Ukraine Targets Russian Forces in Sahel

Andrew McGregor

Eurasia Daily Monitor 21(169)

Washington DC, November 19, 2024

Executive summary:

  • Ukraine is alleged to be providing military equipment and training to the Tuareg separatist coalition CSP-DPA in its armed struggle against Russian-backed Malian government forces.
  • This support is framed as a strategic move by Ukraine to counter Russian influence in Africa, particularly targeting Russian forces and mercenaries in Mali.
  • This commitment reflects Kyiv’s growing interest in subversive tactics to distract and weaken Moscow as Ukraine engages in a worldwide manhunt for Russian forces.

A mid-October investigative article that appeared in the French daily Le Monde alleged Ukraine is supplying military drones to Tuareg rebels operating in northern Mali. This support was described as “discreet but decisive” (Le Monde, October 13). The recipient of these drones is said to be the Tuareg separatist coalition known as CSP-DPA (Cadre Stratégique pour la Défense du Peuple de l’Azawad). Ukraine’s foreign ministry rejected the article’s accusations on October 14 as “false narratives of… the aggressor state Russia,” after allegedly asking the French government to prevent its publication (Le Pays [Ouagadougou], October 20; Kyiv Independent, October 15). The report also claimed, citing a source close to Ukrainian intelligence, that some Tuareg have been trained in Ukraine while a number of Ukrainian specialists have trained rebels in the Sahel. Never known for presenting a unified stand, Mali’s Tuareg remain divided between separatist, Islamist-Jihadist and pro-government militias.

Calling out Ukraine for its alleged support of “international terrorist organizations,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova declared that Ukrainian support for Malian separatists was “interference in the internal affairs of African countries” (Le Pays [Ouagadougou], October 20).

According to Le Monde, light quadcopter drones were used in September and October to drop explosives on Russian camps at Goundam (twice) and Léré, creating casualties before returning to base (Le Monde, October 13). Mali’s army, with likely assistance from their Russian advisors, is also deploying drone warfare. On the night of October 5-6, Malian drones struck what was described by the army as a column of vehicles bearing “terrorists” in CSP-DPA territory. Local sources reported the strike hit a convoy of civilian vehicles carrying Nigérien gold miners (Kyiv Post, October 9).

FAMa Chinese-made Norinco MRAP VP11 Destroyed by Tuareg Militants (Militarnyi)

In a September interview, CSP-DPA spokesman Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane emphasized the efforts of his group to establish relations with external partners, citing in particular a common cause between the peoples of “Azawad” (the name used by separatists for northern Mali) and Ukraine against Russian mercenaries: “Ukraine sees enemies where the Wagners are and we, in Azawad, are [also] facing this organization that is the cause of misfortune and destruction in many countries, in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic, Sudan and of course in Ukraine” (Contre-Poison, September 9).

Describing cooperation with Ukraine as being “in its first phase,” the CSP-DPA spokesman requested arms and military training from Ukraine, placing the struggle of the Azawad separatists in the context of a greater war against Russian imperialism, describing this as “a global fight because Russia is a threat to the entire world… the entire international community must get behind us and help us put an end to this Malian and Russian occupation of our territory” (Contre-Poison, September 9).

Though Russian troops in Africa continue to be called “Wagner” in common parlance, Prigozhin’s mercenary forces in Africa were reorganized as the “Africa Corps” after his death, coming under the direct command of the Russian Defense Ministry. Accusing the Russians of participation in extrajudicial executions of civilians, population displacement, theft of all-important livestock and the destruction of infrastructure, the rebel spokesman warned that the changing status of Russian troops in Mali would have “legal consequences”: “It should be noted that since Wagner’s mercenaries have been dependent on the Russian Ministry of Defense, Moscow is directly and legally responsible for their actions, unlike when Prigozhin was alive” (Contre-Poison, September 9).

Colonel Hamad-Rhissa Ag Hamad-Assalah (Contre-Poison)

Colonel Hamad-Rhissa Ag Hamad-Assalah, who led CSP-DPA fighters in the successful attack on Malian regulars and Russian mercenaries at Tinzawatène, has been more reticent on the issue of Ukrainian military assistance, stating: “We are not aware of any assistance from Ukraine in terms of intelligence and drone support.” The colonel has, however, called for help from France, which, at the time of independence in 1960, imposed Azawad’s narrow link to southern Mali and its much larger population, culturally and linguistically very different from the pastoral and semi-nomadic communities of Tuareg, Arabs, Fulani (a.k.a. Peul) and Songhay (a.k.a. Ayneha) in the arid north:

“If there is one African country whose sovereignty must be recognized by France, it is Azawad. It is France that brought us together with Mali in the past and today, it is France that must separate us from Mali” (Contre-Poison, August 16).

Some Malians see a reciprocal connection between French support for Ukraine and Ukrainian intervention in the former French colonies, or, alternatively, an effort by NATO to punitively destabilize West Africa after a recent decline in Western influence (Burkina24.com, October 19). These and other views are actively promoted by Russian influence experts active in the Sahel.

Tuareg Fighters on an Exercise (Apostrophe.UA)

A peacetime Russia could find the troops and weapons needed to support a greater effort in Mali’s desert warfare, but it is not peacetime and North Korean drones and troops are being fed into the front lines to help a manpower-starved Russian military combat Ukraine’s Kursk incursion.  As promised, the Ukrainians have internationalized the war on Russia’s official or unofficial militaries wherever they are deployed, including Syria, Sudan and Mali (Kyiv Post, October 9). Ironically, it is the Malian junta’s invitation to the Russians that has brought the Tuareg separatists the aerial power in the form of drones that they need to defeat government forces and their allies on the battlefield.

However, diplomatic support for “Azawad” from a Western nation would ultimately be more valuable than military assistance from Ukraine. To this point, the separatists are saying all the right things, offering strategic advantages in return for European support, potentially acting as “border guards” along the Sahel, capable of controlling the flow of migrants to Europe and stemming drug trafficking through the region (Contre-Poison, September 9). There is a strong possibility that Ukraine’s over-taxed military intelligence force may be forced to divert resources from distant Mali to interfere with the more immediate threat created by the flow of North Korean troops to the Ukraine front.

Mercenaries, UN Peacekeepers, and Multilateral Forces May Not Be Enough to Protect the Congo from the M23 Movement

Andrew McGregor

Terrorism Monitor

Jamestown Foundation, Washington DC

July 9, 2024

Executive Summary:

  • The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to struggle to remove M23 rebels from its eastern provinces despite military aid and the assistance of UN troops and European mercenaries. The current UN peacekeeping mission is expected to withdraw by the end of 2024, likely ushering in a period of greater instability in the historically troubled state of Nord-Kivu.
  • Incompetence on the part of the DRC’s army has led to a renewed reliance on European mercenaries and multilateral military operations. This has also opened the door to greater Russian involvement, with Moscow signing a military cooperation agreement with the DRC in March.

Rarely paid, barely trained and poorly equipped, the army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is struggling to drive M23 rebels from the eastern Congo despite the help of UN troops, European mercenaries and military assistance from neighboring states and even nations far from the fighting. The ongoing difficulties of this army, the Forces armées de la république démocratique du Congo (FARDC), have raised local concerns of infiltration or even collaboration with M23 (Mouvement du 23 mars) (AFP, March 30). To revive FARDC’s faltering offensive spirit, Kinshasa has now reintroduced capital punishment sentences in its military courts. On May 3, eight soldiers, including five officers, were sentenced to death for cowardice and “running away from the enemy” (Agence de Presse Africaine, May 4).

M23 Troops Advance in Nord Kivu (VOA)

Formed in 2012 from ethnic Tutsi in the eastern state of Nord-Kivu, M23 receives support from Tutsi-ruled Rwanda as a means of fending off the Kinshasa-backed Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu-based Rwandan armed opposition movement promoting the lethal ideology behind the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda (Le Monde, March 20; Great Lakes Eye [Kigali], December 28, 2022).

General Sultani Emmanuel Makenga (right) (Arab News)

M23 made an earlier play for power over a decade ago under a Rwandan Tutsi, General Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda (jailed for 30 years by the International Criminal Court in 2019 for war crimes and crimes against humanity). M23 took the Nord-Kivu capital of Goma, but were defeated in 2013, their fighters fleeing across the border to refuge in Uganda and Rwanda. The movement began to return to the DRC quietly in 2017 under military leader Brigadier General Sultani Emmanuel Makenga. A Congo-born member of the Mugogwe sub-group of the Tutsi, Makenga helped bring Laurent-Désiré Kabila to power in the DRC in 1997 before Tutsis were ordered to leave the Congo during a general expulsion of “foreign” troops the next year (New African, February 15, 2013).

A reorganized M23 retook the offensive in eastern Congo in October 2021 after Kinshasa launched a campaign to force all armed groups in its eastern provinces to disarm and demobilize. Under pressure from the rebels, President Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo declared in October 2022 that he would not give in to the “fashionable” trend of hiring mercenaries to combat rebellion in his country. Two months later, White mercenaries were spotted providing security around Goma airport (Great Lakes Eye [Kigali], January 19, 2023). These were the vanguard of Romanian private military company (PMC) Asociatia RALF-ROLE, composed mostly of former members of the French Foreign Legion. The mission was meant to focus on training and securing Goma’s international airport, but Romanian mercenaries have instead found themselves fighting at the front.

RALF-ROLE originally consisted of 400 fighters, but Rwanda claims there are now as many as 2,000 mercenaries from Eastern Europe in Nord-Kivu (New Times [Kigali], October 16, 2023). A 2022 decision to lift a long-standing arms embargo on the DRC allowed a free flow of arms for the mercenaries, who are paid $5000 per month (Observator [Bucharest], February 9). The local habit of referring to the Romanians as “Russians” initially created many false reports of a Wagner presence in Nord-Kivu. Unlike Wagner’s connections to the Kremlin, Romanian authorities have made it clear there is no state involvement with the Romanian mercenary group (Observator [Bucharest], February 9).

FARDC Defensive Position (AFP)

Nonetheless, there are indications that the Kremlin is seeking a military entry to the DRC; on March 5, Russia’s Defense Ministry signed a military cooperation agreement with Kinshasa. The pact provides for joint military exercises, military training and visits by warships and military aircraft (TASS, March 5; Digitalcongo.net, March 6). FARDC’s aging air assets are currently flown by Georgian and Belarussian pilots, while their maintenance is in the hands of Bulgarian PMC Agemira  (Deutsche Welle, January 17, 2023; Jeune Afrique, July 28, 2023).

Wazalendo Mayi Mayi (Congo Indépendant)

Corrupt and undisciplined, FARDC is supported not only by the Hutu FDLR and European mercenaries, but also Burundian troops and the Wazalendo (Kiswahili – “patriots”), a coalition of Mayi Mayi militias and other pro-government armed groups formed by FARDC in May 2023 (Africa Defense Forum, January 16). The Mayi Mayi are local Congolese militias ostensibly engaged in a struggle for indigenous rights, but better known for drug-fuelled rampages against villagers involving rape, looting and murder (see Terrorism Monitor, April 3, 2014).

EACRF Commander General Jeff Nyaga

The incompetence of FARDC forces Kinshasa to seek defenders abroad. The East African Community Regional Force (EACRF – Burundians, Ugandans, Kenyans and South Sudanese) deployed in Nord-Kivu in November 2022 during M23 advances, but withdrew its last troops in December 2023 after the DRC declined to renew its mandate (East African [Nairobi], December 21, 2023). Only months into their mission, EACRF faced threats in Goma from demonstrators who accused the force of failing to take the fight to M23, though their mandate called for an offensive only as a last resort (Great Lakes Eye [Kigali], March 21, 2023; DRC News, May 16, 2023). EACRF’s Kenyan commander, General Jeff Nyaga, resigned in April 2023, complaining of intimidation from “foreign mercenaries” (Kinshasa Times, April 28, 2023). Nyaga was accused by the Congolese of “peaceful cohabitation” with M23 and Rwandan troops in Kivu (Kinshasa Times, May 3, 2023). Dissatisfaction with EACRF’s performance may have motivated Tshisekedi to intensify his recruitment of mercenaries.

About 1,000 Tanzanian, Malawian and South African troops belonging to the Southern African Development Community Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (SAMIDRC) began to arrive as replacements for EACRF in December 2023, but deployment has been slow and six men have already been lost to M23 mortar fire (DRC News, April 3; Kinshasa Times, April 9). SAMIDRC is led by South Africa’s Major General Monwabisi Dyakopu, who fought M23 in 2013.

MONUSCO Patrol (PBS)

Also active in Nord-Kivu are UN peacekeepers of MONUSCO (Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en République démocratique du Congo), the UN’s largest and most-expensive peacekeeping mission. First deployed in 2000, MONUSCO now operates alongside FARDC to defend the Nord-Kivu cities of Saké and Goma (DRC News, March 13).

Though remote and impoverished, Nord-Kivu’s extraordinary mineral wealth continues to draw armed groups like moths to a flame. As with most long-term conflicts, many of the varied participants in the struggle for Nord-Kivu have found ways to profit from its extension rather than its resolution, discouraging any foreseeable improvements in security.

Wagner’s Influence in Central African Republic Wanes as American PMC Enters the Scene

Eurasia Daily Monitor 21(19)

February 7, 2024

Andrew McGregor

Executive Summary:

  • President Faustin-Archange Touadéra (nicknamed “President Wagner”) of the Central African Republic (CAR) welcomed the Wagner Group in 2018 but is now in the process of diversifying the CAR’s relations.
  • Wagner’s influence in the CAR has waned following the Prigozhin mutiny despite assurances from Russian authorities of continued support. For example, Touadéra’s government last year approved a US competitor to Wagner to operate in the country.
  • The situation in the CAR and other countries where Russian private military companies operate is a test of Moscow’s ability to focus on any foreign issue beyond the Ukraine War.

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Landlocked, desperately impoverished and development-free, the Central African Republic (CAR) hardly seems like a strategic prize, but it may soon be the focus of a new “Cold War” struggle for Africa and its resources. Like other former French colonies in Africa, the CAR has endured security challenges as French military forces withdrew and Russian “mercenaries” flowed in to replace them.

CAR President Faustin Archange Touadéra

Russia’s Wagner Group was initially welcomed to the CAR in 2018 by President Faustin Archange Touadéra, who carried out a January reshuffle of the government in which important posts were reallocated to cronies, militia leaders and mistresses of the president (Corbeau News [Bangui], January 14).

Last December, the CAR’s presidential spokesman announced that the nation, so closely intertwined with the Wagner Group, was now “in the process of diversifying its relations,” especially in the area of strengthening its armed units. Potential partners named included Russia, but not the United States, though the spokesman noted the president was fond of saying: “I have my arms open to work with everyone” (RFI, December 24, 2023).

“Everyone” appears to include Bancroft Global Development (BGD), an American NGO reputed to be a private military contractor (PMC). The Washington-based BGD claims a presence in Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Libya, delivering “permanent solutions to the economic, environmental and societal harm cause by armed conflict and the hazardous remnants of war” (Bancroft Global Development website).

Since its arrival, Wagner has become deeply involved in the CAR’s diamond and gold sectors, timber extraction and alcohol production. Wagner also inserted advisors at top government levels and launched intensive propaganda efforts in Sango, the local lingua franca. Russian is taught at the local university, a Bangui restaurant serves Russian cuisine and the construction of a Russian Orthodox church is Bangui is accompanied by a drive to encourage conversions from the nation’s Roman Catholic majority (Izvestia, May 29, 2023). Russian arms and training have turned elements of the Forces Armées Centrafricaines (FACA) into armed auxiliaries of the Wagner Group.

Colonel Denis Pavlov, SVR (Alleyesonwagner)

After Wagner’s failed June 2023 mutiny and the subsequent death of Wagner strongman Prigozhin, some 450 to one thousand Wagner personnel left CAR without replacement (Radio Ndeke Luka [Bangui], July 7, 2023; AFP, July 7, 2023). Russian authorities traveled to Bangui last September to assure CAR officials that the Russian mission there would continue, but under the authority of the Russian Defense Ministry. Denis Vladimirovich Pavlov replaced Vitaly Perfilev (a former French Foreign Legionnaire) as security director, while Dmitry Sytii (victim of a 2022 parcel-bomb attack that both Prigozhin and the CAR blamed on France) was replaced as Maison Russe director but remained on to manage Wagner business interests (RFI, December 18, 2023). Pavlov is not a Wagner man, but is instead from the SVR, Russia’s external intelligence agency (Alleyesonwagner.org./RFE/RFL, December 7, 2023; Radio Ndeke Luka [Bangui], December 17, 2022; Izvestia, May 29, 2023).

Last May, the CAR ambassador to Russia mentioned Bangui’s intention to establish a Russian military base “where there could be from five to ten thousand soldiers. Moreover, they could be used in other countries if necessary” (Izvestia, May 29, 2023). On January 26, Russian ambassador to the CAR Alexander Bikantov said that the size and location of the planned base had yet to be determined (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, January 26).

“Russia, the CAR is with you” (al-Jazeera)

Washington is alleged to have first broached the idea of American military training and humanitarian aid in exchange for a Wagner withdrawal within 12 months in a memo passed to the CAR president at the December 2022 United States-Africa conference. The existence of this memo was denied by the CAR’s foreign minister, though she did admit to the establishment of a “cooperative relationship” with the US (Radio Ndeke Luka [Bangui], March 3, 2023).

Rumors of the existence of the US memorandum led to protests against the departure of Wagner and a supposed American assault on CAR sovereignty Radio Ndeke Luka [Bangui], March 3, 2023; Corbeau News [Bangui], January 25). Russian reports echoed earlier French claims that BGD employees were seeking land near the capital for the operation of surveillance drones and the training of a CAR military unit that would protect American mining concessions (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, December 23, 2023; RFI, December 18, 2023). One newly formed pro-Russian civil society group described the “deployment of Bancroft mercenaries” as an “official declaration of war on the Central African people (RFI, January 26). Wagner’s propaganda machine in Bangui has warned of American plans to assassinate President Toudéra (RFI, December 18, 2023).

Michael Stock in Somalia (WSJ)

BGD founder, Michael Stock, and Franco-South African Richard Rouget, a former associate of French mercenary Bob Denard, visited the CAR last September. Contacts with BGD are reported to be handled by two close advisors to President Touadéra (RFI, December 18, 2023). Though BGD has been tight-lipped regarding its association with the CAR, confirmation of a deal with BGD was issued by a presidential spokesman on December 22 (Radio Ndeke Luka [Bangui], December 23, 2023).

Richard Rouget, a.k.a. “Colonel Sanders”

Perhaps sensing fissures in the regime’s stability, Touadera’s rule has been challenged in recent days by two former prime-ministers, Martin Ziguélé (2001-2003) and Henri-Marie Dondra (2021-2022) (Jeune Afrique, December 20, 2023; Jeune Afrique, January 5). They, like most other CAR opposition figures, must operate in exile following detentions and intimidation efforts by Wagner personnel. Nonetheless, most opposition leaders see the arrival of Bancroft as a means of preserving the power of the regime rather than the security of the people (Radio Ndeke Luka [Bangui], December 30, 2023).

There has been much talk of the CAR’s new “security diversification strategy,” though it is unrealistic to imagine Russian and American military personnel happily running parallel security and training operations in Bangui; there are limits to diversity. What will be tested in the coming days is the Russian Defense Ministry’s commitment to foreign adventures initiated by Prighozin’s free-booting Wagner Group.

How African Jihadists Are Exploiting Russia’s “Food War” in Ukraine

Andrew McGregor

AIS Special Report on Ukraine no. 7.

November 9, 2022

Dogon Hunters

Islamist extremists in Mali are attempting to prevent the harvest of various food crops, vitally needed in the midst of food shortages and rising food prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Earlier this year the jihadists tried to prevent farmers from planting, but Malian troops were sent to guard the farmers. Now, with the harvest ready to start, farmers are again coming under fire in their fields. Militia leader Youssouf Toloba has called on traditional hunters of the Dogon ethnic-group to support the Malian military in its efforts to protect the farmers (Le Soir de Bamako, October 17, 2022). Toloba is the so-called “chief of the general staff” of the Dan Na Ambassagou, a group of Dogon hunters who have formed a “self-defense” militia to defend the Dogon from Islamic State and al-Qaeda-associated jihadists operating almost at will in Mali.

