Wagner virus is still alive in Africa

Before flying to the NATO summit in Vilnius, accompanying Joe Biden, Jake Sullivan, his National Security adviser, acknowledged to a small group of journalists, including David Ignatius of The Washington Posthow much the White House is unaware of the factors determining the course of the war in Ukraine, including the June 24 revolt of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private army.

“We do not know how far the conspiracy has gone or where Prigozhin is, but we do know that he moves relatively freely (…) Everything is shrouded in mystery,” he told them. What he did know, however, was that the impact of the mutiny had been almost imperceptible on the Ukrainian battlefields, where Wagner has ceased to participate in combat operations.

According to Russia’s own official sources, Vladimir Putin met with Prigozhin and 34 of his commanders for three hours on June 29. There were many issues on the table: the future of his corporate empire – security services, mining, distilleries, cyber-piracy… – and the eventual absorption by the Ministry of Defense of his contractors private. Or mercenaries, depending on how you see it.

In the case of insurgents who shot down six helicopters and a military transport plane on their way to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don, where their revolt began, Putin’s gesture was more than deferential. The signals coming from Moscow are mixed. According to sources he cites The New York Timesauthorities are questioning General Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, over his close relations with Prigozhin.

Is the tsar naked?

Lucian Staiano remembers in Foreign Policy that criminal organizations infiltrated in the institutions exercise a parallel power in Russia that seems to have gotten out of Putin’s hands, eroding his image as an all-powerful tsar without whose consent not a leaf turns in the 11 time zones that stretch from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok .

Previous enemies or traitors –Nemtsov, Litvinenko, Politkovskaya…– were unceremoniously eliminated, in some cases outside of Russia. In Financial TimesIván Kratsev insinuates that the Russian elites –political, corporate, military…– and whom he calls “the collective Putin” have smelled blood in the water, with which they are going to acquire increasing political autonomy.

Not everyone believes, however, that the tsar is naked. According to Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the consultancy R.Politik, the Kremlin has launched a media demolition campaign of Prigozhin, showing images of his mansions and fake passports and of Wagner’s delivery of tons of ammunition and weapons, while allowing him to keep his business.

Stanovaya maintains that Putin does not do it because he is afraid of him but because he does not believe that he is a real danger. And especially since getting rid of an experienced fighting force in the middle of a war would be absurd.

neocolonial empire

Theories are equally disparate about the future of Wagner’s empire in Africa, where he has officially deployed 5,000 troops in five countries: Mali, Sudan, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Libya. The problem is that in them the fog of war is even thicker than in Russia at a time when the internal war in Sudan is intensifying.

Since the fall of Omar al Bashir, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) collaborated to create the so-called Military Council for the Transition (CMT), the junta that assumed power in Khartoum and to which they granted 3,000 million dollars in aid. Your alliance (ad hoc) in a sprawling, highly populated country that serves as a bridge between Africa and the Middle East was short-lived.

The rivalry between the Sudanese army and the Arab rebels led by General Hamdan Dagalo blew up the pact. While Riyadh and Cairo support the TMC, Abu Dhabi and Wagner have sided with Dagalo, leader of the former janjaweedwho in the 2000s committed a genocide in Darfur that claimed 300,000 lives before the arrival in 2007 of the blue helmets of the UN and the interposition forces of the African Union.

The metastasis spreads

In Sudan, Wagner guards mines whose gold his front companies export first to Abu Dhabi and then to Russia to help it evade Western sanctions. Business opportunities abound in the region for an organization of soldiers of fortune like Wagner.

The last blue helmets from the UN peace mission (Minusma) will leave Mali before the end of the year, where Wagner helps the junta chaired by Assimi Goita to fight against the jihadists and Arab and Tuareg separatists in the north and east of the country. Since 2016 the war has claimed some 10,000 lives.

A foreign empire of these dimensions and utility for Moscow does not dismantle overnight. Among the scenarios that analysts are considering is their absorption by other Russian security companies such as Patriot, which operates in Burundi, Gabon, Syria and Yemen, the creation by their commanders of their own fiefdoms and taifa kingdoms or their dissolution into the bodies of security of the regimes they serve.

Beethoven or Mozart

According to Sergei Lavrov, “Russian private military companies” will remain in Mali and RCA, which have signed defense agreements with the Russian Federation, which in turn has subcontracted to Wagner. A Malian board member acknowledges that the “Russian claws are big, but for now they are just giving us massages.”

In CAR, the regime cannot do without Wagner, which has recruited a parallel army of 5,000 men, most of them from the same ethnic group as Faustin-Archange Toudéra, the leader of the military junta. According to one of his advisers, Fidele Gouandjika, if Moscow withdraws Wagner and sends “Beethoven or Mozart” in his place, they will receive them with the same appreciation.

It is explainable. Without its mercenaries – Russians, Chechens, Syrians, Libyans… – Bangui, the capital, would be at the mercy of the jihadists in a matter of days. The UN estimates that 20% of the country’s population has already been displaced by the internal war and that up to 5.6% could have lost their lives.

According to a recent report from The SentryIn just five years, Wagner has infiltrated the military chain of command and the country’s economic and political system in what he calls a new “ultraviolent colonialism.” The regime has granted Wagner exploitation rights for 25 years from the Ndassima gold mine, which has reserves worth 1 billion dollars and could generate revenues of 100 million dollars a year, according to the Brussels consultancy IPIS.

Nathalia Dukhan, author of the investigation of The Sentrybelieves that Wagner, like viruses, will know how to adapt to the new environment because it is not a pyramidal organization but a structure of parasitic clientelist networks that allows Moscow to interfere in elections, sustain autocracies and exploit resources without being directly involved in illegal activities or crimes of war.

cancer metastasis

In Libya, Wagner controls two military air bases in Cyrenaica that are used to send and rotate troops in Mali and Sudan and protects the oil and gas facilities controlled from Benghazi by General Khalifa Hafter.

Julia Stanyard, an analyst with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, warns of dangers, similar to cancer metastasis. US intelligence agencies have detected Wagner’s footprints also in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Kenya and South Africa.

In Somalia, the withdrawal of the AU mission made up of troops from Uganda, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea and Egypt has already begun, and they have just handed over three of their bases to the Somali army, which is now going to have to face Al alone. Shabbab, the Al Qaeda franchise in the Horn of Africa.

What could go wrong?

Wagner is not, however, invulnerable. Under international law, Prigozhin can be tried for his responsibility for crimes committed by forces under his command. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over Mali, where according to a UN report in 2022 regular military forces and “foreign instructors” summarily executed half a thousand civilians in four days in Moura in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The board doesn’t want witnesses. Days before the Wagner mutiny, Bamako demanded from the Security Council the withdrawal of the 13,000 Minusma troops – which since 2013 has had 300 casualties, thus becoming the second most dangerous of the blue helmets– accusing her of exacerbating inter-ethnic tensions.

The entry The Wagner virus is still alive in Africa was first published in Foreign Policy.

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