent use of drone strikes against Islamist fighters (albeit clearly hitting civilian targets on multiple occasions), seemingly putting some pressure on IS. Nevertheless, the group was able to launch numerous attacks on especially the positions of the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDPs), an auxiliary unit to the armed forces that had been created in 2020. The most noteworthy attack of the year took place in February, when IS scored a big victory, ambushing a military convoy between Oursi and Deou in Oudalan and killing more than 50 soldiers.
The conflict de-escalates
After 2023, the conflict de-escalated sharply and caused well below 100 fatalities annually. In stark contrast to the big battles and devastating death tolls of 2023, the fighting was more small-scale and intermittent. IS did not achieve major territorial expansion or conduct large-scale urban assaults comparable to its rival JNIM, relying mostly on IED attacks, small-scale raids and ambushes. Since 2024, IS had focused its attacks on supply convoys and escort units, suggesting a strategy aimed at economic strangulation and siege warfare. This was evident in 2025, as the two most lethal attacks were of this kind. In January, a civilian convoy escorted by the military was attacked between Dori and Seytenga in Seno province. IS launched rocket launchers against the army vehicles that were in the lead, causing panic among the civilians. When the smoke had cleared, the human toll stood at at least 18 gendarmes and soldiers, as well as three civilians. Some months later, in late July, the group launched yet another bloody ambush on a supply convoy, this time moving between Dori and Gorom-Gorom in Oudalan Province. The convoy, again under military escort, was hit about two-thirds of the way through the journey. IS fighters were positioned on a hill with machine guns as well as in the fields, appearing as farmers, and they targeted the soldiers first, followed by fleeing civilians. While different fatality figures were reported, a trustworthy source from the region estimated that at least 40 soldiers were killed, making this the deadliest attack of the year.
During this time, the group remained confined to the Oudalan and Seno provinces, remote and peripheral parts of the country. As such – despite a couple of rare deadly attacks like the ones described above – ISPP did not constitute as big of a threat to the regime as JNIM, wherefore the junta appeared to focus more of its drone strikes and operations on the latter
