The Costs of United States’ Post-9/11 “Security Assistance”: How Counterterrorism Intensified Conflict in Burkina Faso and Around the World
United States “security assistance” exports a militarized counterterrorism model to dozens of countries through money, training, and weapons. This model comes with dangerous costs.
The narrative, tactics, funding, and institutional supports of the U.S. post-9/11 wars fuel repression and corruption, and escalate cycles of violence.
This paper delves into the current conflict in Burkina Faso as an illustrative case study of how the U.S. counterterrorism model has caused more, not less, instability and violence. Despite the relatively low levels of terrorism assessed in Burkina Faso at the time, the United States laid the groundwork for increased militarism in the region when it began providing security assistance to the country in 2009. Today, Burkina Faso is enveloped in a spiraling conflict involving government forces, state-sponsored militias, and militant groups, and civilians are paying the price. Militant groups have strengthened and seized territory, ethnic tensions have skyrocketed, thousands of Burkinabe have been killed and over one million displaced. A Burkina-based human rights group has warned that the government’s ethnic killings may lead to the “next Rwanda.”
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Stephanie Savell is a public anthropologist researching militarism, (in)security and activism in relation to the United States post-9/11 wars and policing in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Under her leadership, the Costs of War project has produced research cited in thousands of media articles and broadcasts and by President Biden in his official speech about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Since 2017, Savell's regularly updated global map of U.S. counterterrorism operations has been featured by USA Today, CNN, BBC World News and Smithsonian magazine, among others. She is co-author of The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life (Routledge, 2014) and, in addition to Costs of War reports, has published in journals including American Anthropologist and American Ethnologist, and media outlets such as The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, and Axios. Her media appearances include interviews on CNN, NPR, Al Jazeera, Vox, The Problem with Jon Stewart, C-SPAN Washington Journal and Democracy Now. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University.