The Black Sea Corridor and Global Food Security

The jihadists are following Russia’s lead in weaponizing food security. For months after the February invasion of Ukraine, Moscow imposed a blockade of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast, the only real means of exporting Ukraine’s massive production of grain and other food products to the rest of the world.

A July 22 agreement negotiated by the UN and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to allow the shipment of Ukrainian grain and fertilizer through Russia’s naval blockade is set to expire on November 19. By October 19, negotiations with Russia for an extension to the Black Sea safe corridor had already begun to founder after Ukraine invited UN experts to examine the remains of Russian drones allegedly made in Iran. A Russian diplomat warned that any “illegitimate investigation” into the drones’ origins would force Russia to “reassess” its collaboration with the UN (Reuters, October 19, 2022).

On October 29, Russia suspended the agreement, warning of potential danger to ships defying Russia’s blockade. This time the cause was an alleged Ukrainian attack on Russian warships at the naval port of Sevastapol. The alleged attack, using both naval and aerial drones, was said to have damaged several ships, including a modern Admiral Grigorovich class frigate (NATO reporting name “Burevestnik”), probably the Admiral Makarov, flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet since the April 14 sinking of the old flagship Moskva by Ukrainian Neptune missiles (Euromaidanpress.com [Kiev], November 1). Russia admits only to damage to a minesweeper. The Admiral Makarov and other ships of the Black Sea fleet are valuable targets, having been used to launch Kalibr cruise missiles into Ukraine during Russia’s ongoing missile offensive.

Russia’s defense ministry claimed to have captured an intact UAV used at Sevastapol and examined its memory to determine it had flown along the safe corridor. The ministry suggested it may have been launched from one of the civilian ships carrying Ukraine’s agricultural products (al-Jazeera, November 3, 2022). Moscow has also claimed that Russian food exports remain restricted by sanctions and other measures despite assurances provided in the Black Sea safe corridor agreement.

However, Russia’s warning failed to stop shipments of Ukrainian grain and sunflower oil; a new record was in fact set on October 31 for shipping Ukrainian goods through the safe corridor established in July (354,000 tonnes). With the Turkish president once more taking the role of mediator to assure the continuance of the agreement, vital to world food supplies, Russia was left with a hard choice; continue issuing ineffective warnings that would ultimately become embarrassing if they continued to be ignored, attack international cargo ships carrying grain and oil from Ukrainian ports (which would produce global condemnation, even from its allies), or accept Turkish mediation efforts. The latter course was chosen and resulted in “written guarantees” from Ukraine promising that the safe corridor or Ukrainian ports would not be used for attacks on Russian naval ships (BBC, November 2, 2022).

The war has put enormous pressure on global food markets, and there is no guarantee Russia will renew the export agreement in mid-November. It would, however, be in Moscow’s interests as the alternatives are not promising. Once Russia tries to enforce a blockade of the Black Sea corridor, it loses all its leverage. At that point, there would be no reason for Ukraine not to continue attacking the apparently vulnerable Russian Black Sea fleet. The move would also cause damage to the relationship with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has performed a valuable role as mediator between the Kremlin and the West. Food insecurity leads to political insecurity – Moscow stands to lose the quiet support it has in many parts of the developing world if food-laden freighters start going to the bottom of the Black Sea.

The Food Crisis

Among these developing nations is insurrection-torn Mali. Mali imports 14% of its food. In 2019, the top countries from which Mali imported food products included Brazil, South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal and France. While neither Ukraine nor Russia figure largely in Mali’s food sources, global shortages in grain, cooking oil and other products affected by the conflict in Ukraine create competition for diminishing supplies, increased food prices and even civil insecurity.

Mali’s military, known for severe measures against civilians (torture, illegal detainment, summary execution) and for internal fighting while ignoring the terrorist threat, has lost respect in many areas of the country. Having failed to provide security in wide swathes of the nation, government security forces are being replaced by local, ethnically-based “self-defense” militias largely beyond any type of government control. Sometimes well-armed, these militias often attempt to resolve tribal disputes with soaring rates of violence. The worst of Mali’s internal ethnic conflicts is between the agricultural Dogon community and the pastoral Fulani (a.k.a. Fula, Peul, Fulbe). With a spiralling death-rate, the original disputes between farmers and herders over access to land and water have become secondary to the perceived need to meet extreme violence with greater violence.

The Dogon

The Dogon homeland is found along the 93-mile long Bandiagara escarpment, slightly north of Mali’s border with Burkina Faso. The region’s unique geology and cliff-side architecture led to it being recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1989. The Dogon arrived in the area sometime in the 14th or 15th century, displacing the Tellem (Dogon – “We found them”), who practiced a Stone-Age hunting culture. Most Dogon continue to practice a highly ritualized polytheistic religion, though the 20th century witnessed the growth of significant Christian and Muslim minorities. A centralized leadership does not exist, with each village governed by its own elected spiritual and political leader, the hogon.

The Dogon in Mali (Joshua Project)

The Dogon are best known to the outside world through their elaborate ritual masks and, unfortunately, a persistent pseudoscientific delusion that the Dogon, without any type of telescopic instruments, possess highly advanced astronomical knowledge. Though Afro-centrists have advanced the theory that the skin pigment melanin allowed the ancient Dogon to see minute details of incredibly distant star systems with the naked eye, the Dogon knowledge of astronomy was most likely gained in 1893 when a team of French astronomers stayed with the Dogon for five weeks. When French anthropologists recorded Dogon knowledge in the 1930s, they mistakenly included their limited astronomical knowledge as part of the Dogon belief system. In modern years, the “ancient astronaut” and New Age crowd consider Dogon astronomical knowledge as the result of early visitations to the Dogon by extraterrestrial fish-men from the Sirius star system. [1]

Dogon Cliff Dwellings in Bandiagara

In reality, the Dogon practice sedentary agriculture, which has sometimes brought them into conflict over land rights and access to water with their semi-nomadic Muslim Fulani neighbors, whose culture and economy is built around raising cattle. Such disputes were customarily resolved by community elders who recognized the symbiotic relationship between herders and farmers. In recent years, however, traditional conflict resolution methods have begun to fail due to loss of farmlands to desertification, growing numbers of cattle, external provocation of the Fulani by Muslim extremists, an absence of government control and a proliferation of automatic weapons. The latter has helped replace negotiable and individual incidents of violence with large-scale massacres that have no apparent resolution for their victims other than retribution in kind.

Like their neighbors in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, the Dogon include a fraternity of traditional hunters known collectively as the “Dozo Ton” (Hunters’ Fraternity). Typically clothed in brown garments, the Dozo conduct secret rituals and initiations and wear amulets intended to make them bullet-proof.

Amidst growing insecurity in 2016, the Dogon Dozo formed a self-defense militia called the Dan Na Ambassagou (“Hunters who trust in God”). In recent years the Dozo hunters have added automatic weapons to their traditional arsenal of flintlocks, leading to charges from the Fulani that Mali’s deposed government was arming the hunters as a means of farming out the war against Islamist extremists. According to a Dan Na Ambassagou leader, the militia has indeed provided guides for patrols of the Forces Armées du Mali (FAMA – Armed Forces of Mali) (Reuters, April 19, 2019). Survivors of several massacres of Fulani civilians have identified the Dogon Dozo as the perpetrators.

Mamadou Goudienkilé, president of the Dan Na Ambassagou movement and a former captain in the Malian army, claims the hunters are not simply targeting Fulani:

The Fulani are our neighbours, we are ready to live with them. We are fighting the jihadists, not the Fulani. If the jihadist is Fulani, we fight him, if he is Dogon, we fight him too. But I repeat: this war is not between the Fulani and the Dogon…  (Le Point [Paris], April 13, 2020).

The Fulani

To counter the Dogon Dozo hunters, Mali’s Fulani attempted to consolidate their own local self-defense groups into the larger Alliance pour le Salut au Sahel (ASS – Alliance for the Salvation of the Sahel) in May 2018. The militia’s leader, who goes by the pseudonym “Bacar Sow,” maintained the Fulani are as much victims of the jihadists as any other Malian community, pointing as well to decades of government neglect fueling the intercommunal violence:

The areas where we operate have been abandoned since independence. In these areas, there is a lack of water, electricity, infrastructure and development. There are no schools, there are no roads, no health center. All that is necessary for the development of man is sorely lacking in us… Since [independence in] 1960, the various governments have done nothing and a total social disorder has taken hold (Monde Afrique, March 25, 2019).

Amadou Koufa (Jeune Afrique)

The Dogon, Bambara and other ethnic groups believe the Fulani cooperate with regional jihadists, a belief reinforced by the emergence of the mostly Fulani Katiba Macina extremist group in 2015. Led by Fulani imam Amadou Koufa, a veteran of Iyad ag Ghali’s Ansar al-Din (Supporters of Religion), the group joined the al-Qaeda-connected Jama’a Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (Support Group for Islam and Muslims – JNIM) in 2017. In a November 2018 video, Koufa appealed for an ethno-religious Fulani insurrection in seven African countries (RFI, November 9, 2018). Koufa was declared dead by Malian authorities later that month following a French military operation, but re-emerged in a February 28, 2019 video mocking both the French and Malian security forces.

The Fulani are repeatedly targeted by the mostly Bambara Malian army, which often treats all Fulani as terrorists, Islamist extremists or supporters of the jihad groups that have spread their activities from Mali’s north to its central region since 2013. A degree of animosity between the Muslim Fulani and non-Fulani peoples of Mali (including other Muslims) dates back to the great theocratic Fulani kingdoms that dominated the region in the 19th century.

The jihadists, who have suffered serious losses in recent years, are reported to have recently begun pressing young men into their ranks, summary execution being the alternative to recruitment. Once absorbed into the ranks, each recruit is issued a weapon and a motorcycle (Le Soir de Bamako [Bamako], October 18, 2022).

In the last two years, JNIM jihadists, including Katiba Macina, have been in steady conflict with rival jihadists of the État islamique au Grand Sahara (EIGS – Islamic State of Greater Sahara) after some members of Katiba Macina defected to the Islamic State.

Fulani Herders on the Niger River, Mali (TVC News).

In an attempt to strengthen their position in the region two years ago, JNIM militants tried to mediate between the Dogon and Fulani communities. The point was to try and end clashes between the groups that made jihadist expansion difficult while severing Dogon ties to the state. These efforts were initially successful, allowing farmers and herders to operate in peace, but ultimately, they collapsed, marking a return to intercommunal violence and interruptions in the local food supply (Reuters, August 28, 2020).

Before his 2020 overthrow and subsequent death in January 2022, Malian president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta sought to explain the growing hostilities between Fulani and Dogon:

The violence and cleavages we are witnessing are an outgrowth, a contagion of what has happened in the North [of Mali] over the past decade. As part of their expansionist and hegemonic project, jihadist terrorists have exploited the bankruptcies and weaknesses of the administrative network to insinuate and spread an exclusive speech of hatred, all under the guise of religion (Jeune Afrique, July 2, 2019).

Militia vs. Military

The militias all cite the same reason for their formation – the inability or unwillingness of government security forces to secure their communities from attacks and property theft, especially in the last four years. Malian security forces rarely make an appearance during the attacks, regardless of their proximity to the attack or its duration, citing shortages of men and equipment and even the difficulty of operating in the dark.

 Marcelin Guenguéré

Illustrative of the military’s declining prestige was the reaction of Dogon villagers when a truck full of soldiers arrived in the town of Koro to arrest Marcelin Guenguéré, spokesman of the Dogon Dan Na Ambassagou militia and a suspect in violent attacks on the Fulani. Video shot by the militia showed the troops being driven away by chanting, rock-throwing locals and Dogon hunters. Ignoring the president’s order to dissolve the Dan Na Ambassagou, Guenguéré declared that any attempt to disarm the militia “could provoke a rebellion that will not be so easily contained” (Reuters, April 19, 2019). Mamoudou Goudienkilé, president of Dan Na Ambassagou, insisted that “Before disarming ourselves, we should already disarm the jihadists who are killing our people, stealing our cattle and burning our villages!” (RFI, March 10, 2021).

Youssouf Toloba (Malivox/Youtube)

The movement’s military leader, Youssouf Toloba, pointed out the president could not dissolve the group as he “wasn’t the one who created it.” Toloba added that his movement had signed a cease-fire agreement in return for a government pledge to secure the Dogon homeland, “but then nothing was done…” (VOA, March 25, 2019). Toloba provided his interpretation of the role of the Dan Na Ambassagou to a French newspaper:

We do not accept being called bandits or militia on the understanding that, in general, the term “militia” has a negative, even pejorative connotation. We are not a militia, we are rather resistance fighters like those who, in France, during the Second World War, took up arms against the Germans who were the invaders (Le Point [Paris], April 3, 2021).

Toloba has repeatedly called for a combat alliance between FAMA and the hunters, claiming the latter possess invaluable intelligence regarding the position and the operations of the jihadists (Nouvel Horizon [Bamako], May 10, 2022).

Sékou Allaye Bolly

Other Fulani have joined non-Islamist self-defense militias, such as the one led by Sékou Bolly, a Fulani businessman who formed a loose alliance with the pro-government, Tuareg-dominated Mouvement pour le salut de l’Azawad (MSA – Movement for the Salvation of Azawad) and absorbed former jihadists in his militia who passed through the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) process. [2]

Cooperation between Guinguéré and Sékou Bolly in the interest of establishing peace angered elements in both the hunter and Fulani communities, who regarded it as a betrayal of their interests. In turn, Guinguéré and Bolly have both demanded that Youssouf Toloba submit to the state following accusations the militia leader has abandoned the mission of defending Dogon communities in favor of extortion and the looting of resources (Le Wagadu [Bamako], January 13, 2021).

Dan Na Ambassagou fighters clashed with JNIM militants (likely part of the Fulani-based Katiba Macina) last May. The katiba (battalion) had been pressuring local Dogon communities to join a government-sponsored attempt to create local non-aggression agreements with the jihadists (Nouvel Horizon [Bamako], May 16, 2022).  Toloba opposed these “wacky peace deals” with jihadists:

Why would we cede our land to strangers? The goal of the jihadists is to subjugate us. To sign an agreement with them is to betray the Malian state, which is secular. These agreements entail the application on the ground of sharia, which we do not want (Le Point [Paris], April 3, 2021).

Massacres at Ogossogou and Moura

On March 23, one of the worst slaughters in modern Mali’s history occurred at the Fulani village of Ogossogou in the Mopti region of central Mali. Nearly 160 Fulani civilians perished in the brutal attack, allegedly carried out by the Dan Na Ambassagou. Many of the dead were hacked to death by machetes while others were burned alive in their homes. Typical of such attacks, all farm animals were either killed or carried away, leaving the survivors to starve without assistance.

Colonel M’Bah Ag Moussa (Malijet)

The assault occurred one day after JNIM jihadists claimed responsibility for a March 17 attack on the FAMA garrison at Dioura (Mopti region) in which 23 soldiers were killed and a substantial quantity of arms and military gear seized by the assailants, who arrived by motorcycle and automobile. The JNIM statement (carried by its media arm, al-Zallaqa) said the attack was retribution for the government’s “heinous crimes” against the Fulani, but denied the Dioura attack was led, as claimed by the government, by a two-time FAMA deserter, Colonel M’Bah Ag Moussa “Abu Shari’a” (a.k.a. Bamoussa Diara). (Defense Post/AFP, March 18, 2019; Africa Times, March 24, 2019). [3]

Youssouf Toloba’s Dogon and Sékou Bolly’s Fulani militia had conducted successful mixed patrols in the region until the Ogossogou massacre. Bolly loudly accused Dan Na Ambassagou of responsibility for the attack, ending the possibility of further joint patrols. When Toloba was asked about a UN accusation of Dan Na Ambassagou responsibility, he asked: “Did the United Nations catch Dan Na Ambassagou attacking the village?” (Le Point [Paris], April 3, 2021).

Da Na Ambassagou spokesman Maracelin Guenguéré insists, improbably, that the Ogossogou massacre was in fact carried out by other Fulanis, not Dogon: “I can assure you of one thing, today everyone can have access to a hunter’s outfit. These are not hard to get outfits… There are Fulanis who are in conflict with other Fulanis. They manage to kill each other and pretend that it is the Dogons who killed them” (Le Point [Paris], June 20, 2019).

Less than a week after the Ogossogou affair, a March 27 FAMA/Russian raid on the Katiba Macina-held town of Moura was followed by five days of bloodletting, with over 300 civilians murdered after a brief firefight with a small group of 30 armed jihadists, most of whom escaped. The dead filled three mass graves they were forced to excavate first. The attackers indulged in days of rape and looting, as well as the destruction of motorcycles, commonly used by the jihadists. Using FAMA interpreters, the Russians separated Fulanis from other ethnic groups, explaining they needed to be killed as all Fulanis were supporters of jihad (Human Rights Watch, April 5, 2022).

Retaliation at Sobane Da

Retaliation for the Ogossogou massacre came on the night of June 9-10, when an attack on the Dogon village of Sobane Da was carried out by some 50 gunmen on motorcycles or pick-up trucks.  Over eight hours the attackers, identified by the survivors as Fulanis, disembowelled many of their victims and burned women, children and the elderly alive inside their huts (France24.com, June 11, 2019; Le Monde [Paris], June 11, 2019; Le Point [Paris], June 20, 2019). At least 35 villagers were killed. Dogon leaders later claimed the Fulani militia of Sékou Bolly committed the atrocity in revenge for Ogossogou.

According to Da Na Ambassagou spokesman Marcelin Guenguéré:

The people who attacked us, those terrorists, those jihadists, I assure you that these are people we know, these are our Fulani neighbors who are with us on Dogon territory. I do not incriminate all the Fulani, but it is the Fulani who live with us who are at the origin of all this, they have their agenda (Le Point [Paris], June 20, 2019).

On June 18, 2022, the Katiba Macina slaughtered 132 civilians near Bankass, in the Mopti region of central Mali. On July 20, an assault by the militants on the town of Kargué was badly defeated by Dan Na Ambassagou fighters, who killed 53 of the attackers (Le Pays [Bamako], July 22, 2022). On July 23, the katiba attacked the Kati military base outside of Bamako, killing a soldier and demonstrating an unsuspected ability to reach right into the heart of Mali’s military structure.

There seems no end to the cycle of violence – Russian Wagner personnel and Malian troops were accused of massacring 13 civilians in the Fulani village of Guelledjé on October 30 (Africanews/AFP, November 1, 2022). Idrissa Sankaré, a leading official of the Tabital Pulaaku Mali (a civil Fulani umbrella group) recently warned a gathering of Fulani leaders: “Malians must understand that we are condemned to live together, to accept each other mutually to defend our homeland together, to avoid suspicion, amalgamation, hatred… not wanting to live in together is to want to disappear together” (Maliweb, August 31, 2022).

Forecast – The Shift to Moscow

Like a number of other African nations, Mali is now turning to Moscow for security assistance after French counter-terrorist forces withdrew in February. Mali has received an influx of fighters from the Russian Wagner network as well as Russian jet-fighters, mobile radar systems and transport and attack helicopters. Local pro-Russian activists organize demonstrations demanding a Russian presence in Mali -their funding comes from a Wagner-associated mining company with access to Malian gold deposits. Malian authorities, likely with encouragement from Russian disinformation specialists, claim French aircraft collect intelligence for the jihadists and deliver them shipments of arms. [4] Russians patrol the grounds of the presidential palace in Bamako; France’s President Macron has suggested the new military regime is looking to the Russians for protection rather than help in fighting terrorists.

The Black Sea transit agreement expires on November 19. Even if the shipping corridor remains open, the total amount of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products shipped remains small, somewhere around one-tenth of what still awaits export. Some 77 empty freighters are off Ukraine’s ports, awaiting their loads of grain and sunflower oil.

Mali’s minister of the economy, Alousseini Sanou, visited Moscow in the first week of November. In an appearance on Malian state TV, Sanou announced Russia was sending aid to Mali in the form of 60,000 tonnes of petroleum products, 30,000 tonnes of fertilizer and 25,000 tonnes of wheat. The shipment was first discussed in an August phone call between Putin and Colonel Assimi Goïta but has yet to be confirmed by the Kremlin (Reuters, August 11, 2022; al-Jazeera, November 3, 2022; Agenzianova [Rome], November 3, 2022).

