A newly compiled dataset covering Burkina Faso and Mali has delivered a damning verdict on the states own security forces: government troops in both countries are now killing civilians at rates that significantly exceed those of the jihadist insurgencies the forces claim to be fighting. The findings, released in early April 2026, draw on incident-level reporting from local monitors, humanitarian organizations, and open-source intelligence initiatives.
The numbers are striking. Across more than two years of documented incidents, state-sponsored or state-aligned forces were responsible for civilian deaths at a ratio of approximately three to one compared to jihadist groups operating in the same territories. The pattern holds across multiple provinces and time periods, suggesting it is structural rather than aberrational.
The Human Cost of Counterinsurgency
The data paints a picture of warfare in which the primary victims are not combatants on either side but ordinary civilians caught between two forms of violence. Villages in central Mali and northern Burkina Faso have reported mass executions, arbitrary detentions, and systematic destruction of property – acts most frequently attributed to the national armies or their auxiliary forces.
Refugees who have fled into neighboring countries have provided consistent testimony of atrocities committed inside military bases. Eyewitnesses – interviewed by international journalists and human rights researchers – describe civilians being rounded up, beaten, and in some cases executed. Women have reported sexual violence at the hands of soldiers. These accounts align with patterns documented by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International over the past two years.
The Sahel region has long been a theater of complex, overlapping conflicts. Jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have expanded their footprint across Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger since the political upheavals of the early 2020s. Military coups in all three countries – most recently in Niger – have complicated international engagement and peacekeeping operations, while creating openings for Russian security contractors to fill gaps left by departing French and Western forces.
The Russian Presence
Russias Africa Corps – the successor to the notorious Wagner Group – has become a central feature of the security landscape in both Mali and Burkina Faso. Operating under formal state agreements, Russian personnel provide training, intelligence, and direct combat support to national armies. Their involvement has coincided with some military gains against jihadist positions, but has not, according to the data, translated into reduced civilian harm.
In several documented incidents, refugees and local sources specifically implicated Russian personnel alongside national army units in operations that resulted in civilian casualties. The Associated Press, citing 34 refugee testimonies, reported in late 2025 on kidnappings, sexual assault, and killings allegedly carried out by Africa Corps fighters in areas under their operational control.
Moscow has denied involvement in civilian harm and the Malian army continues to reject all accusations of abuse, asserting that its operations exclusively target armed groups. But the growing volume and consistency of witness accounts, combined with the statistical pattern of civilian harm, has made those denials increasingly difficult to sustain.
Strategic Consequences
The implications of these findings extend beyond moral condemnation. International donors, humanitarian agencies, and regional bodies face growing pressure to reconsider their engagement with governments whose security forces are themselves major perpetrators of violence. Development assistance, military aid packages, and peacekeeping mandates are all complicated by the reality that the counterinsurgent and the aggressor can be one and the same.
For the roughly 2.5 million people displaced inside Burkina Faso and Mali – the majority of them women and children – the data confirms what they already knew: the war has two fronts, and neither is safe.