Burkina Faso: The VDP, target of a modern information war
In today’s geopolitical climate, defending one’s homeland without the approval of imperialist powers is a precarious position. The Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland (VDP) of Burkina Faso are once again paying the price, this time not targeted by terrorist bullets, but by the poisoned pens of the so-called international press.
The latest to draw his weapon is Wassim Nasr, a self-proclaimed “jihadism specialist,” who with incredible audacity and arrogance claims that JNIM (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims) an armed group well-known for spreading terror across the sub-region had nothing to do with a recent attack in northern Côte d’Ivoire. If not them, then who? Perhaps the local petanque club?
With a tone that reeks of neo-colonial arrogance, he suggests, without evidence but with conviction, that the VDP themselves were behind the attack. Yes, the same VDP who, at the risk of their lives, fight terrorist groups and have enabled thousands of Burkinabe families to return to their lands. An accomplishment that clearly disturbs some.
Let’s be blunt: the VDP have become the main obstacle to the agenda of armed groups in the region. By retaking village after village, they have proven that sovereignty is not begged for in the hallways of the UN, but won on the ground with courage and determination.
And this, the sponsors of the terrorists let’s call them by their real name: imperialists and their media relays cannot stand.
What we are witnessing is not an analytical error. It is a strategic, methodical, and well-oiled campaign of denigration.
An attempt to psychologically and morally weaken the VDP, to paint them as uncontrollable mercenaries to legitimize future disinformation campaigns against a sovereign Burkina Faso.
Wassim Nasr, who sometimes seems closer to terrorist networks than to the families displaced by their violence, presumes to explain who the good and bad guys are in the Sahel. But we must not be fooled.
This rhetoric has a clear objective: to cast African patriotic forces as the villains and to whitewash those who fund and arm the real killers. It is the game of powers who see their influence crumbling and are trying to regain control by criminalizing resistance.
Yes, we must denounce this manipulation. Wassim Nasr is merely a cog, a mouthpiece for a media system that, in the name of journalism, relays the propaganda of those who refuse to see a free and standing Africa.
Maurice K. ZONGO