If the Russian supplies do materialize, it will provide some relief for Mali, but with jihadists shooting farmers in their fields it will not provide a long-term solution to the diminishing food supply and intercommunal violence, violence that the introduction of private Russian military contractors has only exacerbated. After a meeting with the Turkish defense minister on November 3, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg identified the cause of the growing food crisis being exploited by the jihadists for their own benefit:

The increased prices and the problems we have seen in the global food market are not caused by sanctions. It is caused by the war itself… It is the war of aggression that is undermining and threatening the supplies of food from Ukraine to the world market. The grain deal helps to reduce the effects, but the lasting solution will be to end the war and that’s Russia’s responsibility… [5]

Notes

  1. See, for example: Temple, Robert K.G: The Sirius Mystery: New scientific evidence of alien contact 5,000 years ago, (2nd ed), London, 1999 (1st ed. – 1976).
  2. Aurélien Tobie and Boukary Sangaré: The Impact of Armed Groups on the Populations of Central and Northern Mali: Necessary Adaptations of the Strategies for Re-establishing Peace, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 2019, p. 10.
  3. Ag Moussa was a mixed Tuareg/Bambara considered close to JNIM leader Iyad ag Ghali. He received his military training in Libya and was a native of Kidal region in Mali’s north. Military commander of JNIM since 2017, Ag Moussa was killed in a carefully planned French attack in the Gao region on November 10, 2020. Sidi Mohamed ag Oukana, Ag Moussa’s half-brother, remains Iyad ag Ghali’s senior religious advisor. See “French Troops Kill JNIM Military Leader Colonel Bah Ag Moussa Diara: What are the implications?” AIS Militant Profile, November 20, 2020, https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=4689
  4. Last month, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop demanded an emergency session of the UN Security Council to address Malian allegations that France was providing weapons, ammunition and intelligence to jihadist groups (Le Témoin [Bamako], October 25, 2022).
  5. NATO Press Conference, Istanbul, November 3, 2022, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_208413.htm

The Wagner Group: The Kremlin’s Dirty Arm

A PolskieRadio24 Interview with Dr. Andrew McGregor

November 3, 2022

Any involvement of the Wagner Group has to be approved by the Kremlin and is usually negotiated through the Russian Ministry of Defense; its operations abroad are supervised by the FSB or, more often, the GRU – says Dr. Andrew McGregor, director of Aberfoyle International Security, in an interview with PolskieRadio24.pl.

Ewa Zarzycka, portal PolskieRadio24.pl:  Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin, who admits to creating the Wagner Group?

Yevgeny Prigozhin is responsible for financing the Wagner “Group,” which is really a network of contract soldiers, disinformation specialists, election manipulators, VIP security personnel and a variety of companies focused on resource extraction. He has no known military background or expertise, having moved up from sausage-maker to restaurant owner to Kremlin caterer. A personal friendship with Vladimir Putin dating back to their days in St. Petersburg accounts for most of his success.

Does he command this private army, or is he merely its political protector? Does Prigozhin want to make a political fortune from the successes of the Wagnerians in Ukraine?

With no personal military expertise or training, Prigozhin does not oversee Wagner ground operations, this task being given to senior members of the network, usually with experience in the GRU. Prigozhin does not fund the network’s operations (which in most cases are not particularly lucrative), but acts more as a funding middleman and administrator.

Prigozhin recruits for Wagner Group in a Russian prison colony.

Prigozhin is a creature of Vladimir Putin and his fortunes are closely tied to those of the president. Prigozhin was recently reminded of this point when he began to publicly criticize Russian generals and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, another personal friend of the president. Prigozhin’s spokesman was dragged from his car and badly beaten by members of the Russian National Guard, a force personally loyal to Putin and led by the president’s former judo sparring partner.

How large is the group, and how armed. Is it a private company or does it use state financial and material resources (armaments)?

The size of overseas deployments ranges from 100 (security and advisory services) up to 2,000 (combat operations) depending on the duties undertaken. American estimates suggest there are roughly 8,000 Wagner personnel in Ukraine.

Arms and uniforms are typically identical to those used by Russian regular forces. Russian-made armored personnel carriers or infantry fighting vehicles are often deployed on foreign operations, though these are not always the latest models. In some cases, such as Libya, Russian warplanes (absent their national insignia) were deployed with Wagner pilots. The Wagner network often acts as a conduit for Russian arms supplies to client nations.

Was it Prigozhin first with his idea, or was it first the idea (of the Kremlin?) and then Prigozhin? When did the Kremlin stop pretending that it was a private company?

With strict laws in the Russian Federation against mercenary activities, it was Vladimir Putin who first suggested in a 2012 speech that there might be some room for the establishment of private military contractors (PMCs) in Russia. The next year, the Slavonic Corps, a Hong Kong-registered PMC recruited from Russian veterans, was deployed in Syria. The mission was an utter disaster, partly because of lack of support from the Russian military, and the leaders of the Corps were prosecuted in Russian courts.

However, the deployment did suggest to Kremlin insiders that a new private military force with stronger ties to the Russian regular forces and intelligence services might be a means of furthering the financial interests of Kremlin insiders abroad and, to a lesser extent, Russian national interests. The main appeal was the plausible deniability that came with a PMC with no official existence or visible ties to the Russian government.

What is the attitude of the Americans towards the Group? Do they treat them as a legal formation in understanding international law. After all, they also have Blackwater themselves?

Taking legal action against “the Wagner Group” is complicated by the fact that, on paper at least, no such group exists. The US has thus applied sanctions against Prigozhin, his associates and the many registered entities that form the Wagner network. There is an ongoing debate in Washington over whether the “Wagner Group” should be declared a “Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).” Those who oppose the designation refer to the amorphous nature of the Wagner network and suggest its personnel can be tried instead under existing international laws against war crimes and crimes against humanity. New legal approaches are being developed that would treat Wagner operatives, not as independent “mercenaries,” but as members of a de facto arm of the Russian government.

Though Blackwater and its successor groups have been employed by the US government, especially to allow the withdrawal of US regular army and National Guard personnel, such groups do not figure in the foreign policy of the US in the way Wagner network operatives are used to further Russian goals. Another difference lies in accountability; when Blackwater operatives committed a massacre in Baghdad in 2007, they were eventually prosecuted and convicted by US courts (though all were eventually pardoned by Donald Trump in 2022). Abuses by Wagner personnel are ignored by Moscow, which continues to disclaim any responsibility for their actions.  American diplomatic intervention in recent days appears to have persuaded the military junta ruling Burkina Faso to abandon plans for a widely-expected Wagner deployment.

Is the Kremlin the only “employer” of the Group?

The Kremlin routinely denies any connection to the Wagner network. All deployments of Wagner personnel must, however, meet with Kremlin approval and are typically negotiated through the Russian Ministry of Defense. Wagner operations abroad are overseen by personnel of the FSB (successor of the KGB) and, more often, the GRU.

What is the Group’s relationship with the Kremlin? Putin denies such links, but could the Group develop without the Kremlin’s approval?

As mentioned, all Wagner deployments must meet with Kremlin approval. Any attempt to operate outside Kremlin oversight would quickly result in prosecution under Russia’s strict prohibitions against mercenary activity. In this sense, Wagner operatives are not “mercenaries” in the usual understanding of the term.

Where the Group has operated and continues to operate, officially or unofficially. The main field of activity is Africa and the Middle East (Syria?). There are rumours that in Africa, the Group earns money for the Kremlin. It is also said the Group makes money (for Kremlin) in some unspecified way (exploiting natural resources, e.g. gold). This sounds very mysterious to me. Could you add something on this subject? Can this money change the fate of the war in Ukraine? What part of the Group is fighting in Ukraine and what part is making money abroad? They are badly needed in Ukraine?

Nations or disputed regions in which Wagner personnel or other Russian contractors have had a verifiable presence include Syria, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Venezuela, Sudan, Mali, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Central African Republic and Ukraine. These deployments are typically paid for by contracts giving Wagner-related companies access to natural resources, especially in the mining sector. Profits are directed to Kremlin insiders rather than the state budget. Financing the Russian war in Ukraine relies mostly on proceeds from Russia’s domestic oil and gas industries rather than Wagner-associated operations.

Statue Honoring the Wagner Group in Bangui, Central African Republic (VOA)

A Russian manpower shortage in the current Ukraine campaign has led to many Wagner operatives working abroad being recalled for service in Ukraine. This has reduced their activities in places such as Libya while reasserting the idea that Wagner personnel are under the control of the Kremlin.

Regarding the nationality of the recruits, is it an international formation, similar to the Foreign Legion, or does it recruit only Russians?

The Wagner network recruits in a variety of East European countries, including Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine and Serbia. In the MENA nations, Wagner recruits both Syrians and Libyans; there are unverified reports some of these have been deployed in Ukraine.

Central Asian nations provided Wagner recruits until recently, when most of these nations banned Wagner recruitment. Wagner does not accept recruits from NATO or EU countries. Wagner has little in common with the French Foreign Legion, which is now a fully integrated part of the French regular army and highly selective in its recruiting. Unlike Wagner, the Foreign Legion no longer accepts recruits with a serious criminal record. Wagner is more like the old private armies of the British East India Company, the French East India Company and the Dutch East Indies Company, all of which contributed to the overseas interests of their home nations (particularly through the exploitation of resources and labor) without coming under the formal command of their respective national militaries.

Spain, France, Ukraine, Israel, Great Britain, the United States, Saudi Arabia and many African states continue to recruit foreign nationals for their militaries. Some offer citizenship after completing a set number of years in military service.

Wagner-produced movie “Granite” about Russian contractors in Mozambique.

There is much talk about recruiting criminals into the Group for whom army service can shorten their sentences and earn money. By the way, how much money can a criminal volunteer expect per month , and how long the training would last. Does any insurance company cover them? The risks are very high.

To address Russian manpower shortage in Ukraine, Evgeny Prighozin began recruiting in Russian prison colonies, offering six-month contracts with the promise of commutation of their sentences if the convicts survived. Despite offering a blunt assessment that 80% of prison recruits would not survive the enlistment period, the prospect of serving long sentences in Russia’s miserable and overcrowded prisons has helped enable recruitment.

As little as a week of training is provided to prisoners before deployment to the front lines. This is understandable given that prison recruits function much in the same way as Soviet penal battalions in WWII; they are used in frontal attacks designed, not to take objectives, but to force Ukrainian forces to fire, thus revealing their concealed positions to Russian forward artillery observers (Russian military doctrine relies heavily on the use of massed artillery). Prisoners may be offered less than the usual Wagner rate of $4000 per month, but since full payments are usually made to Wagner operatives only at the end of their contract, many will never collect. They are not covered by insurance and offers to provide compensation to families of dead prisoner-recruits are rarely committed to paper and thus worthless.

Some six-month enlistments and their subsequent commutations of sentence are reported to be for sale to rich inmates in Russian prison colonies. Purchasers are advised to lie low outside of Moscow or St. Petersburg until six months have passed, at which time they can emerge safely with no criminal record.

How do the Russians treat the Group’s activity? Do they regard them as patriots, experts in dirty work or common criminals?

It is difficult to gauge Russian popular opinion in the absence of a free media. Abandoning a policy of keeping a low profile within Russia, Wagner has recently been hailed by Kremlin-controlled media as an important element on the frontlines in Ukraine. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, little was ever said in Russian media regarding Wagner activities. Russian perceptions of Wagner thus tend to be based on Kremlin propaganda efforts and Wagner’s own public relations department, which produces films, statues, t-shirts, Facebook pages and billboards praising the work of Wagner personnel.

The Wagner Group is not the only private army in the world. How many are there? Moreover, how are they used by other governments?

It is very difficult to say how many “private armies” there are in the world. Part of the problem is a matter of definitions – is every private armed security company a “private army”? Private Military Contractors (PMCs) tend to come and go in the marketplace. Some, like Blackwater, change their names on a regular basis. Some can be very dangerous; others, like the Atholl Highlanders, the last private army in Europe before the emergence of the Wagners, are purely ceremonial.

Employment of “private armies” by national governments can be undertaken for the following reasons:

1/   National militaries lack the arms or skills to prevail in a security crisis;

2/  National forces may be regarded as uncommitted or even a threat to regime survival;

3/  National forces may be insufficient in numbers to address an ongoing security threat;

4/   A regime may wish to take severe measures against its internal enemies through the short-term use of unaccountable troops.

Rather than operate as a “private army,” Wagner operatives have experienced close integration with Russian regular forces in recent months despite occasionally violent rivalries between the two forces.

Wagner is not an elite unit, and was never designed or intended for use on European battlefields in a conventional war. The use of poorly-disciplined veterans (many with troubled service records or criminal convictions) and volunteers seeking an early release from Russia’s prison colonies can in no way tip the scales of the Ukraine conflict in Russia’s favor. Instead, their use side-by-side with Russian regulars has merely served to dispel the pretence that Wagner operatives have no connection to the Russian state, severely diminishing their usefulness abroad. Wagner’s brutal methods, its failure to subdue jihadist or rebel movements and its devotion to profit over security will ultimately backfire in most of its foreign deployments. As a means of establishing a broad Russian geo-political presence in resource-rich and strategically important nations, the Wagner approach and its rapid spread has alarmed the West.  However, so long as Wagner personnel remain unaccountable to any authority, even despite now clearly-established ties to the Kremlin, short-term success can only be followed by long-term failure.

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Aberfoyle International Security is a Toronto-based independent consulting firm specializing in international security analysis. According to the US press in 2011, among the materials found in Bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout there were more than 50 articles written by its current director, Andrew McGregor.

Russia’s Broken Steamroller: Why the Structure of the Russian Army Prevents Victory in Ukraine

AIS Special Report on Ukraine No. 4

April 7, 2022

Andrew McGregor

Strategic speculation regarding a potential clash of European powers in the early 20th century often cited the likely impact of “the Russian Steamroller,” referring to the massive Imperial Russian army of 1.4 million men and a reserve of over 3 million more. Despite a surprisingly poor performance against Japan in 1904-05, the spectre of millions of armed Russians rolling across Europe in an irresistible wave still figured into the military calculations of other European powers. When a European war did break out in 1914, a smaller German force quickly destroyed the invading Russian masses around the lakes of East Prussia. New armies were raised from the seemingly endless manpower of Russia and some 15 million Russians eventually passed through the army ranks, leaving two million dead on the battlefields of Eastern Europe before Russia made an early exit from the conflict.

Russia’s disastrous role in the Great War contributed to a civil war and an earth-shaking post-war political change that saw Tsars and princes replaced with Bolsheviks and commissars. Though the army of the new Soviet Union remained huge, its equipment was poor and its timid leadership was all that was left after Stalin’s pre-war purge of “anti-revolutionary” elements in the officer corps. This encouraged Germany to tackle the “Steamroller” head-on once again in 1941. Despite its numbers, the almost leaderless Red Army collapsed and the Germans were within sight of Moscow before the army’s headlong retreat could be halted. Germany ultimately lost the war in the East (in large part due to massive Allied aid to Moscow), but not before it succeeded in killing some ten million Soviet soldiers out of the 26 million that served in the wartime Red Army.

Mass Soviet armies threatened Europe throughout the Cold War, but the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the military divided and confused regarding its composition and role. Since the beginning of the Cold War, the military goal of the Soviets and their Russian successors has been to field an army capable of taking on American forces (and their NATO allies) while spending a mere fraction of the US military budget. Needless to say, this is an unrealistic goal and efforts to keep up with American military spending have already broken the Kremlin’s bank once before.

Embarrassing defeats at the hands of Chechen resistance fighters in the 1990s helped bring internal recognition that reforms were badly needed in the Russian army. Poorly trained conscripts performed so ineptly in the Caucasus that frontline officers begged to be spared further reinforcements of draftees.

Russia thus began a gradual transformation to a more professional force with a focus on elite elements rather than the massed armies that had served Russia in the past. However, efforts to build a smaller and more professional military continue to be held back by Russia’s perceived need to field forces large enough to engage with its strategic “peers” in Europe. The financial inability of Russia to fund an army with training, armament and numbers comparable to NATO forces while also maintaining expensive elite forces has led to imbalances in the structure of the Russian Army, imbalances that sabotaged Moscow’s plans for a quick and decisive victory in Ukraine.

Unexpectedly forced into a conventional war unlike the lightning strike by elite troops that Moscow had planned for, Russia’s military seems unable to overcome resistance from a much smaller army, even with the benefit of short supply lines and a huge superiority in arms, armor, aircraft and weapons systems. So what is wrong with the Russian Army?

Not anticipating a campaign of any length, Russia did not field its army in the usual way as brigades, divisions and armies, deploying its forces instead in the battalion tactical groups (BTGs) the army has favored for use in the Donbas region. The BTGs, which focus on mobility backed by artillery, do not carry the same level of battlefield maintenance and repair support services as the larger formations, partly explaining the logistical problems experienced after Russia’s “special military operation” failed to take out the Zelensky government in the first 48 hours (ECFR, March 15, 2022). Roughly 125 BTGs have been deployed in Ukraine.

The new focus on elite troops and the common practice of scripting large-scale military exercises in peacetime have damaged the army’s ability to fight in a conventional manner. Poor land-air coordination of Russian forces prevents effective offensive airstrikes with confusion prevailing over the identification of ground forces as friend or foe. Wretched staff-work and military intelligence efforts bordering on outright incompetence speak to the neglect and lethargy still common to large parts of the Russian military. A basic inability to identify useful military targets may be contributing to the Russian destruction of civilian targets throughout Ukraine.

The Russian army also seems to be unable to use drones to their full advantage in pressing home their attacks. Ukraine’s use of Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones has been much more effective in comparison, taking full advantage of the Russian invasion’s reliance on roads and rail to move men and materiel at this time of year.

It is noteworthy that no single general appears to be in command of the campaign, partly due to the Kremlin’s reluctance to elevate operations in Ukraine in the public eye to the status of an “invasion” or “war,” terms that have actually been banned from public discussion of the operation. Confident of a quick victory, Putin may have decided to retain overall command for himself in order to claim credit for a legacy-building contribution to the reconstruction of the Soviet Empire so mourned by the Russian president. Putin has not, however, admitted to any responsibility for a war that has badly damaged Russia’s economy, exposed its military and battered its international reputation.

General Valery Gerasimov (CNBC)

Despite being the author of Russia’s central military doctrine, commander of the Russian Armed Forces General Valery Gerasimov briefly went missing from public view after March 11, along with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and intelligence chiefs Igor Kostyukov (GRU) and Alexander Bortnikov (FSB). The FSB, responsible for domestic intelligence, has a clandestine foreign intelligence branch that was responsible for forming partisan groups and encouraging public support for the invasion in Ukraine, failing dismally on both counts. Shoigu and Gerasimov reappeared in a March 26 press conference, but it is unclear whether the two are still actively in command of Russian operations in Ukraine. Putin’s dissatisfaction with the efforts of his military and intelligence leaders became obvious in his March 16 declaration, when he warned the Russian nation will distinguish between true patriots and “scum and traitors” who will be dealt with in a Stalin-style purge.

THE PROFESSIONALS – THE CONTRACT CORE OF THE RUSSIAN ARMY

Conscript losses in the Chechen wars hastened the implementation of proposals to develop a professional corps of volunteer soldiers under three-year, renewable contracts. The kontraktniki, as the contract troops are known, now form two-thirds of Russia’s 600,000-man army and enjoy far better conditions and benefits than conscript troops. Proposals to further expand the contract force continue to founder on the financial difficulty of paying contractors 30 times what a conscript is paid (plus benefits and pensions).

Citizens of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) were first given the opportunity of enlisting in the Russian army in January 2004. According to new rules introduced in 2010 aimed at addressing the unpopularity of military service in Russia, citizens of the CIS were allowed to sign a five-year military service contract, with the possibility of obtaining Russian citizenship after three years. [1] Recruitment began to intensify in the Northern Caucasus and Central Asian states, where military service was still seen as a traditional and honorable occupation offering opportunities of advancement. Enlistment also proved popular with ethnic Ukrainians; a breakdown of ethnic origins in the Russian Federation Army in 2018 revealed over half the officers in the army at that time were ethnic Ukrainians (Newizv.ru, February 28, 2022).

