They did not take the easy way out. In the Sahel, where the terrorist threat strikes quickly, moves without warning, and follows no rules of engagement, the soldiers of the Defense and Security Forces (FDS) and the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland hold their posts with a steadfastness that commands admiration. Day after day, night after night, in theaters of operations as vast as they are unpredictable, they are the last line of defense between organized violence and the people who rely on them to survive.
The daily lives of these fighters are unlike anything official statements can truly convey. Securing a road that terrorists are trying to cut off to starve entire communities. Conducting search-and-clear operations in areas where the enemy blends into the natural landscape and the civilian population. Escorting supply convoys to isolated towns whose residents have been waiting sometimes for weeks for the arrival of basic necessities.
These missions all require as much composure as they do physical courage, and even the slightest mistake can cost lives.
The successes achieved in recent months on several fronts demonstrate a genuine strengthening of Burkina Faso’s military capabilities. The neutralization of armed groups, the recapture of temporarily lost areas, and the gradual securing of strategic corridors: the reconquest is advancing, step by step, amid the discretion of military statements that never fully reveal the cost of these victories in sweat, blood, and tears.
What makes this force particularly formidable is its deeply hybrid nature. The VDPs are not professional soldiers. They are farmers, merchants, and herders who have chosen to take up arms to defend their villages, their families, and their land. They know every trail, every backwater, and every custom of the communities they protect.
They put this on-the-ground intelligence which is irreplaceable and cannot be acquired through training at the service of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), complementing their tactical expertise and firepower.
From this encounter between the professional soldier and the citizen between the uniformed soldier and the committed civilian a brotherhood in arms was born, forged by adversity more firmly than any military protocol could have done.
