Russia’s Wagner Group in Africa: Growing concerns of the West
-
Loading... - Abargil Buchra
- 14 Mar 2023
- 58 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
or years militias affiliated with al-Qaida and Daesh have exploited porous borders and large swathes of ungovernable land to terrorize the Sahel region and Central African countries. This toxic mix of volatility, terrorism, poverty and weak states in parts of Africa has given Russia opportunities to make inroads in the continent. Having failed to effectively combat terrorist groups on their own, some local state and non-state actors in the Sahel and Central Africa have embraced the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian mercenary force linked to the Kremlin, as a security partner.
The Wagner Group joined Libyan putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar during his April 2019 offensive on the capital Tripoli and as many as 2,000 Russian mercenaries remain in the country. The private military company also operates in Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, the Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan, Sudan, and allegedly Burkina Faso too. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) have documented the mercenary group’s human rights abuses in the CAR, Mali and elsewhere.
Russia’s soft power push
Moscow has capitalized on longstanding African grievances toward their former Western European colonizers to push a narrative about Russia representing an alternative power that counters French influence in Africa. “The Russians are trying to step in where France has withdrawn and trying to establish themselves as a dominant actor in West Africa by capturing states and building alliances with isolated military regimes. This is good (from Moscow’s perspective) because it undermines French claims to neo-colonial influence in West Africa,” Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said. Read More…