Russia often has difficulty convincing contract soldiers to renew their three-year deal in the best of times; convincing kontraktniki whose contracts are expiring to sign up for another hitch during the dirty and demoralizing war in Ukraine may prove a challenge. Little attention has been given to the proper training of non-commissioned officers (NCOs), leaving the lower ranks more dependent on junior officers for initiative and leadership. Russia has, however, revived the controversial post of “political commissar,” albeit in a new form, with lessons in Marxist dialectical materialism replaced by instruction in patriotism and devotion to the state. Besides the new focus on patriotism as a core military value, some effort has been made in recent years to alleviate the notoriously brutal conditions of service in the Russian army, including better pay, pensions and improved living quarters.

Much has been made of the experience Russian forces gained in Syria since 2015, but this experience has been limited to elements of the air force, special forces, intelligence services, military police and select naval ships. Russian infantry of the regular forces have not participated in the ongoing conflict in Syria. Ukrainian troops, on the other hand, have been regularly rotated through frontline positions in the Donbas region since 2014, fighting pro-Russian militias and their Russian advisors. Regular exposure to combat no doubt provided motivation in the Ukrainian ranks to absorb the intensive training provided by elite NATO troops for the past seven years.

THE CONSCRIPTS – THE STEAMROLLER ON LIFE SUPPORT

The persistence of conscription in Russia when most competing Western nations have moved entirely to professional volunteer forces reflects both an authoritarian fear of a politicized professional military seizing control and an inability to finance a purely professional force.

The deployment of nearly helpless conscripts against highly-skilled and motivated Chechen resistance forces in the 1990s led to a massive distaste for compulsory service in Russian society. As a result, the armed forces found themselves left with only those not clever enough or wealthy enough to avoid the draft, some even resorting to self-mutilation to avoid service. What was left was the slow-witted, the unhealthy and underweight poor, the drug-addled and drink-besotted and the less-than-patriotic graduates of Russia’s prison system. At one point in the 1990s, the Russian conscription class contained far more ex-convicts than recruits with a higher education. It was unsuitable material with which to build a modern army.

For any recruit holding a misguided belief in a military future, there was the dedovshchina, a deeply ingrained system of violent hazing of first-year conscripts by second-year conscripts that led to thousands of unnecessary deaths every year, including those who looked to suicide as a means of escaping the abuse. While a change to only a single year of conscription and other reforms have helped, the reputation established by this iniquitous tradition continues to deter young Russians from military service. Unfortunately, the dedovshchina is now being replaced by ethnic rivalries in the lower ranks, forcing the command to consider creating ethnically-based units to keep rival groups apart, though this is unlikely to proceed due to Moscow’s traditional suspicion of its national minorities. The army of the Russian Federation is far from homogenously Russian and Christian despite its close alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church; it includes Muslim Tatars, ethnic-Koreans, and Muslims from Central Asia and the North Caucasus, among others.

The army recruits through semi-annual drafts, the spring draft coming on April 1 and the fall draft launching on October 1. In recent years, the annual number of recruits has been between 260,000 to 270,000. Very few, if any, children of the Russian elite are ever absorbed into the service through conscription.

Captured Russian Conscripts in Kiev

In 2008, then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov promised to stop sending conscripts to “hot-spots” where combat is ongoing and reduced the conscription period from two years to one. With basic and secondary training taking six to seven months, conscripts are only available for service for a few months before finishing their year-long enlistment.

Due to the difficulty in turning low-quality conscripts into active service troops with the short training period (complicated by conscripts’ focus on their release date rather than developing military skills), draftees are typically unable to operate advanced weapons systems and are instead used in more labor-intensive support roles such as wood-cutting, construction, cooking and transportation. For tasks requiring technological skills, contractors are used exclusively.

A March 7 declaration by Putin that no conscripts were currently deployed in Ukraine was followed a day later by an admission by the Ministry of Defense that conscripts were indeed fighting in Ukraine. In Putin’s mind, his claim may have been technically true – there are numerous reports since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict of Russian conscripts nearing the end of their enlistment being forced, even physically, to sign three-year contracts changing their status from conscript to contract soldier. The change in status, however, is no substitute for the additional training and combat experience real contract troops have received. Ultimately, the addition of poorly trained warm bodies to Russian combat units in the middle of a conflict will do little to enhance their effectiveness, though it may keep these units busy chasing deserters.

THE RESERVE – TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

Most of Russia’s reserve forces are basically non-functional, with little money available for mobilization, monthly exercises and other training necessary to keep reserve troops in fighting trim. It cannot, therefore, be counted on to replace Russian losses in an extended conflict. Until recently, Russia’s active reserve amounted to only a few thousand soldiers, forcing Moscow to avoid protracted conflicts in which losses could not be easily replaced.

Apparently with an invasion of Ukraine in mind, the Kremlin began to take the problem of the reserves seriously in August 2021. Until that point, reservists were spread out through the country, receiving little or no training. Contact with the armed forces was minimal – reservists were expected to report in themselves in the event of a mobilization and there was no system to keep track of the locations of reservists after they finished their one-year of conscript service. Mobilization of the reserve counted very much on who would feel inclined to show up at the local collection center. By this point, Russia’s armed millions had become little more than a fiction.

To deal with this problem, the Russian command formed the Special Combat Army Reserve (Boevoy Armeyskiy Rezerv Strany – BARS), a kind of reserve form of the kontraktniki, where volunteers with military training could sign three-year contracts, receiving compensation for three-days of training a month. Employers would also be compensated for the loss of labor on service days. The plan was to build a capable reserve of 100,000 troops, likely in preparation for the invasion of Ukraine and possibly other regions on Putin’s “restore the Soviet Union” list.

Vladimir Putin announced on March 8 that Russian reserve troops were not serving in Ukraine, though the announcement came on the heels of Putin’s false assertion that Russian conscripts were not present in Ukraine. Given the intensity of the fighting in Ukraine, it will be impossible to avoid the necessity of temporarily rotating kontraktniki units out of the frontlines; if Russian reserves are not in Ukraine now, they may soon be.

MERCENARIES AND FOREIGN FIGHTERS: WHAT WOULD BREZHNEV SAY?

Russia’s experiment in using private military contractors (PMCs) with close ties to private Russian mining firms and investment companies to extend Russian influence abroad has yielded dividends for the Kremlin. At the same time, it allows Moscow to deny culpability for the war crimes and corrupt practices of these formations. From their early use in Syria and Ukraine’s Donbas region, the PMCs (most notable of which is the notorious “Wagner Group”) have now deployed in Sudan, Mali, Mozambique, Libya and the Central African Republic (CAR), offering military services as well as assistance in electoral manipulation, disinformation campaigns, VIP protection and intimidation operations. This new phase of establishing Russian influence abroad marks a drastic deviation from the Soviet era, when the Soviet Union was one of the firmest opponents of “white mercenaries” in Africa, most of whom were staunch anti-communists and hindrances to the spread of Soviet influence.

While the employees of Russia’s PMCs do not fall under official Russian control and are commonly referred to as mercenaries, they are not mercenaries in the true sense in that they are only allowed to operate to the benefit of Russian interests in operations approved by the Kremlin; any attempt to freelance in the traditional way of mercenaries would subject these soldiers to the severe penalties for “mercenarism” included in Russia’s criminal code. The PMCs also quietly receive logistical and transport support from the Russian Defense Ministry, though some Defense Ministry officials may resent the ability of the PMCs and their directors to enrich themselves through access to gas, oil and mineral wealth in the regions where they operate. Putin appears to be following the long-established Soviet practice of encouraging rivalries rather than cooperation amongst national security agencies and their proxies with the intention of preventing any one agency of becoming strong enough to overthrow the regime.

In many cases the PMCs now substitute for the usual work of civilian Russian intelligence agencies overseas, maintaining instead close relations with the GRU, the intelligence agency of Russia’s Ministry of Defense. GRU special forces were instrumental in seizing Crimea in 2014 and have been operating in the Donbas region since then.

The unexpected Russian demand for additional manpower in what was expected to be a brief and decisive operation in Ukraine is now draining personnel from the regions in which the PMCs operate. In some cases, these are not only Russians being pulled to the battlefields of Ukraine, but local fighters who have signed on to the PMCs as mercenaries and interpreters in Africa or Syria.

Elements of the Russian Wagner Group in Libya have been observed leaving for eastern Ukraine, with the remainder of the force locking down at Sirte, or further south at the Brak al-Shati military base and the Tamenhint airbase in Fezzan. Russian regulars are also reported to be leaving Abkhazia and South Ossetia for Ukraine, signs the Russian command is desperate for experienced troops to allow relief for frontline forces.

Syrians are now being recruited for mercenary service in Ukraine. Roughly 300 Syrians are undergoing advanced training in Russia, with the prospect of many more to follow. Most of the Syrian recruits are former members of Syria’s 25th Special Mission Forces Division, specialized in mechanized warfare using Russian equipment and accustomed to working closely with Russian Special Forces units. On March 11, President Putin authorized the recruitment of up to 16,000 volunteers from the Middle East.

OUTLOOK

Destroyed Russian T-8OU Main Battle Tank

Moscow’s agreement to postpone the invasion of Ukraine until the completion of the Beijing Olympics was a strategic mistake based on Russian assumptions that the war would be over in days. Frozen ground that might have allowed the off-road movement of armor and other military vehicles has now turned into the notorious Rasputitsa that bogged down German invaders 80 years ago. Hundreds of combat vehicles have been lost in the first five weeks of fighting to mud or Ukrainian attacks; according to Ukrainian intelligence, Russian authorities were dismayed to discover that “mothballed” replacements had been stripped of their valuable electronics and optical devices by their corrupt custodians.

Putin is reaching the end of his constitutional mandate as president. Unless he sends out firm signs that he plans on further constitutional manipulation to preserve his rule, failure in Ukraine, either real or perceived, may loosen his grip as new players seek to position themselves in a post-Putin struggle for power.

A Russian occupation of Ukraine seems impossible at the moment. The growing evidence of Russian war crimes in an unprovoked conflict will preclude the legitimacy of any Russian-backed Ukrainian government. Russian excesses could force a strongarm military occupation instead, tying up large numbers of troops with little chance of recruiting local “pro-Moscow” partisans to do the dirty work of occupation outside the Donbas region, at least in the short to medium-term. Concentrating nearly all of its effective troops in Ukraine leaves the rest of Russia’s enormous land-mass nearly defenseless and dependent on Russia’s nuclear option to deter incursions on its borders.

While adding conscripts to the invasion force mix may bring units up to strength, it cannot be reasonably thought that additions of poorly trained conscripts forced into frontline service will contribute in any meaningful way to combat effectiveness, and may even work against it. The use of foreign mercenaries in the “liberation” of Ukraine will only further diminish the Kremlin’s credibility and the legitimacy of its “special military operation.”

Parts of the Russian integrated military doctrine such as information manipulation and cyberstrikes have stuttered when called upon so far, having achieved far greater success in manipulating public opinion inside Russia than in the international arena, where its clumsy claims of “crisis actors” and insistence that Ukrainian troops are committing war crimes against Ukrainian civilians have found little resonance. If the regime in Moscow survives the war, it will be forced to address the structural problems of its military and the contribution these problems have made to the growing debacle in Ukraine. Whether this can be carried out effectively and honestly in a state where even mention of the word “invasion” is an offense is highly questionable.

NOTE

  1. The largely moribund Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) consists of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan. Georgia withdrew from the CIS due to Russian aggression in 2008; Ukraine withdrew for the same reason in 2018. Turkmenistan participates at a distance as an associate member.

Jihad in Ukraine: Putin’s Chechen Legion and the Ghosts of WWII

AIS Special Report on Ukraine No.2

March 10, 2022

Andrew McGregor

Packing Boxcars with Chechen Deportees, February 1944

The day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began was the 78th anniversary of the Russian deportation of the Muslim Chechen and Ingush peoples of the North Caucasus. Carried out in 1944 with the utmost brutality, American trucks supplied for the Russian war effort transported the related ethnic groups to railyards where they were packed onto freight cars in scenes similar to the German transport of Jews to concentration camps. Thousands died on their way to internal exile in Central Asia, where hundreds of thousands more died of cold and starvation. Their crime? Joseph Stalin’s never substantiated allegations of Chechen cooperation with invading Nazis. The most bitter irony was that the deportations were only possible since most Chechen and Ingush men of military age were serving on the front-lines of the Red Army’s struggle with Nazi Germany. At war’s end, these men were decorated and deported to join their dead or dying families in exile.

Today, after two ultimately unsuccessful wars for independence from Russia that killed 100 to 200 thousand Chechen civilians between 1994 and 2000, we now see the incongruous sight of thousands of armed followers of Ramzan Kadyrov, Vladimir Putin’s coarse and violent appointee as Chechen leader, engaged in fighting in Ukraine to eliminate the “Nazis” Putin claims are running that country. One of Kadyrov’s first steps in expressing his appreciation of Putin’s sponsorship was the dismantling of the national memorial to the victims of the 1944 deportation in the Chechen capital, Grozny. The memorial was constructed from the scattered and broken tombstones of generations of Chechens; in their quest to eliminate the Chechens, Stalin’s men had not ignored the dead.

Perhaps the most hardline of all Putin’s acolytes, Kadyrov favors a Russian annexation of all Ukraine, achieved through extreme measures against the Ukrainian people, even suggesting the Russian army was “coddling” Ukrainians: “We need to change our tactics in order to convince them… Putin must give the appropriate order so we can finish with these Nazis” (Newlinesmag.com, March 3, 2022).

The Kadyrovtsy

Kadyrov’s armed followers, known as the “Kadyrovtsy,” are members of the Russian National Guard. The Rosgvardyia, as it is known, was formed in 2016 as an internal security establishment separate from the armed forces and reporting directly to the president. Viktor Zolotov, Putin’s former bodyguard and martial arts sparring partner, was appointed commander-in-chief of the National Guard at its formation. Zolotov is working closely with Kadyrov on the deployment of Chechen guardsmen in Ukraine. Ten thousand Chechen guardsmen, many of whom have combat experience in the long-running Donbas and Luhansk conflict in eastern Ukraine, are believed to already be operating in Ukraine, with the possibility of further deployments.

Muslim Kadyrovtsy at Prayer in the Ukrainian Forest

On March 3, a seemingly over-enthusiastic Kadyrov announced a pro-Putin “jihad” as he threatened the “shaytan-s [devils]” from Ukraine’s “nationalist battalions,” claiming the Chechens had their addresses and those of their families: “Nazis know this. Like jackals, they are hiding behind the backs of the military men.” The Chechen leader urged Ukraine’s military to turn on the nationalists or leave them to the Chechen special forces: “We won’t stop. We have an order, we have jihad!” (Pravda, March 4, 2022).

By March 5th, Kadyrov was falsely claiming President Zelensky had fled Ukraine: “He ran away so fast that no one could even see his clean pair of heels.” Kadyrov advised the Ukrainian president to turn the country over to former president Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian politician who was deposed by a popular rising in 2014 and since sentenced in absentia to 13 years in prison for treason. Kadyrov told Zelensky: “There is still time to return to Kyiv, accept Russia’s demands and ask for forgiveness… But don’t push your luck too much” (Pravda, March 5, 2022).

Kadyrov also warned that Ukrainians were planning aggressive action against Russia that had only been halted by the actions of President Putin, “a far-sighted strategist.” Again echoing Putin’s WWII-influenced rhetoric, Kadyrov declared nine days of “special military operations” had made it “obvious that we are not just dealing with Banderites, but with ruthless killers who do not disdain any methods. They and their fanatics plunged the whole of Ukraine into complete darkness… [the special operation] must be carried out to the complete defeat of Bandera’s followers” (Sputnik News, March 4, 2022). Kadyrov’s characterization of the Ukrainians as “Banderites” is a reference to Stepan Bandera (1909-1959), a controversial Ukrainian nationalist leader who initially cooperated with Nazi Germany against the Russians in WWII in the belief Germany would recognize an independent Ukraine. Disabused of this notion, he spent much of the war in a German concentration camp. He returned to his violent brand of nationalism after the war, but was killed with cyanide by a KGB assassin in 1959.

Bandera’s legacy is often invoked by Ukrainian nationalists as a symbol of anti-Russian resistance, while Russia’s leaders invoke it as proof of Ukraine’s ongoing allegiance to fascism; when Russia annexed Crimea in February-March 2014, Vladimir Putin declared he was saving Crimeans from Ukrainian leaders who were the “ideological heirs of Bandera, Hitler’s accomplice during World War II” (Washington Post, March 25, 2014).

Recruiting Posters for the SS Division Galicia

Another troubling legacy of the war is the ongoing historical dispute over the activities of the SS Division Galicia (Galicia is a name for western Ukraine), a mostly volunteer Ukrainian Waffen SS unit active between 1943 and 1945. Recruiting for European Waffen SS units focused on the destruction of Russian communism and the overthrow of Joseph Stalin, which appealed strongly to many Ukrainians who had fresh memories of the Holodomor, Stalin’s man-made 1932-33 famine in Ukraine that killed at least four million people, possibly many more. [1] Though small numerically in comparison with the millions of Ukrainians who served in the Red Army, the intent of the division’s volunteers remains divisive, with some hailing them as anti-communist heroes, while others accuse them of anti-Semitism and war crimes.

The Kadyrovtsy at Hostomel

When the Russian airborne assault on Hostomel Airport turned into a debacle on the first day of the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russian mechanized forces were moved up to try and take the airport and rescue surviving paratroopers in the woods outside Hostomel. [2]

Ukrainian sources claimed that a Chechen National Guard column was crushed outside Hostomel Airport on February 26, with the destruction of 56 Chechen/Russian tanks and the death of hundreds of Kadyrovtsy. Though these precise claims are likely exaggerated and are impossible to confirm in current conditions, there does seem little doubt that a mechanized Chechen column was ambushed and halted outside of Hostomel. Turkish-designed TB-2 Bayraktar UAVs, now made in Ukraine under license, may have been used in the attack on the Chechens. The successful use of these attack drones has been reported against other Russian convoys in Ukraine. The office of the Ukrainian president confirmed the destruction of “a convoy of Chechen special forces” near Hostomel on February 26 (Kyiv Independent, February 27, 2022).

General Magomed Tushayev with Ramzan Kadyrov

Also reported was the death during the clash of the commander of the Chechen forces in Ukraine, General Magomed Tushayev of the National Guard’s 141st motorized regiment (Ukrinform, February 27, 2022; Interfax-Ukraine, February 27, 2022). The claim was quickly dismissed by Kadyrov, who said he had spoken to Tushayev by phone and posted what he said were recent photos and a video of the general in the northern suburbs of Kiev.

Chechen Battalions Fighting for Ukraine

The opportunity to fight Russians continues to attract Chechen fighters who reject the rule of Kadyrov and Putin. Some have been active against pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine since 2014; others continue to arrive on the battlefields from Europe, the Caucasus and Syria. The leading Chechen-led formations include:

The Dzhokar Dudayev Battalion: The battalion was initially formed by Chechens in exile in Europe to join the fighting against Russians and pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The unit became less active after the death in combat of its capable leader, Isa Munayev, while fighting pro-Russian separatists at the Battle of Debaltseve in 2015. Munayev had been the military commander of Chechen forces during the 1999-2000 battle for Grozny, the Chechen capital, where he became known for his expertise in urban warfare tactics. The battalion was revived after the Russian offensive on Ukraine was launched in February, with a reported 300 volunteers, mostly from various republics of the Caucasus. Adam Osmayev, who succeeded Munayev, remains the battalion commander. His wife, fellow fighter Amina Okueva, was killed in an ambush that also wounded Osmayev in October 2017.

Adam Osmayev (Radio Svoboda)

In 2012, Osmayev was accused of plotting to assassinate Vladimir Putin and was arrested in Odessa by special forces agents and tortured. He spent two-and-a-half years in a Ukrainian prison but successfully fought off extradition attempts and was eventually acquitted on all charges and released (BBC, October 31, 2017; The Sun [London], October 7, 2021). After Kadyrov announced the presence of his loyalists in Ukraine on February 26, Osmayev took to video to confirm “real Chechens” continued to oppose Russia: “I want to assure Ukrainians that real Chechens are defending Ukraine today… These puppets fighting for Russia are a shame to our whole nation — we consider them only traitors” (Newlinesmag.com, March 3, 2022). The battalion is named for Dzhokar Dudayev, a former Soviet Air Force general who became Chechnya’s first president from 1991 until his death in 1996 when a satellite call he was making was intercepted by Russian aircraft, giving them the coordinates for a laser-guided missile strike. His six successors were all killed in action or assassinated by Russian agents, the latest in 2015.

