After militants this week opened fire on immigration agents in a border village, killing one, Ghana has sent 1,000 special forces to guard its northern border with Burkina Faso. The attack has raised concerns that Burkinabe Islamist terrorists are fomenting instability to spread throughout the region.
According to police records, a 40-year-old ethnic conflict between the Mamprusi and Kusasi people over a chieftaincy seat in Bawku—an hour's drive from Burkina Faso's border with Ghana—has turned into a war with allegedly foreign combatants that has claimed more than 30 lives between December and April.
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Experts claim that as Islamist extremists use the political unrest in Ouagadougou to expand their frontiers in coastal West Africa from the Sahel area, Ghana's porous borders, and smuggling routes have grown to be significant risks to the country's peaceful environment.
The Upper East Region of Ghana's Bawku border town's mayor, Amadu Hamza, told VOA that the lax security posture at unmanned entrance crossings is concerning.
The difficulty, according to Hamza, is that numerous openings would allow for permanent positions. However, for various reasons, the Ghanaian government needs to commit more funds to have those regular soldiers policing those areas to thwart jihadists. Bawku is a victim of unrest and strife.
Hamza claimed that the town's once-vibrant economy had been negatively impacted by the internal struggle and the country's unrest, worsening the unemployment problem and rendering young people more open to being recruited by Islamist terrorists.
Hamza stated that the "general economy of Bawku has completely decreased" and added that "most of the people cannot come in from Burkina Faso, Togo, Niger, and Mali." Bawku residents are unable to cross. Only a small number of people take the risk and go.
The worry is that the jihadists will kill you when you leave. Unemployment is the primary way the jihadists capture and bring people into their camps. "Access to education is essential."
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Mahama Ayariga, a parliamentarian for a Bawku district and a member of the opposition National Democratic Congress, claimed that terrorists were approaching Ghana from its wild northern frontiers and urged the administration to devote more resources to ending the long-running ethnic conflict in Bawku.
Regarding the discussion of terrorism, Ayariga said, "You see, we have a problem, but we are not concentrating our resources on it, and we are not concerned about the lives of people in Bawku who are dying."
"We are [more] concerned about terrorists entering from the other side. Are you serious about claiming that the Ghana Armed Forces cannot control such a limited geographic area? That is my main issue.
Adib Saani, executive director of the Jatikay Center for Peace Building, said officials must concentrate more on improving the lives of the locals by giving them access to essential utilities. At the same time, the Ghanaian government sends more troops to Bawku to maintain safety.
Access to education, he declared, is essential. "Access to necessities of life, including food, water, sanitation, and shelter," especially for young people who are disproportionately jobless, spend their days talking to each other under trees, and carry weapons.
Ghana has avoided a direct assault attributed to Burkina Faso-based Islamist extremists. The security authorities, however, are under pressure to step up their efforts to safeguard Bawku's 144,000 residents and secure the borders as the city is quickly emerging as the focal point of violent attacks on citizens, particularly women, and children.
