How gold mines pad jihadists' wallets
BROADCAST AND DIGITAL RESTRICTIONS~**
Broadcasters: NO USE BURKINA FASO / MUST ON-SCREEN COURTESY "SITE INTELLIGENCE GROUP" Digital: NO USE BURKINA FASO / MUST ON-SCREEN COURTESY "SITE INTELLIGENCE GROUP"**~
This is the sound of militant Islamists spreading their message in Burkina Faso.
There's several languages being spoken.
We believe it was recorded on a bystander's cell phone.
The bystander was a gold miner, but it's the jihadists' gold now.
As Islamic State, al Qaeda, and other militant groups lose ground in the Middle East, they're aggressively pushing into a new source of cash and recruits in Africa's Sahel: wildcat gold mining.
Reuters has been studying how illegal gold can flow through black markets. Burkina Faso's gold, for example, makes its way to hubs like the UAE for refining and then it's sent on to big importers like Switzerland.
But in the Sahel - where Western militaries are desperately training locals to counter the rise of these militant groups -- we've found that the territories overlap.
Look at this map of Burkina Faso.
The blue markings signify unregulated mines. Its government says there's over 2,000 of these sites.
Now look at this. These are areas of recent Islamist attacks.
Sometimes they want a cut of the money, the miners tell us. Other times they simply take over the sites.
The miners rely on gold to feed their families, though.
Local authorities try to ban the mines. So by letting the miners dig, the jihadists can win over some hearts and minds.
But the violence does force many miners to flee instead.
Special correspondent David Lewis traveled to Burkina Faso:
(SOUNDBITE) (English) DAVID LEWIS, REUTERS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT FOR AFRICA, SAYING:
"We've come to a site in Ougadougou where the displaced have been gathering and have been given some food aide. It's mostly women and children. But there's also some motorcycles that the miners have escaped with. We found here a miner called Zakaria Sawadogo, who's going to tell us his story."
(SOUNDBITE) (More) ZAKARIA SAWADOGO, GOLD MINER WHO FLED MILITANTS, SAYING:
"The terrorists lived with us. They'd go out to kill and then come back to bother us. We didn't know what to do. We couldn't run away because if we tried they'd catch us and accuse us of betraying them. (...) They used to patrol neighboring villages with their guns, as if they were the military. And they'd return to warn us against denouncing them. If we tried to denounce them we'd have problems."
The sums involved here are huge.
The Sahel region's unregulated gold trade is estimated to be worth $2 billion.
The threat also isn't limited to the wildcat miners. Just recently scores were killed or wounded in an attack on an industrial mining outfit, owned by a Canadian company.
It's also fostered a cottage industry of robberies and kidnappings for ransom targeting the mining industry.
That's the risk of doing business in one of the world's latest gold rushes.