Georgian, Ukrainian and Chechen fighters in Eastern Ukraine (Adam Osmayev)

The Shaykh Mansur Battalion: Another formation of volunteers from Chechnya and other Caucasus republics heavily involved the 2015-15 fighting in eastern Ukraine, this unit has similarly been revived. While its total strength is unknown, it includes both Chechens and Crimean Tatars, another Muslim minority that has suffered significantly under Russian rule, including its wholesale deportation to Central Asia in 1944. This unit has a more Islamist orientation than the Dzhokar Dudayev Battalion. The battalion is named for Shaykh Mansur, an 18th century Chechen military commander and religious leader who battled the Russian armies of Catherine the Great in the North Caucasus.

Osmayev and the Shaytanov Affair

Among the units facing the Chechen column outside Hostomel was Ukraine’s “Alpha” special forces group. Normally occupied with counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism tasks, the formation reports to the Security Service of Ukraine (Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrayiny – SBU) rather than the Ministry of Defense.

Arrest of Major-General Valeriy Shaytanov, October 2020

As part of its counter-intelligence work, the SBU arrested its own chief, Major General Valeriy Shaytanov, in 2020 on charges of high treason and terrorism related to plotting the assassinations of Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Commander Adam Osmayev (Radio Svoboda, October 8, 2020; Radio Svoboda, October 19, 2020). Osmayev claimed to have been part of the operation that captured Shaytanov by allowing loyal Ukrainian SBU agents to fake his death in a scheme designed to trap the traitor (The Sun [London], October 7, 2021). The SBU general was allegedly turned by a colonel of the Russian Security Service (Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti – FSB) in 2014 while they worked on a joint anti-terrorism project (Interfax Ukraine, April 15, 2020; RFERL, April 17, 2020).

Outlook

Coverage of the ongoing war in Ukraine tends to ignore the ghosts of the USSR and their role in the ideology behind the invasion of Ukraine. World War Two is a settled issue in most parts of the world, but less so in some of the former states of the Soviet Union, where it continues to inspire and even define certain conflicts. What can sound like crude propaganda, such as Putin calling the Zelensky government a cabal of “Nazis,” may even reflect sincere convictions, regardless of their accuracy. In Ukraine, the ghost of Stepan Bandera still stalks the steppes and cities, a divisive figure from the past that inspires some and incenses others. Many Chechens continue to frame their relations with Russia through the experience of Stalin’s genocidal campaign against their people. Some have made their peace with Russia and see a way forward through allegiance to the pro-Putin Kadyrov regime; others will never forget the deportations or Putin’s ruthless repression of Chechen independence in 1999-2000.

Unfortunately for Moscow, the deployment of the Kadyrovtsy could lead to the resurrection of the Chechen independence struggle, especially if Russia’s military offensive falters and Putin’s war in Ukraine begins to work against him. Weakness is spotted quickly in the North Caucasus, and Kadyrov’s early bluster may be replaced by the realization that many of his best-armed supporters are now fighting and dying far from Grozny.

Note

  1. Remarkably, Stalin and his methods still have supporters, even in the West. In 2019, Dougal MacDonald, a University of Alberta lecturer and candidate for the Marxist-Leninist Party, used Holodomor commemoration week to claim that “in Canada, former Nazi collaborators and their spawn have long led the phony [sic] Holodomor campaign.” The “educator” was supported by 43 fellow academics after many calls came for his dismissal (National Post, December 6, 2019).
  2. See “Russian Airborne Disaster at Hostomel Airport,” AIS Special Report on Ukraine, March 8, 2022, https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=4812.

Warlords and Mercenaries in Central Africa: The Struggle for Power in Chad and the Central African Republic – Part One

Part One – Why is Chad’s New Intelligence Director a Fulani Warlord Convicted of War Crimes?

The answer involves Russian mercenaries, the battle-death of an African strongman and a struggle between Paris and Moscow for influence in Africa.

Dr. Andrew McGregor

AIS Special Report, February 6, 2022

Introduction

Chad and its southern neighbor, the Central African Republic (CAR), have been closely connected since the 18th and 19th centuries, when the old Muslim sultanates now incorporated into Chad treated the savannas and forests as a source of slaves and ivory. In the CAR, exploitation by the sultanates was followed by French colonial occupation and decades of post-independence misrule enabled by French neocolonialism, including the bizarre and bloody rule of “Emperor” Jean-Bédel Bokassa. The legacy of these destructive activities is that the CAR is one of the least developed countries in the world.

Despite this, the instability in the CAR attracts mercenaries, bandits and rebels, including many who straddle the line between these occupations. Chadians have long been prominent in these “trades” in the CAR but their influence has been challenged by the arrival of Russian mercenaries operating with the approval of the CAR government of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. While the trade in slaves and ivory has passed, there are new possibilities in the land-locked nation for riches in diamonds, gold and other minerals, though development of the mining sector remains constrained by insecurity, high start-up costs, lack of transportation infrastructure and a local labor force familiar only with subsistence farming, herding and artisanal mining.

FACA Patrol at the CAR-Chad Border (Accueil)

Both Chad and the CAR exist as a legacy of French colonialism, both incorporating a variety of ethnic groups inside borders drawn by the French and their colonial counterparts in Africa.  One prominent group common to the borderlands between the two nations is the Fulani, an almost exclusively Muslim ethnic group that has spread across the Sahel. Comprised of an estimated 25 million people, many of the Fulani continue to follow a semi-nomadic lifestyle centered on herding cattle. [1] At a time when pressure on water resources and pastureland is increasing, the herders have come into conflict with agriculturalists dependent on the same resources. What was once a low-scale conflict has been greatly exacerbated by the influx of modern arms into the Sahel, with individual murders now replaced by massacres and cycles of brutal retaliation.

General Abdalkadar Baba Laddé

One individual who has tried to profit from the insecurity along the Chad/CAR border is “General” Mahamat Abdalkadar Oumar, better known by his nickname Baba Laddé (“father of the bush,” a Fula language term for a male lion). A warlord and highwayman (locally coupeur de route) with political pretensions, Baba Laddé now finds himself in the center of the border conflict and a larger struggle between traditional French influence and that of upstart Russian forces operating to the north of Chad in Libya, and south of Chad in the CAR. Baba Laddé belongs to the Mbororo (a.k.a. Wodaabe) branch of the Fulani, a nomadic sub-group of the Fulani best known for their adherence to Fulani customs and a traditional way of life focused on cattle-herding.

Having been sprung from a stretch of incarceration in some of Chad’s grimmest prisons, the 52-year-old Fulani warlord was appointed Chad’s new director of intelligence (officially Directeur général des renseignements généraux) on October 14, 2021. The general’s appointment indicates N’Djamena’s desire to focus on threats from its southern border, a region where troops of the Force Armée Centrafricaine (FACA – Armed Forces of Central Africa) carry out operations against Muslim rebel movements with support from Rwandan special forces and some 2,000 Russian mercenaries. When a variety of rebel movements joined forces in late 2020, they nearly succeeded in taking Bangui, the CAR capital. However, FACA’s foreign allies and troops of the UN peacekeeping mission in the CAR stopped the rebel offensive on the outskirts of Bangui on January 13, 2021. A government counter-offensive succeeded in driving most of the rebels back into the bush or across the border into Chad in the following months. Baba Laddé has support in his new role from the Fulani president of Nigeria, Muhammad Buhari.

The International Response to the Crisis in the CAR

In response to the communal violence sparked by the 2013 takeover of the CAR by Séléka (a coalition of Muslim rebel movements), France deployed troops in the CAR through Operation Sangaris from 2013 to 2016. The force was withdrawn amidst controversy over a UN report claiming sexual abuse of children by French troops (as well as African troops) and was replaced by a 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping mission, the Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en Centrafrique (MINUSCA). At present, the UN mission consists solely of African and Asian peacekeeping contingents. These operate under a mandate to support the deployment of CAR security forces or to engage in joint operations with FACA designed to restore security. Complicating the relationship is the fact that FACA rarely moves out of its bases unless it is accompanied by Russian mercenaries or Rwandan Special Forces operating outside of any UN framework.

The French ended their military cooperation with the Touadéra regime in June 2021, but continue to run a logistics mission in Bangui and contribute military trainers to the European Union Training Mission (EUTM). Created in 2016, the EUTM’s mandate to provide military and ethical training to CAR troops has been renewed until November 12, 2022. MINUSCA does not conduct any military training.

The total number of personnel in MINUSCA, including soldiers, police, prison guards and civilians, is just over 19,000 in a mission that now costs over $1 billion per year (Le Quotidien [Dakar], January 19, 2022). Like its predecessors, the peacekeeping mission has been plagued by continuing allegations of sexual abuse of civilians. In mid-September, 2021, the entire Gabonese deployment was sent home after charges of sexual exploitation (UN News, December 11, 2021).

“Father of the Bush” – A Rebel Turns Regime Supporter

After 14 years of open rebellion to the regime of President Idriss Déby Itno of Chad, Baba Laddé surrendered in September 2012, but efforts at reintegration failed and he fled Chad for other parts of Africa before being persuaded to return in 2014. An archetypal African strongman, Idriss Déby (Bidayat/Zaghawa), chief-of-staff of the Chadian army, became president in 1990 after mounting a coup against his former patron, President Hissène Habré (Akanaza Tubu). Habré died of Covid-19 in August 2021 while serving a life sentence in Senegal for sadistic behavior and crimes against humanity that left as many as 40,000 dead during his presidency.

In July 2014, Baba Laddé was made prefect of Grande Sido, a department of Moyen-Chari province bordering the Central African Republic. The region was home to thousands of Muslim refugees from the CAR. Baba Laddé was dismissed in November 2014 when President Déby swept many governors out of office. Popular in Grande Sido, Baba Laddé used the confusion of local protests against his removal to escape a military convoy sent to arrest him on December 1, though his wife and bodyguard were severely beaten by enraged troops (RFI, December 3, 2014).

MINUSCA arrested the fugitive warlord a week later. Following the detention, his supporters demanded his release as a political refugee who feared for his life in Chad and should be given the opportunity of seeking political asylum elsewhere. In an open letter to MINUSCA, Shaykh Aboulanwar Djarma, opposition figure and former mayor of N’Djamena, expressed the opinion held by Baba Laddé’s friends:

If we cannot deny that some of Baba Laddé’s men have committed criminal acts, these were never ordered by Baba Laddé; on the contrary, he has always repressed those of his fighters who were perpetrators of such acts. The Chadian opposition has evidence of this, and several states also have in their possession evidence that exonerates Baba Laddé of criminal acts (Centrafrique-presse, December 12, 2014).

Nonetheless, MINUSCA sent Baba Laddé to Chad in January 2015, where he was confined in the notorious Koro Toro desert prison. The extradition marked a temporary end to Baba Laddé’s efforts to overthrow the governments of Chad and the CAR.  Many of his fighters joined the recently formed Unité pour la paix en Centrafrique (UPC) rebel group, led by Baba Laddé’s former lieutenant, Ali Darassa Mahamat, a Fulani specialist in guerrilla tactics.

In early 2018, the still untried Baba Laddé became seriously ill in prison, but was not included in a general amnesty for former rebels in May 2018. In the same year, the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries expressed concerns regarding human rights violations and long-term detentions without due process at the Koro Toro prison. [2] Finally convicted and found guilty of rape, arson, armed robbery, criminal conspiracy and illegal possession of weapons after nearly four years in detention without trial, Baba Laddé was sentenced to eight years in December 2018 (Tchadinfos, December 6, 2018).

Surprisingly, the warlord’s reconciliation with the Déby regime began before Idriss died on the battlefield. Baba Laddé’s sentence was commuted by the president on August 10, 2020 and he was freed the following September 7. It was a major shift in the late president’s interaction with Baba Laddé, whom he had previously described as nothing more than a highwayman. With rising tensions along the southern border with the CAR, Déby likely began to see the value in an asset with intimate knowledge of the border region and all those operating in it.

Still wary of the regime that had suddenly released him, Baba Laddé quickly left Chad. While living in Dakar after his release, Baba Laddé attempted to file papers for a run as candidate for the Front Populaire pour le Redressement (FPR) in the April 2021 presidential election, but was rejected by the Supreme Court of Chad on the grounds his party was not recognized. Laddé complained at the time that authorities sought to “criminalize” him by “wanting to create a rupture between the Popular Front for Recovery [FPR] and Chadian national opinion” (Jeune Afrique, March 11, 2021).

During the 2021 elections, Idriss announced his intention in March of doing something that still seemed unthinkable – bringing Baba Laddé back to Chad and into the fold of the regime. Shortly after this, Baba Laddé announced that he was abandoning the armed struggle against the Déby regime and would support the president’s re-election campaign: “I made the choice of peace. That’s what made me come back. Not just for Chad but for the sub-region… So, I came home, just to support [Déby] because he keeps the peace” (RFI, April 4, 2021).

In late January 2022, the members of Baba Laddé’s FPR gathered in Mandoul region (on Chad’s southern border with the CAR), sparking fears in some quarters that they intended to form a militia acting in parallel to the national army. The movement in turn announced that the FPR fighters were only assembling prior to demobilization or integration into the national army according to the terms of Baba Laddé’s agreement with former president Idriss Déby (Alwihda Info [N’Djamena], January 27, 2022).

Baba Laddé and the Fulani

Through convenience or in an effort to provide some political/ideological legitimacy to his armed movement, Baba Laddé has often posed as a defender of the Fulani people, though he has rarely expressed any type of ideology surrounding this standpoint.

In December 2011, Baba Laddé issued an open letter “to the People of Azawad” (northern Mali) that helped define his approach to the issues of the Fulani and their place in the ethno-political structure of the Sahel. Baba Laddé urged an alliance between the Fulani, the Tuareg, al-Qaeda, Ogaden separatists and the Saharan Polisario. He also expressed his support of Mali’s Songhay and Fulani-dominated Ganda Koy and Ganda Iso militias “because these people are afraid, afraid of being dominated, of being second-class citizens in an independent Azawad.” (Jeune Afrique, December 23, 2011). [3]

Baba Laddé, asserting that not all of Africa’s problems are due to European-imposed borders drawn without reference to local ethnic groups, suggested that federalism may provide a means of restoring the great multi-ethnic states of the past: “Let us remember the empires of Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kanem-Bornu, the Almoravids. All of these pre-colonial states were multi-ethnic. There have always been states in Africa and they have always been multiethnic and that’s an abundance of wealth!”

Turning to the issue of violent clashes between Fulani herdsmen and agricultural communities across the Sahel, Baba Laddé offered a slogan rather than a solution: “Farmers and breeders must be united. In the Central African Republic, in Chad and in Azawad.” Though admitting al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are ideologically in error, the Fulani warlord spoke sympathetically of their struggle: “Seeing the disastrous world where capitalism, perverse sexuality and corruption reign, they chose to destroy this world. Seventy years ago, they would have been communists, 110 years ago they would have been anarchists, in 2011 they are Salafi-Jihadists” (Centrafrique-presse, December 8, 2011).

In September 2021, Baba Laddé claimed to have been informed by a number of rebel movements in Mali that they would take up arms again if Russian mercenaries arrived in Mali, a decision based partly on what they had seen of the Russians in the CAR. The warlord called for a broad Fulani resistance to Russian expansion in the Sahel:

All the Central African communities are victims of the barbaric exactions of the Wagner mercenaries, but particularly the Muslims and even more particularly the Fulani civilians… We call on all Fulani, friends of the Fulani or more simply those attached to human rights to mobilize against Wagner… The fight is total against the Wagner mercenaries and the local allies of these barbarians (Corbeaunews, September 24, 2021).

There are many, however, who consider Baba Laddé’s ventures into ethnic politics a convenient cover for his illegal activities. The late Idriss Déby questioned Baba Laddé’s political credibility, insisting he was nothing more than “a former Chadian gendarme who became a coupeur de route [highwayman] and trafficker in ivory. He is not a rebel, as some media claim, but a great bandit. This kind of character does not constitute a threat to Chad. For the Central African Republic, maybe” (Vanguard [Lagos], December 6, 2021).

Death of a President

Even as president, Idriss Déby kept a tight rein on the military by remaining both a general and Chad’s defense minister. In these capacities he continued to take to the field to lead important operations in person, such as the March 2021 offensive against Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region. Déby’s presence there was required to bolster Chadian forces after a disastrous March 23 defeat of a garrison of largely inexperienced troops at the hands of Boko Haram on Lake Chad’s Bohoma Peninsula. One hundred Chadian troops were killed and 24 armored vehicles destroyed by the Bakura faction of Jama’at Ahl al-Sunnah li al-Da’wah wa’l-Jihad (the original faction of Boko Haram, led by Abubakar Shekau until his death in May 2021). The Bakura faction is led by a Nigerian, Ibrahim Bakura “Doron.”

Only a few weeks later, President Déby’s rule was challenged from the north in the form of an offensive by the Front pour l’alternance et la concorde au Tchad (FACT – Front for Change and Concord in Chad), a Libyan-based movement of anti-Déby rebels from northern Chad. FACT was created by Mahamat Mahdi Ali in March 2016 and is dedicated to the overthrow of the Déby regime. Only one week after securing his election to another 5-year term, President Déby arrived at the frontline, but was mortally wounded by FACT rebels in the Kanem region of Chad on April 18, 2021. There was wide speculation that the FACT fighters were trained by Russian mercenaries in Libya (The Times [London], April 23, 2021; NYT, April 22, 2021; Foreign Policy, November 30, 2020). While confirmation was elusive, the claims were well-noted in N’Djamena.

During their long stay in Libya, Chadian FACT fighters were employed as mercenaries by Russian-backed warlord Khalifa Haftar, leader of the so-called “Libyan National Army” (LNA). Backed by Egypt, the UAE and Russia, Hafter, a self-appointed “field marshal,” armed the Chadians and housed them at al-Jufra Airbase, the main base of the Russian Wagner Group mercenaries operating in Libya (Al-Araby, May 6, 2021). FACT’s association with the Russians was criticized by Baba Laddé: “FACT claims to want democracy. But Wagner will only ally with a rebellion if they are sure a dictator will take over and let them plunder the resources” (Corbeaunews, September 24, 2021).

In a bizarre incident, ten Russians were detained in June 2021 by Chadian police in a military operational zone in Kanem, close to where President Déby was killed in April. Though fighting in the region between Government troops and Libyan-based rebels had ceased only a month before, the Russians insisted they had organized a trip to a remote part of Chad because it “was very interesting” and “very rich in natural sites.” The wayward tourists, the apparent vanguard of a previously unknown Russian interest in touring “natural sites” in Chadian war-zones, were escorted to N’Djamena “for their own safety” and flown back to Moscow (Reuters, June 25, 2021).

A Family Dynasty in Chad?

With the quiet support of Paris, the late president’s son and commander of the presidential guard, Mahamat Idriss Déby “Kaka” (Zaghawa/Gura’an Tubu) seized power in N’Djamena with a group of loyal officers, citing “extraordinary circumstances” that necessitated defiance of the CAR Constitution, according to which the President of the National Assembly would become temporary head-of-state until early democratic elections could be organized. [3] According to Mahamat Idriss, the president of the national assembly “refused to take office and no one could force him to become the head of state against his will. You are free to ask him about this” (Africa Report, June 30, 2021).

CMT President Mahamat Idriss Deby (Vincent Fournier for Jeune Afrique).

Mahamat dissolved the legislature, replacing it with a Conseil Militaire de Transition (CMT -Transitional Military Council) with himself as president that would oversee the nation until elections in 18-months’ time. Since then, the CMT has begun pressing for a five-year transition period.

Chad’s leaders often have connections through marriage to leading figures in neighboring Darfur and the CAR; Mahamat is married to the daughter of Abakar Sabone, a spokesman for the CPC rebel coalition and former advisor to Séléka leader and former CAR president Michel Am-Nondokro Djotodia.

Abdelkerim Idriss Déby, half-brother to Mahamat, graduated from West Point in 2014. He became hugely influential in the administration and was the man to talk to for investments and project approvals under his father’s rule. He continues to play this role in the CMT and works closely with Mahamat.

