According to this article (Al Jazeera link), the conflict is related to the civil war currently ongoing in Northern Mali, which attracted AQ and ISIS and it would not surprise me if it also attracted American money, especially since it seems to have spilled into Burkina Faso right around their first election in a while and has only been intensifying since the new anti-US government took power. I don’t know enough about what’s going on to talk more specifically though.