The Untold History of Baré, Burkina Faso: A Microcosm of Global Struggles
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Nestled in the heart of Burkina Faso, the small town of Baré is more than just a dot on the map. It’s a living archive of resistance, resilience, and the relentless struggle for survival in a world that often overlooks places like it. While global headlines focus on Ukraine, Gaza, or climate summits, Baré’s history offers a lens into the quieter but equally urgent crises shaping our planet—food insecurity, jihadist insurgencies, and the legacy of colonialism.
Before the French stamped their authority over what is now Burkina Faso, Baré was a trading post for the Mossi and Fulani peoples. The Mossi kingdoms, known for their sophisticated governance, used Baré as a minor but strategic stop along the trans-Saharan trade routes. Salt, gold, and enslaved people moved through here, tying Baré to the brutal economies of pre-colonial Africa.
When the French arrived in the late 19th century, they redrew the region’s destiny. Baré became a labor reservoir for cotton and peanut plantations, part of France’s exploitative mise en valeur policy. The locals resisted—sometimes openly, often quietly. Oral histories still recount the story of a Mossi chief, Naaba Kango, who organized nighttime sabotage of French supply lines. His rebellion was crushed, but the spirit wasn’t.
By the 1960s, Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) gained independence, but freedom was a mirage. The new elite, trained in Paris, replicated colonial structures. Baré, like much of the countryside, remained impoverished. Then came Thomas Sankara in the 1980s—Burkina Faso’s Che Guevara. Sankara’s policies (land redistribution, vaccination campaigns, women’s rights) reached even Baré. Peasants here still remember the day Sankara’s cadres arrived to teach agroecology, chanting "La patrie ou la mort, nous vaincrons!" ("The homeland or death, we will win!").
But Sankara was assassinated in 1987, and Baré’s brief flirtation with progress ended. The World Bank’s structural adjustments gutted public services. By the 1990s, the town’s clinic was a shell, its school had no chalk, and young men began migrating to Ivory Coast’s cocoa plantations—a pattern repeating today as climate change destroys crops.
In the 2010s, Baré became a frontline in the Sahel’s jihadist crisis. Groups like Ansarul Islam exploited grievances over land disputes and government neglect. In 2019, a nearby gold mine—operated by a Canadian company—was attacked. Locals whispered that the jihadists were funded by rival warlords eyeing the mines. Meanwhile, temperatures soared, wells dried up, and the UN warned of "climate apartheid."
Baré’s youth now face an impossible choice: join the jihadists for $50/month, risk the deadly trek to Europe, or starve. The town’s once-vibrant weekly market is now half-empty, policed by soldiers who view every young man as a suspect.
While men flee or fight, Baré’s women hold the fragments together. They’ve revived ancient farming cooperatives, growing drought-resistant fonio (a grain). Some even run clandestine schools, defying both jihadist bans on girls’ education and a state that barely functions. Fatou, a midwife, delivers babies by flashlight, using techniques Sankara’s health workers taught her mother. "We are the government here," she says.
Yet their resilience is undercut by global forces. When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spiked wheat prices, Baré’s bread vanished. When France withdrew troops from Mali, jihadists crept closer. And when COP27 debated "loss and damage," no one mentioned Baré’s drowned sorghum fields.
Baré’s tragedy is its irrelevance—to everyone but those who exploit it. Wagner Group mercenaries now lurk in Burkina’s capital, offering "security" in exchange for mining rights. China’s drones patrol the skies, while the U.S. pours millions into counterterrorism that often kills more civilians than militants. Meanwhile, Baré’s elders recall Sankara’s warning: "Debt is neo-colonialism."
The town’s history is a fractal of Africa’s paradoxes: rich land, starving people; foreign armies everywhere but no protection; global headlines that never come. As the world fixates on TikTok bans and AI doomsdays, places like Baré slip deeper into the shadows. Yet their stories—of resistance, adaptation, and quiet heroism—are the ones that might just save us all.