General Taher Erda

Mahamat Idriss also has the support of powerful figures such as General Daoud Yaya Brahim, the CMT’s defense minister, and General Bichara Issa Djadallah, a Rizayqi Arab, chief-of-staff under Idriss Déby and cousin of Muhammad Hamdan Daglo “Hemeti” (the number two man in the Sudanese military junta). Another Déby family loyalist in the CMT is General Taher Erda, a Zaghawa and the new commander of the presidential guard. Loyal to Idriss since 1989, he is related to veteran Zaghawa rebels and twin brothers Tom and Timan Erdimi. In the often-small world of Chadian politics, the Erdimis are cousins of Mahamat Idriss. Timan is the leader in Qatari exile of the Chadian rebel Union des Forces de Résistance (UFR). Tom disappeared in late 2020 while staying in Egypt, but was discovered alive this month in Egypt’s notorious Tura prison (south of Cairo) by a relative accompanying a visit by Mahamat Idriss to the Egyptian capital (RFI, January 18, 2022). [5] Steps are being taken to obtain his release.

Chad is unaccustomed to worrying about a threat from the southeast, where the region that now forms the CAR was an established source of slaves, ivory and other resources for Chad’s Muslims and the Arab and African tribes of Darfur. Now facing an assertive military alliance of CAR regulars, Rwandan Special Forces and Russian mercenaries, Chad’s CMT would like to avoid threats from the southeast while it keeps forces available for regional counter-terrorism commitments and to protect Chad’s northern border from further incursions by rebel forces, especially those suspected of having some degree of training or support from Russian contractors. [6] Regarding the presence of Russian “Wagner Group” mercenaries in the CAR, Chad’s foreign minister, Cherif Mahamat Zene, stated: “external interference, wherever it comes from, poses a very serious problem for the stability and security of my country… There are Russian mercenaries present in Libya, who are also present in the Central African Republic” (UN/AFP, September 24, 2021).

The Wagner Group is a firm of private military contractors (PMCs) established in 2014 by Dimitri Utkin, a Special Forces and GRU veteran of the First and Second Chechen Wars (where his call sign was “Wagner”), though the outfit is believed to be owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a leading Russian businessman and Kremlin insider with close connections to President Putin. The company, together with several other Russian PMCs, provides openings for Russian political and economic influence in various conflict zones while providing deniability for the Kremlin, which routinely disavows any knowledge of their activities. Besides the CAR, the Wagner Group operates in Syria, Ukraine, Libya, Mozambique, Madagascar and Sudan; it has recently been engaged by Mali’s new military government. Burkina Faso might be next; the new ruling military junta there is headed by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who was previously unsuccessful in persuading the nation’s former civilian government to allow the entry of Russian mercenaries to combat Islamist extremists.

Chad’s foreign minister added that the May 30 attack border on a Chadian village near the CAR border was “backed” by Russian mercenaries and also claimed that the FACT rebels who killed President Idriss in April were trained by the Wagner Group (AFP, September 24, 2021). Though not referring to Russia by name, defense minister General Daoud Yaya Brahim alleged that the “death of our Marshal, weapon in hand” occurred when Chad was “attacked by some powers, we think, by big countries” (Al-Wihda [N’Djamena], September 25, 2021).

Chad’s military rulers are in the midst of a diplomatic campaign to convince its neighbors, military partners and aid sources that their intentions are benign and dedicated to the restoration of democracy in Chad (if Idriss Déby’s regime could be called democratic). To this end, the CMT has made a number of moves intended to generate acceptance of the military junta.

Goukouni Waday

Concerned with the growing Russian influence in both Libya and the CAR, the military council in Chad declared a general amnesty for members of the armed opposition on November 29, 2021. The intent was to promote a resolution to the seemingly endless rebellion so greater strategic threats may be addressed. Responsibility for Qatar-sponsored peace talks was given in late November to Goukouni Waday (or Ouddei), former president of Chad and leader (derde) of the Teda Tubu. Goukouni is well-suited to lead the talks, respected for being part of the royal Tumaghera clan of the Teda Tubu and for having fought in many of Chad’s civil conflicts alongside or against (sometimes both) many of the imprisoned or exiled rebel leaders. Many political prisoners of the Idriss Déby regime were behind bars for “crimes of opinion.” The recommendations of Goukouni’s committee for nearly 300 pardons and amnesties were largely approved, with pardons issued to major rebel leaders, including Mahamat Nouri Allatchi (Anakaza branch of the Daza Tubu), leader of the Union des forces pour la démocratie et le développement (UFDD) rebel coalition, Abakar Tollimi (Bidayat/Zaghawa), president of the Conseil National de la Resistance pour la Democratie (CNRD) and Adouma Hassaballah Djadalrab, former head of the Union des forces pour le changement et la démocratie (UFCD), who has been held in the cells of the secret police in N’Djamena since his extradition from Ethiopia in 2011 (Jeune Afrique, November 24, 2021).

Besides the armed groups, there is also a civil political opposition that rejects the takeover by Mahamat Idriss and the CMT. One of its leaders is economist and politician Succès Masra, who was prevented from running against Idriss Déby in the April 11 election.  Masra has pointed out that Mahamat’s succession contravenes the constitution; he and his movement, Les Transformateurs, seek a ban on military officers like Mahamat from running for the presidency, though it may be some time before there is another election. Mahamat Idriss has insisted that “the members of the CMT will not stand for election once their mission has been accomplished” (Africa Report, June 30, 2021). Since the CMT coup, most of the opposition parties have been legalized, including Les Transformateurs.

The Chadian Army

In September 2021 Chad’s defense ministry announced its intention of nearly doubling the size of the Armée Nationale Tchadienne (ANT) to a force of 60,000 troops by the end of 2022. According to General Daoud Yaya Brahim, “the objective is to build elites capable of adapting to the asymmetric warfare our Sahel countries are facing” (Reuters, September 25, 2021).

The army’s reliance on the culturally similar Zaghawa and Tubu minorities of northern Chad for military leadership and recruits for its better-trained and better-paid elite units can create dissension in the ranks and risks to field operations; in 2019, there were two incidents in which northern troops refused to engage relatives in the armed opposition, which is also composed mainly of Zaghawa and Tubu tribesmen. The Chadian minority of African Christian and animist ethnic-groups in southern Chad has played only a minor role in Chad’s military, political or armed opposition leadership since the overthrow of President François Tombalbaye (ethnic Sara) in 1975.

Chad is an important member of both the G5-Sahel, a counter-terrorist and development alliance that also includes Mauritania, Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, and the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a counter-terrorist military alliance battling Islamist extremists in the Lake Chad region. The MNJTF includes Chad, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger.

Chad is also a major contributor of troops to peacekeeping missions in the CAR (MINUSCA) and Mali (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali – MINUSMA).

Ali Darassa Mahamat – Baba Laddé’s Successor

Many African states have limited ability to deliver security to their citizens, especially those where militaries are weak, resources scarce, borders porous, officials corrupt or incompetent and the landscape favorable to banditry or prolonged insurgencies. Rebels have their own challenges, notably in securing steady sources of food, arms, munitions and recruits, so that conflicts tend to drag on for years without conclusion. Eventually both sides adjust to the semi-permanent state of conflict and learn to profit from the instability at the expense of the people both sides pretend to be rescuing. At this point the only apparent chance of restoring peace is to reward rebels and bush warlords with integration into the state security services or administrative structure, often with an understanding they will still be able to carry on their most profitable sidelines.

General Ali Darassa (REUTERS/Emmanuel Braun)

Such was the case with the Khartoum peace accord signed in February 2019 (the Accord politique pour la paix et la réconciliation – APPR) by the CAR government and some 14 rebel movements, including the leaders of the main Muslim armed groups in the country. Baba Laddé‘s successor, ‘Ali Darassa Mahamat, leader of the UPC, Mahamat al-Khatim (a.k.a. Mamahat al-Hissène), leader of the Mouvement patriotique pour la Centrafrique (MPC), and Sidiki Abass (a.k.a. Bi Sidi Souleymane), leader of the Retour, Récupération, Réhabilitation (3R) movement, were all made “special military advisors to the office of the prime minister [Firmin Ngrebada at the time]” despite allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As called for in the Khartoum Accord, their men were supposed to be integrated into “special mixed units” with FACA regulars. Each rebel leader was given responsibility in the zone they used to control as insurgents, a frightening prospect for residents who hoped the peace deal would remove the warlords from their regions rather than entrench them with official sanction. The mixed units of rebels and FACA regulars were resisted by Touadéra and never implemented, leaving thousands of gunmen to their own devices while their leaders enjoyed the perks of being a cabinet minister in Bangui.

Darassa’s mainly Mbororo Fulani UPC movement has had repeated clashes with CAR security forces and MINUSCA peacekeepers in the Ouaka prefecture of south-central CAR, especially around the city of Bambari, capital of Ouaka. A raid by Portuguese paratroopers attached to MINUSCA destroyed the UPC headquarters at nearby Bokolobo in January 2019.

Darassa abandoned the Khartoum Accord in August 2020. Shortly afterwards, CAR National Assembly deputy Martin Ziguele accused Darassa of keeping the population of over a dozen towns and villages in slavery, as well as being responsible for the assassination of four Catholic priests (Humanglemedia, August 5, 2020).

The UPC and five other rebel groups formed the Coalition des Patriotes pour le Changement (CPC) on December 15, 2020, with the declared aim of overthrowing President Touadera. However, Ali Darassa announced the UPC’s withdrawal from the CPC in 2021, citing the continuing suffering of the civilian population from political violence. In November 2021, Ali Darassa accused the Wagner Group of committing a series of murders and massacres of CAR civilians, many of them targeting ethnic Fulanis (Corbeaunews-Centrafrique [Bangui],  November 30, 2021). However, Ali Darassa’s complaints failed to shift attention from himself and US sanctions were imposed on him on December 16, 2021 in consequence of the UPC’s own “brutal atrocities against civilians” (Reuters, December 17, 2021).

The UPC appears to have been the target of a disinformation campaign when a recent press release bearing the UPC logo announced the dissolution of the UPC. Ali Darassa responded with his own “disclaimer letter” denouncing the “gross lie” perpetrated by President Touadera, the Wagner “killing machine” and livestock minister Hassan Bouba Ali, the “traitor and bastard” of the Fulani community.  Darassa promised the UPC was ready to liberate the Central African people from Touadéra and his “blood-drinking allies” (Corbeaunews [Bangui], January 4, 2022). Bouba was earlier condemned by Baba Laddé in September 2021 as “an accomplice in the massacre of his own people” (Corbeaunews, September 24, 2021).

Darassa’s attack on Hassan Bouba was not surprising; Bouba was formerly the number two man in the UPC. A Fulani livestock-trader and former member of Chad’s secret police, Bouba was once close to Baba Laddé. Bouba’s appointment to the government as the UPC’s representative (the Khartoum Accord having called for rebel representation in the government) angered Darassa, who had lost trust in Bouba and opposed his appointment. As Livestock Minister, Bouba acted as the government’s main mediator with the rebels and was its main source of intelligence on rebel activities. Nonetheless, Bouba was arrested in November 2021 in connection to his alleged role in ordering a massacre of 112 civilians at a refugee camp in 2018 (Justiceinfo.net, November 23 2021). Bouba, considered close to the Russian mission, was the only individual actually arrested out of 25 arrest warrants issued for individuals accused of crimes against humanity in the CAR. Instead of facing charges at the Cour pénale spéciale (CPS – Special Criminal Court, a hybrid chamber of local and international magistrates intended to deal with war crimes in the CAR), Bouba was freed by the gendarmes a week later and awarded the National Order of Merit by President Touadéra on November 29, 2021 (Le Monde/AFP, December 8, 2021). The sequence of events confirmed the impunity enjoyed by pro-government warlords and militias.

In recent weeks, UPC operations in Basse-Kotto prefecture (east of Darassa’s stronghold in Ouaka prefecture) have been hampered by a wave of defections and the surrender of “Colonel” Sallé Ali, who claimed Darassa suspected him of being in league with FACA (Radio Nedeke Luka [Bangui], January 7, 2022).

A leading UPC official, Mahamat Abdoulaye Garba, was arrested at the beginning of February. Under interrogation, he confessed to working as an agent of the French Embassy and a conduit for messages from the French to Ali Darassa. Mahamat Abdoulaye was reported to have implicated Baba Laddé in a pro-French conspiracy and to have asked Darassa on behalf of the French what it would take for Darassa to appeal to all Fulani to join a battle against FACA and its Russian allies (Nouvellesplus, February 3, 2022). Seeing a Russian hand in the arrest and interrogation, Darassa responded to the allegations with a press release condemning the Wagner Group’s attempts to “tarnish the image” of France, the Chadian state and its director of intelligence and investigations, General Baba Laddé (Corbeaunews, February 5, 2022).

For Part Two, see:  https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=4756

Notes

  1. The Fulani speak a common language (known as Fula, Fulfulde or Pulaar) but are known by several other names in their broad geographical range from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, including Fulbe, Fula, Peul, Peulh, and Fellata. It should be noted that in the 21st century, not all Fulani are cattle herders following traditional means of existence; many are urbanized city dwellers speaking a variety of languages and are well represented in the business communities of the Sahel and the coastal regions of West Africa. For background on the Fulani crisis, see: “The Fulani Crisis: Communal Violence and Radicalization in the Sahel,” Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, CTC Sentinel 10(2), February 22, 2017, https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=3881.
  2. Debriefing statement on its mission to Chad, 16 – 23 April 2018 by the UN Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the right of peoples to self-determination, n.d. (2018), https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22986&LangID=E
  3. For Ganda Koy and Ganda Iso, see: “’The Sons of the Land’: Tribal Challenges to the Tuareg Conquest of Northern Mali,” Terrorism Monitor, April 19, 2012, http://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=447; “Mali’s Ganda Iso Militia Splits over Support for Tuareg Rebel Group,” Terrorism Monitor, February 21, 2014, http://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=808.
  4. Kaka is Chadic Arabic for “Grandmother”; Mahamat was given the nickname after being raised by his grandmother.
  5. For the Erdimi twins, see https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=2263.

Warlords and Mercenaries in Central Africa: The Struggle for Power in Chad and the Central African Republic – Part Two

Part Two – Can Russian Military Contractors Overcome Tribal Politics and French Influence in the CAR?

Moscow’s Privatized Point-Men in Central Africa Have Had It Their Way So Far. Can It Last?

Dr. Andrew McGregor

AIS Special Report, February 5, 2022

Moscow’s addition of Russian “contract soldiers” to its fighting force in Chechnya has evolved into the regular use of contract fighters to spread Russian political and economic interests in conflict zones, especially those experiencing seemingly intractable conflicts. Unlike those who served in Chechnya, the new generation of contract fighters operate outside Russia’s formal military structure. Like earlier European mercenary groups in Africa, it is understood by the leaders of these “contractors” that their reward for saving governments under threat will be guaranteed access to the wealth generated from resource extraction.

Central African Republic (Worldometer)

The use of mercenaries as bodyguards for the president has a long history in the CAR, with Chadian gunmen usually filling this role, so the introduction of Russian mercenaries as presidential security was hardly unprecedented. What is surprising is the eagerness with which African nations such as the Central African Republic (CAR), Sudan, Mozambique, Mali and others have welcomed the return of White European mercenaries after decades spent trying to drive them out of Africa. The surprise is even greater when it is plain the mercenaries from the east are still using the playbook used by the White mercenaries of the 1960s and later:

  • Separate the ruler from the ruled by forming a bodyguard of mercenaries who control access to the leader;
  • Insert economic “advisors” who direct national finances;
  • Ensure rights to mining and other extractive industries are given to firms favored or owned by the mercenaries;
  • Establish discreet and deniable connections to European states or corporate interests seeking to establish or expand their influence and holdings in Africa.

The leaders of Wagner Group appear to be familiar with the work of earlier European mercenaries in Africa, including Frenchman Bob Denard, a mercenary who worked for Belgian mineral interests in Katanga in the 1960s. Denard later became the power behind the throne in the Comoros Islands by controlling its 500-man presidential bodyguard through the 1980s, maintaining connections to Jacques Foccart, France’s point-man in Africa before deciding to take over the country himself in 1995.

Bob Denard in Yemen, 1953

The Russians are also sure to have studied the disastrous South African deployment in Bangui in 2013 and the book Composite Warfare: The Conduct of Successful Ground Force Operations in Africa, an influential 2016 tactical work by South African mercenary Colonel Eeben Barlow, based partly on operations carried out against Boko Haram in Nigeria by his mixed-race “Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection” unit (STTEP). [1]

Civil War in the CAR

Both Ali Darassa and Mahamat al-Khatim were officially dismissed as special military advisors on December 31, 2020 (RFI, January 2, 2021). Al-Khatim’s Mouvement patriotique pour la Centrafrique (MPC) suffered serious losses in arms and personnel during the late 2021 government counter-offensive. A recent communiqué from the MPC chief-of staff, “General” Abdraman Mahamat Abfiessa, accused the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, a Christian, of “using a Hitlerian strategy to erase the Muslim identity of the Central African Republic” (Corbeau News [Bangui], January 7, 2022).

Sidiki Abass (DW.com)

Sidiki Abass, whose Retour, Récupération, Réhabilitation (3R) militia was notorious for torture, rape and murder, quickly returned to the bush after the 2019 Khartoum Accord that was meant to end the fighting. He died in March 2021 from wounds either received in an attack on a village on November 16, 2020 or in an ambush of his convoy in December 2020. Sidiki was succeeded by the self-described “General Bobbo.” The 3R’s hold on diamond-rich areas and control of the cross-border cattle trade with Cameroon have enabled it to buy arms and recruit mercenaries of their own (Vanguard [Lagos], December 6, 2021). Many of these mercenaries come from Chad, some with combat experience on Libyan battlefields. There is no difficulty for them in crossing the permeable border between Chad and the CAR.

Mahamat al-Khatim

3R is mostly Fulani, as is the UPC, and began its run in 2015 as a Fulani self-defense militia. Al-Khatim’s MPC is a mix of Arab and Fulani fighters. The conflict in the northern CAR reflects the growing militancy of the Fulani people across Africa’s Sahel belt, though their struggles remain uncoordinated, lack central direction and are generally fuelled by local issues and ethnic rivalries rather than ideology. Baba Laddé is one of the few to have tried to situate the violence between Fulani groups and their neighbors within a larger ethnic framework, with some attempt to define larger goals for a multinational Fulani alliance.

Fulani herders in the CAR are actually targeted by both certain rebel groups and government forces (and their allies), whether through taxation in the form of cattle or retaliatory attacks in response to operations by self-identified Fulani “self-defense” groups. In dealing with the Fulani, the Russians are reported to make little distinction between civilian herders and armed fighters (Le Monde/AFP, January 14, 2022).

The ongoing violence in the CAR began when its president, François Bozizé Yangouvonda (Gbaya ethnicity), was deposed in March 2013. Bozizé had seized power in a 2003 coup but was expelled by the Muslim Séléka alliance of Arab and Fulani rebel groups in 2013. Bozizé fled Bangui for Cameroon in March 2013 as Russian-educated Séléka leader Michel Djotodia took power as the CAR’s first Muslim president. Bangui and other parts of the CAR were plunged into violence as hastily-formed “anti-Balaka” Christian militias began retaliatory attacks on Séléka fighters and Muslim civilians for attacks on CAR Christians.

Djotodia, a member of the Gula ethnic group from Vakanga prefecture, was forced to resign in January 2014 and an interim government was formed as UN, African Union and French troops attempted to restore stability and security. In March 2016, academic and former prime-minister Faustin-Archange Touadéra was elected CAR president. Following the election, French troops withdrew, creating immediate security challenges for the new president.

Bozizé attempted a return to the CAR in late 2019 with the intention of running in the December 2020 presidential elections, but the CAR’s constitutional court announced his disqualification on moral grounds due to outstanding international warrants and UN sanctions for torture and war crimes. Instead, Bozizé was alleged to have mounted a failed coup attempt in December 2020, a week before elections were to begin. The action prompted Russian and Rwandan reinforcements.

