Three weeks after the Solhan massacre in Burkina Faso, the Burkinabè government assigned the attack to the support group for Islam and Muslims, linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. What GSIM denies. Now it is their Islamic State rivals who are communicating on the subject.
In its latest Al-Naba propaganda review, the Islamic State group accuses the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM) of “removing its responsibility.” For IS, it is the rival group led by Iyad ag Ghali and linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb who brutally attacked Solhan. And this despite GSIM’s denial barely three days after the massacre of at least 132 people in this village in the Sahel.
The contribution to this unusual press release war is the image offered to the people. Islamic State fighters in the Greater Sahara, perpetrators of several massive attacks, are generally considered more cruel than their GSIM rivals, who do not hesitate to present themselves to the people as more measured and that I listen to everyday problems, such as land disputes, as they sometimes even helps to solve. “Until now, GSIM has tried to discredit the EIGS by pointing out its exaggeration against civilians,” explains Héni Nsaibia, a researcher examining the movements of jihadist groups in the Sahel within the Acled project. “Now,” he continues, “we have a glimpse of what they can do on their own.”
Divisions
What the researcher specifies is that Solhan’s attack would actually have created divisions within the group linked to Aqmi. Katiba Mujaïd al-Qaeda, literally “fighters for al-Qaeda’s Islam”, which the Burkinabe authorities attribute to the Solhan massacre, is not known to any specialist in the area – and RFI questioned it. A lot – but terms actually correspond to the usual way Aqmi warriors refer to themselves. According to Héni Nsaibia, a subgroup of GSIM carried out this attack, from which “the leadership chose to distance itself through purely strategic communication.”
The researcher, in addition to his own sources of information, develops the method of the attack, and in particular the use of explosive devices left in Solhan to prevent access to the national army. A way of doing things that is “typical” for GSIM, according to Héni Nsaibia, more than for the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. And which, according to him, also makes it “doubtful” the information that Ouagadougou conveys that the majority of the attackers were between 12 and 14 years old. “It seems rather exaggerated,” appreciates Héni Nsaibia, who recalls the scale of the attack and its level of organization, with improvised explosive devices, prepared and planted in advance or even hidden material.
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