Russia and Wagner are involved in the civil war that broke out in Sudan in April this year.Įverywhere it goes, Wagner has been indifferent to human life, indiscriminately killing civilians as well as Islamic militants and other insurgents.In Mozambique, the government has hired Wagner to fight an al-Shabaab-linked group.According to a leading research centre, 40% of combat engagements between December 2020 and July 2022 involved Wagner. In the Central African Republic (CAR) Wagner has engaged in direct combat with a coalition of rebels.Wagner's use of mines and booby traps, which killed many civilians, also violated the laws of war. This is Russia's clearest violation of international law in deploying Wagner. Wagner joined the civil war in Libya in October 2018, eventually sending in over 1,000 troops to assist the rebel leader Khalifa Hiftar's Libyan Arab Armed Forces.This has included its role in Mali where elections are being stalled and the military regime has invited Wagner forces in. It has helped nascent dictatorships consolidate power.It assisted Sudan's Omar al-Bashir to train troops, guard resources and suppress dissent between 2017 and his overthrow in April 2019.Wagner has helped abusive regimes maintain power on the continent. This means that, in due course, the AU and responsible African governments are likely to resent Wagner's presence and regret their failure to oppose it. Overall, Wagner has done nearly nothing to make life better for Africans: its activities have served to entrench dictators and undermine democracies to extend and deepen civil conflicts to murder innocent civilians to exploit natural resources for Russia's gain and to vilify the only alternative that Africans have to China for investment. The passivity towards Wagner also reflects a deeper ambivalence about Russia and Russian imperialism. Its utility to certain regimes helps explain the African Union's conspicuous silence on the menace it poses. Its presence will continue also because individual African actors, state and non-state, benefit from its presence. I was re-alerted to the "return" of Russia to Africa in preparing a textbook, Africa's International Relations, published in 2018.īased on this experience my view is that Wagner is likely to continue to bring misery to the African continent in multiple forms. This has included the slowly escalating Sino-American competition in Africa over the past 20 years. Since completing my dissertation on Soviet-American competition in Africa in 1992, I have followed the great power competition on the continent. In the unlikely event that Putin were to be overthrown, Russia would still maintain its interests in African minerals and the support of African countries in the UN. Of course, the Wagner rebellion that began on 23 June 2023 - after this article was first drafted - makes Wagner's future in Africa highly uncertain.Īssuming that Putin successfully represses the rebellion, Wagner mercenaries are likely to come under the command of the regular Russian military. During this period the interests of Russia and Wagner might have differed - but they did not compete and they heavily overlapped. For over a decade, Prigozhin could not operate without Russian President Vladimir Putin's permission.
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