Six of the strongest rebel groups mounted a joint offensive against the Touadera government in December 2020, calling themselves the Coalition des Patriotes pour le Changement (CPC). Their plan to cut off the capital was foiled by the response of CAR troops, Rwandan special forces and Russian mercenaries. By January 13, the rebels began to retreat. Ten days later, the government reported the death of 44 rebels at Boyali (54 miles from Bangui), “including several mercenaries from Chad, Sudan and the Fulani.” (Al-Jazeera, January 25, 2021).

In late February 2021, the Bozizé stronghold of Bossangoa 175 miles north of Bangui was captured by CAR troops supported by Russians and Rwandans. Bozizé, who was being investigated for “rebellion” at the time, took charge of the CPC in March 2021. He is now believed to reside in N’Djamena; in his absence, Ali Darassa has taken control of the rebel coalition.

The CAR government declared a unilateral ceasefire in October, 2021 to encourage a dialogue with rebel factions. The move, however, had little impact on the ongoing violence; the rebels had little interest and the government offensive continued. 3R forces attacked the town of Mann in the northwest, killing five civilians and one soldier in December 2021, while a particularly gruesome machete attack by pro-Touadéra militias in the CAR’s center-east left 15 civilians dead including women and children; many others suffered mutilations and amputation of limbs (AFP, December 20, 2021; ).

Increasing the instability in Bangui is the revival of the Requin (“sharks”), a pro-ruling party militia known for its violence. Created in 2019 by Touadéra’s Mouvement cœurs unis (MCU – United Hearts Movement), the Requin were dissolved in July 2020 under international pressure. Resurrected in 2021, the group mounts heavily-armed patrols through Bangui at night (Jeune Afrique, January 12, 2021). They have been accused of mounting an assassination campaign against members of the Gbaya (François Bozizé’s ethnic group) and circulating lists of opposition figures to be eliminated (Corbeaunews [Bangui], January 18, 2021). Russian mercenaries are also reported to have targeted the Gbaya with summary executions (ICG, December 3, 2021).

Clashes on the Chad/CAR Border

Unsurprisingly, tensions between a pro-French government in Chad and a pro-Russian government in Chad’s traditional Central African hinterland have created a state of instability along the border between the two nations. At times, these clashes have threatened to spark a wider conflict.

An attack by Russian fighters and CAR regulars on a Chadian border post on May 30, 2021 resulted in the death of six Chadians and three Russians. Chad’s defense ministry claimed that five of their soldiers had been captured and executed. Bangui insisted the clash was “a mistake” resulting from CAR forces and their allies pursuing rebels near the border (Reuters, June 2, 2021). A diplomatic crisis followed and more Chadian troops and weapons were sent to the border. The incident came only weeks after the Russian ambassador to the CAR criticized Chad for failing to prevent the passage of arms and fighters across the border into the CAR (Africa Report, June 4, 2021). Asked why Chad did not respond militarily to the execution of its troops, Mahamat Idriss would only respond: “Let’s just say that we exercised a lot of restraint after these murders were committed” (Africa Report, June 30, 2021).

Sani Yalo (DR)

Following the incident, the CAR’s top “fixer,” Sani Yalo, was sent to N’Djamena to assure Chad’s leadership that President Touadéra had no interest in creating insecurity on the border. Yalo is a political operator and one of President Touadéra’s closest advisors, despite having no official position. Believed to be pro-Russian, Yalo has demonstrated his survival skills and importance by acting as a presidential advisor during the presidencies of Ange-Félix Patassé, François Bozizé and Michel Djotodia. Touadéra refuses to extradite Yalo to Equatorial Guinea, where he is wanted for his alleged involvement in a 2017 attempt to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema (Jeune Afrique, October 16, 2019).

A further confrontation followed on December 10, 2021, when Russian mercenaries pursuing CPC rebels crossed the border into Chad. After a firefight with Chadian troops in which one Chadian was killed, the Russians withdrew, taking one captured soldier with them (Corbeau News, December 12, 2021).

Instability on the CAR’s South-Western Border with Cameroon

The regions adjacent to the 560-mile-long border between Cameroon and the CAR are beset by cattle-rustling, banditry, kidnappings and arms trafficking. When pressed, rebel groups from either nation take refuge on the other side of the border and have become heavily involved in resource exploitation, including the hunt for gold. Life in the border region has become precarious; 3R rebels launched attacks on CAR civilians and security forces near the Cameroon border on November 28, 2021, killing 30 civilians and two soldiers.

It is not only Fulani herders who are now in conflict with agricultural communities. In northern Cameroon, there have been repeated and bloody clashes between Arab Shuwa herders and Musgum (a.k.a. Mulwi) and Masa (a.k.a. Masana, Yagoua) farmers and fishermen over access to diminishing water resources. With the influx of arms to the Sahel region in recent decades, massacres have replaced traditional modes of dispute resolution; as one traditional chief in north Cameroon noted: “Today, when there is a problem between two people from different communities, all the communities get involved with weapons” (Reuters, December 9, 2021). Many Cameroonians have fled the violence into the CAR, while some 300,000 CAR residents have fled the other way into Cameroon.

The Russian Third Phase in Africa

Tsarist efforts to establish a colonial foothold in the Horn of Africa after the collapse of the Egyptian Empire in the late 19th century came to naught. This was despite the notable efforts of a handful of adventurous Russian officers and Cossacks who became influential in the court of the Abyssinian emperor and even managed to plant a Russian flag at Fashoda on the White Nile before the arrival of the French or British. However, there was little interest in Africa at St. Petersburg, as Russia focused on consolidating its rule in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Soviet efforts in the post-colonial era were more determined and resource-targeted, but decades of military and diplomatic work had unsatisfactory results – the Russians were expelled from Egypt due to Cold War political manoeuvring and the application of Marxist economics by inexperienced Soviet-trained leaders to non-industrial societies in sub-Saharan Africa resulted in famine, economic collapse and intractable civil wars. These latter, naturally, were fuelled by Western states desiring to make the communist presence in Africa as costly as possible. These strategies transformed Africa into a proxy battleground until the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Soviet project in Africa.

Ten Russian BDRM-2 armored scout cars were delivered to FACA in 2020; two broke down almost immediately.

The third phase of Russian interest in Africa may be inspired by Soviet-era efforts (especially its search for African military bases), but has abandoned the ideological element of the Soviets. This eases the entry of Russian business interests and resource extractors that are often closely tied to the provision of some combination of military contractors, arms supplies, personal security, political advisors and information manipulators. These, in turn, have direct connections to Kremlin insiders like Yevgeny Prigozhin (owner of the Wagner Group) who can get things done even without having official status in the Russian government. For unstable regimes with no other means of re-asserting government control in profitable but rebellious regions, it is an attractive model.

The Wagner Group and Russian arms arrived in January 2018, not long after a visit by President Touadéra to Sochi, where he met with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. Four years later, Russians have become a highly influential, if not dominant, force in the national army, the gendarmerie, the mineral sector, the presidency and the National Assembly. The Wagner force is mainly Russian, but is reported to include a number of Syrians and Libyans whose knowledge of Arabic is useful in dealing with the CAR’s Muslim communities.

A report leaked from the EU’s foreign service in November 2021 described Russia’s use of a “complex hybrid strategy” in the CAR, including “support through proxies in the National Assembly.” The report also noted the Wagner Group’s “alleged reliance” on official Russian military infrastructure, transport and health services (EU Observer, November 29, 2021). Two weeks later, the EU imposed sanctions on the Wagner Group and eight specific individuals associated with it, citing “serious human rights abuses, including torture, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings [and] destabilising activities in some of the countries they operate in,” including Libya, Syria, Ukraine and the CAR.

In March 2021, the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries cited various abuses by Russian mercenaries in the CAR, including mass summary executions, torture, arbitrary detentions, indiscriminate targeting of civilians and attacks on humanitarian workers. The UN investigators were also alarmed by the “proximity and interoperability” between the mercenaries and the peacekeepers of the UN’s Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en Centrafrique (MINUSCA) forces (Al-Jazeera, March 31, 2021). In response to the UN’s claim Russian fighters had looted and murdered in the CAR, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov insisted such reports were “yet another lie” (AP, June 28, 2021). Anti-MINUSCA protests in Bangui organized by Touadéra’s Russian advisors quickly followed the release of the UN report. Since the protests, Russian diplomatic efforts have prevented UN experts from pursuing further investigations.

However, the relationship between MINUSCA and the Russians inevitably deteriorated as the year progressed due to the conflict between their mandates and the difference in their methods.  Whatever cooperation existed between the two groups was finally put to rest on November 1, 2021, when ten unarmed Egyptian policemen joining the MINUSCA force were wounded at Bangui’s M’Poko Airport in an attack by the Russian-controlled Presidential Guard. MINUSCA described the attack as “deliberate and unjustifiable,” though a presidential spokesman claimed the reports had “nothing to do with reality” (Reuters, November 3, 2021; UN News, November 2, 2021). [2]

In recent weeks, Russian mercenaries in Bria, capital of the Haute Kotto prefecture, have been in the habit of rounding up young men on a daily basis for use as forced labor in the construction of a nearby base. When no young men were to be found for several days, the Russians carried out a military operation in the early morning, surrounding Bria and opening fire on fleeing youth. Four were killed, prompting the rest of the town to flee to the bush or to the safety of a nearby displaced persons’ camp. The Russians returned late in the day to carry away the bodies of the deceased from a mosque where they were awaiting burial (Journal de Bangui, January 5, 2020; HumAngle [Abuja], January 5, 2022).

Claims of abuses by Russians in the CAR have been dismissed by a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman: “If the insinuations about their atrocities had any real foundation, and the local population was actively protesting, the CAR’s leadership would hardly have insisted on the further presence of specialists from Russia” (Financial Times, October 25, 2021).

The Russian fighters are steady consumers of imported vodka and land for a local vodka distillery in the CAR has already been expropriated. When vodka runs short, the mercenaries are known to add isopropyl alcohol, Mecurochrome and various chemical-based wound disinfectants to beer to give it the necessary kick. Three Russians died from drinking these concoctions in mid-2021; four more died and six others were hospitalized in the last week of January 2022. Troops of the Force Armée Centrafricaine (FACA – Armed Forces of Central Africa) are said to avoid drinking with their Russian comrades (Corbeaunews [Bangui], January 31, 2022).

Valery Zakharov is the CAR’s national security advisor, assuming both military and diplomatic roles, including negotiations with Mahamat Darassa and other rebel leaders. The former intelligence agent, variously described as a veteran of the FSB or the GRU, also has a business role through mining firm Lobaye Invest Sarlu and Séwa Sécurité (or Sewa Security Services – SSS), a Russian private military contractor (PMC) engaged to guard President Touadera and other CAR officials. [3] According to Zakharov, Russia is not presently seeking a military base in the CAR, but did not rule it out in the future: “There is already a Russian military representation in the CAR, which is still sufficient for operational coordination between the Central African and Russian Ministries of Defense, the issue of opening the base is not yet on the agenda” (Descifrando la Guerra, March 7, 2021). While a military base may become a reality in the future, for now instability in the CAR has created an entry point for Russian interests in the CAR’s valuable mining sector.

Russian Members of Sewa Security Services in the CAR (Jeune Afrique)

In a September 2021 interview, a defensive President Touadéra pretended to have little knowledge of Wagner, Sewa Security or Lobaye Invest, adding that an appeal for security assistance from EU states had failed to obtain a favorable response. However, Russia, “with whom we have a long-standing relationship,” responded positively with arms and military trainers: “I have nothing to hide about the Russians” (Africa Report, September 24, 2021).

Prigozhin is reported to control both M-Finans, specializing in precious metals and the provision of private security services, and Lobaye Invest Sarlu, specializing in the mining of non-ferrous metal ores. Mining permits are regularly issued without consultation of the CAR’s National Assembly, a violation of the national constitution (Jeune Afrique, August 20, 2019). According to the US Treasury Department, Prigozhin’s CAR operations are “reported to be coordinated with the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense.” [4]

Yevgeny Khodotov is the managing director of Lobaye Invest Sarlu, with contracts to explore for gold and diamonds, sometimes through another company called M-Finance. The US Treasury Department has identified Khodotov as an associate of Prigozhin. He is reported to be in contact with Noureddine Adam, leader of a faction of the Runga-dominated Front Populaire pour la renaissance de la Centrafrique (FPRC), as well as former president Michel Djotodia (Jeune Afrique, August 20, 2019). [5] The FPRC, under its military commander Abdoulaye Hissène, is known for targeting Fulanis; in 2016 the group massacred 85 people in Bria during a brutal raid on the town that displaced 11,000 people (Reuters, November 26, 2016). The FPRC was targeted by government-controlled militias in 2019-20. Noureddine Adam is now believed to be living in Sudan after the CAR government’s counter-offensive.

UPC Rebels, 2018 (Radio Ndeke Luka)

Reports of a massacre of civilians carried out in January near Bria (Haute-Kotto prefecture) by FACA and Russian mercenaries have ignited a UN investigation by MINUSCA officials. The incident occurred during a January 16-17 operation against Darassa’s UPC. Dozens of civilians were reported killed; a military source described “summary executions” and “more than 50 deaths” (AFP, January 21, 2022, al-Jazeera, January 22, 2022).

Nonetheless, Touadéra’s Russian advisors have tried to popularize the unfamiliar Russian presence in the CAR, providing medical services and sports equipment, funding a “Miss Centrafrique” contest and producing a film lionizing the Russian fighters. “The Tourist,” a Prigozhin-financed movie about young Russian military advisors in the CAR battling bloodthirsty rebels, was shown at a Bangui sports stadium to as many as 70,000 people, some of whom were helpfully supplied with Russian flags to show their enthusiasm. Dubbed into the local Sangho language (a lingua franca in the CAR), the movie featured Wagner Group mercenaries as extras. A “quickie” by film standards, the movie was shot in March-April 2021 and premiered in May (Moscow Times, May 21, 2021).

FACA Troops Wearing “Russie – Je Suis Wagner” T-shirts (Corbeaunews)

Displaying little regard for the political sensitivities of the CAR rulers who were trying to disavow any knowledge of Wagner Group mercenaries in the country, the Russian mercenaries created a “Je Suis Wagner” (I am Wagner) t-shirt they issued to the gendarmerie and FACA members (some of these bear a large “Russie” logo over the shirt’s image). Soon, the shirts were being worn by fashionable youth and members of the ruling party alike (Corbeaunews [Bangui], October 31, 2021).

Young Girl Styles “Je suis Wagner” T-shirt (Corbeau News)

The services of private Russian security firms don’t come cheap, and questions have been asked regarding the possibility that donations from the World Bank and the EU, which provide half of the CAR’s $400 million budget, might be used to pay the Russian mercenaries on top of access to gold and diamond deposits (Financial Times, October 25, 2021).

The French Reaction

Unhappy with the Russian challenge to France’s traditional zone of influence, French president Emmanuel Macron has used strong language to condemn the growing criticisms of France in the CAR: “This anti-French rhetoric legitimises the presence of predatory Russian mercenaries at the highest levels of the state, with President Touadéra who is today a hostage of the Wagner group. This group is taking over the mines and, in the same way, the political system” (Journal du Dimanche, May 29, 2021; RFI, May 31, 2021).

France is still far from out of the picture in the CAR, and some indication of its lingering influence might be seen in the June 10, 2021 resignation of Prime Minister Firmin Ngrebada and his cabinet. Ngrebada was an architect of the 2019 Khartoum Accord and believed to be close to the Russians, at whose embassy he sought refuge when the Séléka movement occupied Bangui in 2013. Five days after his resignation, he was replaced by former finance minister Henri Marie Dondra, believed to be closer to the French who lobbied hard for Ngrebada’s removal. Dondra, whose family lives in France, declined the protection of Russian bodyguards (Jeune Afrique, June 18, 2021). Despite Dondra’s acceptability to the IMF/World Bank, there has been internal pressure to replace him. Dondra is reported to have already submitted his resignation earlier this month; the president is expected to respond in the coming days. The prime minister has struggled with demands from the Wagner Group, a staff picked by a president to whom he has never been close, increased reluctance to provide continuing financial support to the CAR by France and the EU, and finally ethnic insults made by the spokesman of the leader of the National Assembly (African Intelligence, February 4, 2022). Though the World Bank is unhappy about the Russian mission’s influence on certain government institutions, Dondra’s successor is likely to be more accommodating to the Russian presence in the CAR.

The Investigation

To the surprise of many, on October 1, 2021 CAR Minister of Justice Arnaud Djoubaye Abazène (a relative of Michel Djotodia) released the results of an investigation by a Special Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations in the CAR that implicated the CPC rebels, MINUSCA troops and “Russian instructors who operate in support of FACA” in repeated and egregious violations (Le Monde/AFP, October 1, 2021). Aware of the repercussions the report would have, Djoubaye did not provide advance notice to the Russian military mission or the Russian embassy. After presenting the report, the Minister of Justice was roundly assailed as “pro-French” by deputies in the Touadera camp.

Only two weeks after Djoubaye made the accusations of war crimes and human rights violations public, the CAR’s National Assembly issued a public letter of thanks for the “interventions of the Russian contingent alongside our forces” in retaking the regions occupied by “terrorists,” along with “our sincere congratulations for your bravery” (Afrik.com, October 16, 2021). The letter, completely undermining the Minister of Justice, was yet another example of the growing Russian influence in the Assembly.

Djoubaye was forced to defend his report in a parliamentary interpellation several days later, though he opened by criticizing the “almost generalized impunity” enjoyed by military, political and criminal human rights violators in the CAR. Repeating that the majority of such violations were committed by rebel movements, Djoubaye noted the “privilege of jurisdiction” enjoyed by FACA’s foreign allies, an acknowledgement that crimes committed by these entities were unlikely to be prosecuted in the CAR. Attempting to still the waters, the Justice Minister finished by stating that the report of the Special Commission of Inquiry “was not intended to affect the morale of FACA or that of the allies who are applauded by our people” (Centrafrique-presse, October 24, 2021).

Djoubaye and the Tribal War in the North

Djoubaye has himself been accused of helping orchestrate attacks amounting to war crimes in his hometown of Birao (capital of Vakaga prefecture) in 2019. The attacks were carried out by pro-government militias on members of the Runga community, especially those close to the FPRC (Monde Afrique, July 3, 2021). Dozens were killed and tens of thousands displaced in the violence between neighboring ethnic groups.

The three militias involved in the attacks on the Runga included:

  • The Mouvement des libérateurs centrafricains pour la justice (MLCJ), composed largely of Kara and Gula from the region of Birao. The MLCJ was founded by Abakar Sabone and is now led by Gilbert Toumou Deya, currently a cabinet minister under the integration terms of the Khartoum Accord. The political/military movement is reported to have been reinforced by Chadian and Sudanese mercenaries (Mondafrique, March 28, 2020).
  • The Rassemblement patriotique pour le renouveau de la Centrafrique (RPRC). The movement’s founder and political leader, Herbert Gontran Djono Ahaba, is now a cabinet minister. The RPRC, operating in the northeast CAR, is now led in the field by Gula “General” Zakaria Damane (a.k.a. Moustapha Maloum). Damane cooperates with Lobaye Invest in the Ouadda region of Haute-Kotto prefecture.
  • The Parti pour le rassemblement de la nation centrafricaine (PRNC) is led by Nour Gregaza (a.k.a. Mahamat Nour Nizan) and Issa Issaka Aubin, former army chief-of-staff under the presidency of Michel Djotodia (Mondafrique, March 28, 2020; RFI, June 6, 2019). The movement was created by a June 2019 split with the RPRC.

The clashes in Birao led to a vicious split in the ranks of the FPRC in neighboring Haute-Kotto prefecture. Diamonds appeared to be at the core of a further clash in Bria in January 2020, between the Kara and Gula peoples who own the mines and their former Runga allies in the FPRC who control the sale and trade of diamonds from the region (AFP, January 20, 2020). The fighting was joined by fighters of the Kara and Gula-dominated MLCJ. The FPRC’s internal ethnic struggle spread to its main base in Ndélé in the Bamingui-Bangoran prefecture (southwest of Vakaga prefecture) in April 2020, with dozens slaughtered. “General” Azor Kalité, a Bria-based Gula warlord and former senior member of the FPRC, and eight companions were arrested by MINUCA on suspicion of war crimes as the fighting continued in May (AFP, May 20, 2020; Monde Afrique, May 27, 2020). A pact of non-aggression between the Runga and Gula factions of the FPRC helped reduce the violence in August 2020. Ndélé was eventually recaptured by government forces in June 2021.

