Groups affiliated with Islamic State and al Qaeda are killing and kidnapping elder statesmen and their families in villages across Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. The violence mimics their tactics in other parts of the world where they have seized control.
Scrawled onto a cement gravestone in the village of Tchombangou is the date when the calm of the remote community in southwest Niger was shattered: Friday, Nov. 22, 2019.
Before dawn that day, gunmen approached on motorbikes across the surrounding scrubland. Their target: Boubacar Lawey, the 95-year-old village chief who walked with a cane and for 55 years had settled local disputes, collected taxes and registered births and deaths.
While residents slept, the men led Lawey a short way from the village and shot him dead.
