u/Naurgul

• New report highlights killings by Burkina Faso military, allies
• Civilians' deaths part of 'regional pattern', researcher says
• Killings risk fuelling jihadist recruitment in Sahel, analysts say

Government and allied forces in Burkina Faso have killed more than twice as many civilians as Islamist militants have since 2023, according to a tally of incidents documented in a report, opens new tab published on Thursday by Human Rights Watch.

The pattern is broadly consistent with data shared ​with Reuters by Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a conflict monitoring group, and also applies to neighbouring Mali.

In that country, which like Burkina Faso is ruled by a military-led government ‌that seized power in a coup, government forces and their partners have been responsible for three to four times as many civilian killings as jihadists over the last two years, according to ACLED's data.

Violence involving jihadist groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has surged since 2021, making the Sahel region a global terrorism hotspot.

Widespread deaths of civilians at the hands of government forces could bolster the political legitimacy of militant groups and fuel recruitment, analysts said.

They could also complicate steps by the United States to improve relations ​with Sahel governments, which expelled French and other Western forces after their respective coups.

The Burkinabe forces' behaviour is part of a regional pattern, raising concerns ⁠about military indiscipline and its consequences for counterinsurgency efforts, she said.

Covering the period between January 2023 and ​August 2025, the HRW report documents 57 incidents in which at least 1,837 civilians were killed. Of those, 33 were committed by government forces and their allies, resulting in 1,255 civilian deaths, according to the report, which details widespread abuses by all parties to the conflict.

"When the army arrived in this ​village and saw that it was populated, they surrounded ​the entire village and they exterminated everything – every ⁠living being," he told Reuters. “People tried to flee, but if you run, they shoot at you.”

##See also:

• Over 1,800 killed since junta seized power in Burkina Faso, rights group says (BBC)

More than 13,000 immigrants who were living legally in the U.S., waiting for rulings on asylum claims, suddenly faced so-called third-country deportation orders, destined for countries where most had no ties.

Yet few have been deported, even as the White House pushes for ever more immigrant expulsions. Thanks to unexplained changes in U.S. policy, many are now mired in immigration limbo, unable to argue their asylum claims in court and unsure if they’ll be shackled and put on a deportation flight to a country they’ve never seen.

Some are in detention, though it’s unclear how many. All have lost permission to work legally, a right most had while pursuing their asylum claims, compounding the worry and dread that has rippled through immigrant communities.

And that may be the point.

“This administration’s goal is to instill fear into people. That’s the primary thing,” said Cassandra Charles, a senior staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, which has been fighting the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. The fear of being deported to an unknown country could, advocates believe, drive migrants to abandon their immigration cases and decide to return to their home countries.

In the late 1990s, psychologists began using the general trust scale to measure people's overriding opinions about others' nature. You can get a flavour of it here, by rating the following statements from one (completely disagree) to five (completely agree).

• Most people are basically honest

• Most people are trustworthy

• Most people are basically good-natured and kind

You may assume that the highest scorers would be easy to dupe – but this belief is largely unfounded.

Take a recent study in which participants were tasked with watching a series of recorded interviews before determining who was telling the truth and who was lying. Rather astonishingly, the participants' scores on the general trust scale had no influence over their ability to spot the bad actors: the most suspicious were no less likely to be duped than the most trusting.

What's more, the participants all made very similar mistakes, regardless of their opinions about humanity as a whole. In fact, the study confirmed previous research showing that most people have "truth bias", which is the natural tendency to assume that a claim is genuine – and the levels of general trust did not affect this.

##Scam awareness

Scams are a little different.

It is our capacity to pick up those cues that determines our overall "gullibility", according to recent research by psychologist Alessandra Teunisse. While completing a doctorate at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, she designed a Gullibility Scale that asked participants to rate statements such as:

• If anyone is likely to fall for a scam, it's me

• I'm not that good at reading the signs that someone is trying to manipulate me

• People think I'm a little naïve

In one deliciously devious study, she recruited participants to take the questionnaire before sending them a series of fake phishing emails over the next few months. "The people who clicked on the hyperlinks in those emails had significantly higher scores on the Gullibility Scale than those who did not click on that link," says Teunisse.

Crucially, this bore almost no relation to their scores on the Generalised Trust Scale, supporting the idea that we can think the best of humanity without leaving ourselves vulnerable to other people's trickery. "You can be highly trusting, but the second you see a cue that signals that something isn't right, you re-evaluate the situation," Teunisse explains.

##Elevated feelings

Such conclusions align with new research on elevation – the uplifting emotion we feel when we see extraordinarily virtuous or altruistic acts, such as someone risking their own life to save another's.

Since numerous experiments have shown that experiencing elevation inspires people to act more pro-socially, Anne Hamby, an associate professor in consumer psychology at Boise State University in the US, wondered whether it would also render them more gullible. "But after a few studies, we kept finding the reverse effect." Hamby says.

In experiment after experiment, people who were feeling "elevated" tended to be better at detecting scams. They were more likely to discern the false claims in a dubious advert for an herbal medicine, for instance.

##A self-fulfilling prophecy

Eric Neumann from Stanford University started to wonder whether people's attitudes to trust might become self-fulfilling prophecies. By showing faith in others, we may gain their goodwill and encourage them to behave more honestly around us, in turn reinforcing our positive beliefs. If, however, we always suspect the worst, people could end up living down to those expectations, which only confirms our pessimism.

So Neumann developed the Self-Fulfilling Trust Mindset questionnaire, with statements like the following:

• When people feel that you trust them, they actually become more trustworthy

• When you trust people, that brings out their most trustworthy behaviour

He found people who scored high on the Self-Fulfilling Trust Mindset tended to score higher on the general trust scale and a host of other measures examining people’s faith in human nature.

Neumann suspected that senders primed with the Self-Fulfilling Trust Mindset would be more generous in their initial offers, and that their good faith would then be rewarded by the receiver. And that is exactly what he found