The Haute-Kotto and Vakaga prefectures are located on the historically turbulent fault line between Muslim north Africa and traditionally animist sub-Saharan Africa (which now includes many Christians). Many of the ethnic-groups of these regions converted to Islam in the 19th century as a way of attempting to evade enslavement by the Fulani, Arabs and Maba from Chad and Fur and Arabs from the Darfur sultanate (Muslims are forbidden to enslave other Muslims, though this restriction was not always observed in practice in Chad’s southern hinterland). Vakaga is the CAR’s northernmost prefecture and the only one to share borders with both Chad and Sudan. Though oil reserves are present in the region, it remains sparsely populated due to its depopulation by 19th century slave raids. Vakaga has been brought under some semblance of government control since the FACA/Russian/Rwandan offensive and many Hausa and Sara who fled to Sudan and Chad are considering a return (Corbeaunews [Bangui], January 31, 2022).

The Army of the Central African Republic

Senior FACA officers complain the Russians are recruiting their own battalions and deploying them to act as support units in their operations without respect to the FACA hierarchy (Corbeaunews [Bangui], December 21, 2021). To the chagrin of members of the European Union Training Mission (EUTM), many of their graduates, so carefully instructed in human rights issues, are heading straight into FACA battalions controlled by Russian mercenaries. The EUTM now focuses on strategic advice having suspended its training program two months ago over concerns it could not cooperate with Russian mercenaries that did not share the values of contributing European nations. An offer was made to resume training if Russian control of FACA ended and the army began to respect human rights, but these conditions seem unlikely to be met (Defense-gouv.fr, February 5, 2022).

A FACA soldier wearing the Wagner Group Death’s-Head patch (Corbeau News).

Of even greater concern is last year’s wave of arrests of former and active FACA senior officers by Russian contractors with the apparent acquiescence of the government:

  • Former FACA chief-of-staff General Ludovic Ngaïfei Lamademon was arrested at his home on January 16, 2021 and detained at the Camp Roux military prison, where he was questioned regarding his relationship with rebel CPC leaders. The arrest occurred when a column of FACA armored vehicles and Russian APCs smashed through the gates of his house, with FACA troops firing wildly despite the absence of any resistance. Ngaïfei was accused of organizing a coup against the government after speaking critically of the president in the local press. The retired general had been dismissed by President Touadéra following a dispute in 2018 (Corbeaunews [Bangui], February 1, 2021);
  • Colonel Rodongo, commander of FACA’s signals battalion, was arrested by the Russians in Kaga-Bandaro;
  • The Russians came for the captain-chief of the FACA detachment in Bria in July 2021. The officer fled to a local MINUSCA detachment, but was turned over to the interrogators of the research and investigation section of the CAR gendarmerie (Corbeaunews [Bangui], October 24, 2021).
  • Colonel Moussa Kitoko, commander of the north-east military zone, was arrested at Ndélé by Russian mercenaries, who accused the colonel of selling ammunition to the FPRC rebel movement (Corbeaunews [Bangui], October 24, 2021).
  • Chief Warrant Officer Guetel, head of the Berberati remand center, was also arrested by the Russians in mid-October, 2021.

Beside the arrests of their colleagues, FACA officers are, like their Chadian counterparts, unhappy with the system of promotion, which seems to elevate favorites of Touadéra or his Russian advisors. Despite the apparent success of the FACA/Russian/Rwandan offensive in early 2021, morale remains low in the army and defections to rebel groups are common. In August 2021, a group of soldiers of all ranks sent a 20-page letter to President Touadéra criticizing the handling of the army. The letter cited tribalism and favoritism in promotions, an unclear purpose for the army, the arrests of senior officers and the “humiliation and dishonor” in the ranks due to their subordination to the Wagner Company and Rwandan special forces: “Is it an army at the service of the people or an army to defend the interests of certain individuals who are in power?” (Journal de Bangui, August 23, 2021).

Female soldiers of FACA are no longer allowed on active operations due to the strong risk of sexual assault by their Russian allies under the influence of drugs and alcohol, something allegedly experienced by two out of three female recruits (Corbeaunews [Bangui], December 27, 2021; Letsunami.net [Bangui], January 15, 2022).

Major General and Chief of Staff of the Central African Armed Forces Zéphirin Mamadou is reported to work closely with General Oleg Polguyev, former intelligence chief of Russia’s airborne forces and a member of the official Russian mission (rather than Wagner).

Rwanda in the CAR

Rwanda is not a neighbor of the CAR, but, as with its earlier intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the government of President Paul Kagame is interested in gaining access to mineral resources of the type found in the CAR.

The Rwandan component of MINUSCA consists of two infantry battalions, a mechanized battle group and a field hospital. Rwandans began providing protection for President Touadéra and other authorities in 2016 (East African (Nairobi), August 4, 2021). Rwanda is the largest single contributor to MINUSCA, with roughly 1700 troops and 500 policemen under UN command. [6]

In 2020, Rwanda deployed “force protection troops” from the Forces de Défense du Rwanda (FDR) to the CAR under a bilateral defense agreement. The agreement allowing Rwanda to deploy troops in the CAR outside the MINUSCA framework was signed in October 2019. Accompanying economic agreements gave Rwanda access to the CAR’s mining sector and permitted Rwandan officials to be inserted into CAR mining operations. The deployment came “in response to the targeting of the Rwanda Defense Force under the UN peacekeeping force by rebels supported by François Bozize” (Govt. of Rwanda, December 20, 2020). In early August 2021, another battalion of 750 troops from the FDR arrived in the CAR; one of their main tasks was to secure the vital highway connecting Bangui and Cameroon (New Times [Kigali], August 9, 2021).

According to Valery Zakharov, the Rwandans “act very efficiently and professionally. Of course, without the support of Rwanda, it would be difficult to repel the aggression of the militants and immediately go on the offensive. We are in constant contact with the Rwandan forces, as well as with all other partners” (Descifrando la Guerra, March 7, 2021).

Soldiers of Fortune in the CAR

Some European mercenaries have taken advantage of the CAR’s state of insecurity for their own profit. Horațiu Potra, a Romanian mercenary and former French Legionnaire, became involved in Baba Laddé’s plan to overthrow both François Bozizé and Idriss Déby. Potra, allegedly a dealer in war-zone diamonds, is closely associated with a number of rebels and mercenaries active in Chad and the CAR and was an instructor of the presidential guard of Ange-Félix Patassé.

Another shadowy adventurer is the Italian Elio Ciolini (a.k.a. Bruno Lugon, a.k.a. Bruno Raul Rivera Sanchez, a.k.a. Gino Bottoni Di Ferrara, a.k.a. Colonel Eliot). Nicknamed il faccendiere (“the henchman”), Ciolini has spent time in the prisons of several states on drug and weapons charges. Now working in the CAR as an “adviser to the presidency for national security,” Ciolini manufactured a fake coup attempt in Bangui while posing as “Colonel Eliot” of the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s combined foreign and defence ministry. As “organizer” of the coup, Ciolini contacted a number of political and military leaders in the CAR in what seems to have been an attempt to flush out opponents of President Touadéra and his Russian backers. Ciolini was seen many times in Bangui in the company of Dmitri Alexandrov, a top Russian advisor to the president, before he disappeared in May 2020 (Jeune Afrique, July 1, 2020). Alexandrov (real name Dmitri Sergeevich Sytii) is a director of Lobaye Invest, a Russian mining firm tied to Prigozhin operating in the CAR. Sytii, who speaks four languages, works as an interpreter in high level talks and leads propaganda operations in Bangui that denounce MINUSCA and local politicians who resist the Russian expansion or favor a partnership with France. 

Two days after France suspended a military training and operational support mission to the CAR in June 2021 to protest the failure of Ngrebada’s government to combat an anti-French disinformation campaign on social media, French national Juan Rémy Quignolot was charged with weapons, espionage and threats to state security (i.e., aiding and training rebel groups). The charges came a month after the former French paratrooper, known to work as a bodyguard for aid organizations, was arrested in Bangui with a small cache of weapons, a few camouflage uniforms and cash in several currencies. Though the arms seized from Quignolot were described in many places as “a very large arsenal” endangering the state, photos of the seized weapons and gear revealed only two hunting rifles (one with a scope), a handgun and an M-16 automatic rifle, nothing especially unusual for a security practitioner in an insecure region and certainly not enough to mount a coup, as CAR security has suggested was his intent. [7]  Paris quickly characterized the arrest as a “manipulation” and part of an anti-French disinformation campaign after reports of the seized “arsenal” and arrest were prominently featured on Valery Zakharov’s Twitter account (al-Jazeera, June 9, 2021). The 55-year-old’s arrest came at a time when accusations were being made of human rights abuses by the Wagner Group in the CAR. According to his sister, Quignolot is being held in solitary confinement with a daily plate of rice to keep him alive as he faces a possible sentence of life at hard labor (Corbeaunews [Bangui], January 9, 2022).

Conclusion

In the CAR, it has become clear a cabinet of government ministers cannot be formed from rebel leaders and bandit chiefs, especially those who serve only themselves and have committed war-crimes and murders of CAR civilians. The impunity enjoyed by those rebel leaders now absorbed into the highest levels of the government only encourages others to view violence as the quickest path to wealth and influence. Such a structure cannot hold, hence the need for no-questions-asked assistance from mercenaries.

Alexander Bikantov, a proponent of a Russian presence in the CAR, is taking over as Russian ambassador this month from Vladimir Titorenko, who was perceived locally as inserting himself into CAR politics and was also occasionally at odds with Wagner Group officials. In October/November 2021, Bangui was visited by both Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner Group founder Dmitri Utkin in an attempt to calm growing differences between the Russians and CAR authorities.

Weak states compelled to hire mercenary forces to enable their survival are always at risk of the mercenaries taking over state institutions for their own profit, especially if expected wealth does not materialize. From the mutiny of mercenaries over pay in 3rd Century BCE Carthage to the mercenary mutinies in 1960s Congo, it is a familiar pattern. If continued insecurity in mineral-rich areas and pushback from CAR politicians delays the get-rich-quick schemes of the Russian mercenaries and their backers, the result could be an internal conflict that would both test and reveal Moscow’s control over the military contractors.

The Russians are strong enough to take rebel-held towns and territory, but lack sufficient numbers to occupy them, a task that is turned over to the unreliable forces of FACA. Rebel movements are, in classic guerrilla fashion, able to melt into the bush to await the departure of the Russians and Rwandans before moving back into their usual areas of operation. The incompetence of the national security forces prevents the delivery of state services and humanitarian relief to areas in desperate need of same, encouraging further rounds of rebellion. The victories obtained by the Russians are thus illusory; as elation over the initial success of the 2021 anti-rebel offensive dissipates and the mission becomes overwhelmed by the very real (but unprofitable) needs of the population, the Russian contractors will be more likely to focus on protecting the mining facilities operated by Russian interests.

The mandate for the EUTM to provide ethical and military training to FACA will expire in September 2022 and cannot be renewed without the approval of President Touadéra and his government. At the moment, training has been suspended, and if the mandate is not renewed (and it is questionable whether the EU at this point even has any interest itself in renewing it), it is likely that military training will fall to the Russians, completing their takeover of FACA.

Mercenaries are ultimately a poor means for states to project power and influence; without the discipline of formal military structures, they begin to act with an assumed license that is ultimately counterproductive to the interests of state sponsors. Such was the experience of the Americans with the Blackwater PMC in Iraq; even Bob Denard, with all his contacts in the French secret services, was eventually reined in and arrested by French troops in the Comoros Islands in 1995 after mounting his fourth coup attempt.

Managing the ever-shifting ethnic rivalries and alliances in rebellious and difficult-to-reach parts of the CAR will tax the patience of the small Russian force of advisors and mercenaries, intensifying a greater focus on profits rather than security. The Russian role in driving the rebel formations back into the bush has helped build Russian popularity in some sectors of society, but this may quickly evaporate if the contractors come to be seen as economic predators.

Notes

  1. For the SADF experience in Bangui, see: “South African Military Disaster in the Central African Republic: Part One – The Rebel Offensive,” April 4, 2013, https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=238, and “South African Military Disaster in the Central African Republic: Part Two – The Political and Strategic Fallout,” April 4, 2013, https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=236. For Eeben Barlow and mercenary tactics used against Boko Haram in Nigeria, see: “Last Hurrah or Sign of the Future? The Performance of South African Mercenaries against Boko Haram,” AIS Tips and Trends: The African Security Report, June 30, 2015, https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=3371.
  2. Egypt contributes over 1,000 troops to MINUSCA, making it the fourth largest contributor.
  3. Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti (FSB – Federal Security Service) is Russia’s domestic intelligence agency. The Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije (GRU – Main Intelligence Directorate) is the main military intelligence agency.
  4. “Treasury Increases Pressure on Russian Financier,” US Department of the Treasury Press Release, September 23, 2020, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1133
  5. In 2015, Noureddine Adam tried unsuccessfully to resurrect an expanded version of the old Dar al-Kuti sultanate called “the Republic of Logone.” In its early days (1830-1890) the sultanate was under the control of the Chadian sultanate of Wadai, providing the Wadaians with a steady source of slaves and ivory; in its latter years (1890-1911), the sultanate was invaded by the Nubian slaver Rabih al-Zubayr (1842-1900), who used it as a base for even more intensive slave raids in the region. The Islamic sultanate and its slave-labor plantations survived Rabih’s death at the hands of the French for some years under Rabih’s successor, Muhammad al-Sanusi.
  6. The top ten military contributors to MINUSCA include seven African nations and three Asian nations. MINUSCA Fact Sheet, January 5, 2022, https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/minusca
  7. Private ownership of a semi-automatic rifle is illegal in the CAR.

Why Mozambique Is Outsourcing Counter-Insurgency to Russia: Part Two – Hidden Loans and Naval Bases

Andrew McGregor

November 4, 2019 (Part One of this article was published on October 29, 2019)

At the heart of Mozambique’s reinvigorated relationship with Moscow (see EDM, October 29) is a financial scandal that almost ruined the country. Specifically, corrupt elements in the southeast African state’s Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) government and the Serviço de Informaçao e Segurança do Estado (SISE, Mozambique’s intelligence agency) secretly arranged for $2 billion in loans from foreign commercial banks for three state-owned firms without parliamentary approval in 2013–2014. Guaranteed by the government, loans from Russia’s VTB Bank and Credit Suisse were made to EMATUM, Proindicus and Mozambique Asset Management (MAM). The scandal severely undermined Mozambique’s currency and GDP growth as well as resulted in the imposition of strict new conditions on further International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank assistance. It also discouraged further foreign investment even as Maputo struggled to find up to $2 billion to finance its share of development of LNG reserves off Cabo Delgado (Macauhub.com.mo, October 18). Moscow’s VTB Bank is demanding repayment of its loan (over $500 million) by the end of the year (Clubofmozambique.com, September 9).

Mozambican Troops Inspect Terrorist Damage in Cabo Delgado (PetroleumEconomist)

As Mozambique’s state security forces—the Forças de Defesa e Segurança (FDS)—proved incapable of dealing with the lightly-armed terrorists in the north, Maputo began a search for military alternatives. Initially, Erik Prince’s Dubai-based Lancaster Six Group (L6G) private security firm was in competition with Russia’s Wagner private military company (PMC) and Eeben Barlow’s South African Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection International (STTEP) for security contracts in Cabo Delgado, with Prince promising to eliminate the terrorists in three months in return for a share of oil and natural gas revenues (Issafrica.org, November 20, 2018; Macauhub.com.mo, October 18, 2019). Prince also indicated he was interested in forming partnerships or making investments in the three state-owned firms involved in the hidden loan scandal in deals expected to lead to maritime security operations in the gas-rich Rovuma Basin (Deutsche Welle—Português Para África, June 4, 2019).

On August 20, Russia forgave 95 percent of Mozambique’s debt to the Russian Federation during a Russian-Mozambican business forum. Though the forum encouraged continuing growth in bilateral trade, some Mozambican businessmen expressed concern over the consequences of dealing with Russia while it remains under Western sanctions for its annexation of Crimea (Agência de Informação de Moçambique, August 22). Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi also encouraged Russia’s Gazprombank (specializing in financing oil and gas projects) to help invest in liquid natural gas (LNG) projects in the Rovuma Basin (Agência de Informação de Moçambique, August 22). Rosneft, a publicly-owned Russian energy firm, has three licensed exploration blocks in Mozambique and is seeking more.

Russian Cargo Plane Unloads Military Supplies at Nacala International Airport, September 26, 2019 (ClubofMozambique)

Prince and Barlow lost out in the security competition; in late September 2019, reports emerged of armed Russians, possibly from Wagner PMC, arriving in the northern cities of Nacala and Nampula (both in Nampula province, immediately south of Cabo Delgado), allegedly accompanied by drones and helicopters (see EDM, October 15). The reports followed an admission by Mozambique’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation that Russia was providing military equipment for use in Cabo Delgado (Noticias ao Minuto, October 5). Another report suggested the men were Russian regulars, 160 in number, who intended to create a mobile military intelligence (GRU) base and a permanent Russian naval base (Observador, September 28). The Russian embassy in Maputo has denied the presence of Russian military personnel in Mozambique (Sapo 24, October 3).

Russia’s ambassador to South Africa, Ilya Rogachev, recently defended the use of Russian PMCs in Africa, claiming critics see Russia “through colonial eyes,” overlooking Moscow’s perception of African states as “equal and not junior partners.” Rogachev added that “private military companies are not necessarily bad… I think it depends on the goals that are assigned to these companies” (Daily Maverick, October 17).

LNG Fields in Mozambique’s Rovuma Basin (BankTrack)

Though Cabo Delgado is deeply impoverished, organized crime runs lucrative operations there, trafficking in heroin, timber, wildlife and rubies (Globalinitiative.net, October 2018; Enact Africa, July 2, 2018). For now it remains unclear whether the terrorist attacks in the region are more closely connected to radical Islamists from the north or organized crime using Islamism as a cover. The intention could be to create enough insecurity to delay the development of a legitimate industry that could threaten their operations. It has been suggested elsewhere that the insurgency is designed to facilitate the entry of private military firms into the region and enable their exploitation of local energy resources (Deutsche Welle—Português Para África, June 13, 2018). Local journalists attempting to investigate the violence have faced intimidation, detention and even torture from government security forces (Mg.co.za, April 25).

Moscow and Maputo signed an agreement simplifying the entry of Russian naval ships into Mozambican ports and a memorandum on naval military cooperation, on April 4, 2019. Mozambique’s defense minister, Athanasio Salvador Mtumuke, noted that “our national flag depicts the Kalashnikov rifle, which symbolizes the deep relations between our countries in the military area…” (Sputnik Brasil, April 5, 2018).

Alexander Surikov, Moscow’s ambassador to Mozambique, has emphasized the readiness of Russian energy firms to develop natural gas reserves in Mozambique’s north, adding, “We provide [military] assistance to them without threatening their neighbors and rattling the saber, we only do what our partners in Mozambique ask for” (TASS, October 25).

Port of Nacala (MacauHub)

Moscow undoubtedly has eyes on the port of Nacala, southern Africa’s deepest harbor, which lies roughly 200 miles south of the Rovuma Basin. The Mozambican town of Palma, close to the border with Tanzania, is slated for development as the main port for the Rovuma LNG industry, but it is unlikely to serve a dual purpose as a Russian naval base. Palma has suffered from attacks by the insurgents. Additionally, local demonstrations calling for a halt to LNG-related development until security is established have been dispersed by police gunfire (Agência de Informação de Moçambique, January 14). Mozambique’s most powerful neighbor, South Africa, will hold joint naval exercises for the first time with the navies of Russia and China in November.

Besides military support, the FRELIMO government is seeking strong allies as it battles internal dissatisfaction with electoral fraud, growing crime, emerging terrorism, internal political challenges and rampant corruption. While Russia may offer itself as a solution to some of these problems, the question is whether Maputo can overcome its traditional reticence to engage wholeheartedly with Moscow’s regional ambitions. Financial pressure and the lure of energy riches may be just enough to permit Russia to establish its long sought naval base in Mozambique.

This article was first published in the November 4, 2019 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor.