Africa-Press – South-Sudan. In feudal Japan, the ronin were wandering warriors for hire, loyal to no particular master but renting their skills and weaponry to the highest bidder. That description might aptly apply to Russia’s Wagner Group in Africa, modern-day ronin-like soldiers for hire, trading their military prowess, security services and weaponry — and a reputation for battlefield brutality — for business deals and mining concessions.
For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw these global mercenaries as a useful tool for advancing the Kremlin’s interests in the Middle East and Africa — as well as a lucrative source of revenue. They backed Russia’s strategic and diplomatic aims, but at arm’s length, giving Mr. Putin a veneer of deniability. As a private military company, or PMC, the Wagner Group could coordinate with the Russian military but act as a unit apart, a secretive force aggregator.
And a vicious one at that. Wagner mercenaries have been credibly accused of serial human rights abuses in areas where they operate, including torture, illegal detention, sexual violence and the arbitrary killing of noncombatants.
Wagner’s ongoing activities in Africa have been called into question by the group’s leader, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who led the ill-fated June 23 putsch. There is still much mystery surrounding the Wagner mutiny and its fallout, and even around Mr. Prigozhin himself — such as whether he really went into exile in Belarus, or if he supposedly returned to Russia, as claimed by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The picture was further muddled when the Kremlin confirmed that Mr. Putin met with Mr. Prigozhin and 35 of his commanders just days after the failed insurrection.
Likewise, the future of the Wagner Group’s global operations remains shrouded in mystery. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said there were no plans for Wagner mercenaries to pull out of strife-torn Mali and the impoverished, war-racked Central African Republic. Wagner mercenaries have been most active in those two countries propping up fragile governments against rebel forces. Mali and the Central African Republic are where Wagner fighters have been most frequently accused of committing massacres against civilians. Those two countries are also where Wagner-linked Russian companies have the deepest financial stakes.
Russian diplomats also reportedly sent assurances to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has relied on Russian mercenary support in fighting his civil war, and to Libyan warlord Khalifa Hifter, whose forces receive assistance from more than 1,000 Wagner fighters.
Recent reports and video from the Central African Republic’s capital, Bangui, showed Wagner forces packing up and departing. But subsequent reports said that was a normal troop rotation. Again, mystery abounds.
Despite the uncertainty and confusion, a few things seem clear. First, the Wagner Group remains a pernicious force on the continent, contrary to Russian claims that it is contributing to stability.
In Mali, Wagner fighters have helped supply training and transportation to Malian soldiers fighting Islamic State and al-Qaeda insurgencies, but they are also helping prop up the military junta under interim President Assimi Goïta, who seized power in a coup two years ago.
In the Central African Republic, where Wagner has been operating since 2018, the Russian mercenaries provide security for President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, as well as military training. Wagner helped Mr. Touadéra beat back an insurgency, but at a considerable price. The mercenaries were given lucrative mining concessions, including the granting of exclusive access rights to the giant Ndassima gold mine, which has been undergoing a major expansion, according to satellite images, and which the U.S. Treasury Department says could be worth as much as a billion dollars. Wagner’s holdings in the Central African Republic extend to other businesses, including a gold and diamond purchasing company, some radio stations and a brewery.
Announcing sanctions against Mr. Prigozhin and four Wagner-linked mining companies in June, the Treasury Department said the mercenary group “exploits insecurity around the world, committing atrocities and criminal acts that threaten the safety, good governance, prosperity, and human rights of nations, as well as exploiting their natural resources.”
Wagner mercenaries have also been accused of helping fuel the senseless conflict ongoing in Sudan since April, by supplying weapons, including missiles, from two of its air bases in Libya to one of the two Sudanese warring generals, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti. Gen. Dagalo’s fighters reportedly received training from Wagner forces, and he and the Wagner Group have reportedly partnered in gold-mining operations in the strife-torn Darfur region. In May, Mr. Prigozhin denied Wagner was operating in Sudan in recent years.
It appears the Kremlin wants to bring the Wagner operatives under more direct command and control. The mercenaries are being asked to sign contracts. There might also be some rebranding, possibly changing the group’s name or ousting some of its more notorious figures.
But Russian mercenaries under a new name and new leadership are still a dangerous and destabilizing force — and must be held to account. Beyond the limited effect of sanctions, the United States should make it clear to Russia that any future war-crimes investigations by the International Criminal Court will not be limited to the atrocities in Ukraine, but in other locations where Kremlin-backed fighters operate, under whatever name. There can be no impunity.
The mercenaries thrive on instability. They have flourished in the security vacuums created when Western military powers like France withdrew, or where peacekeeping forces from the United Nations or the African Union were absent or ineffective. That’s why the United States and its allies should redouble efforts to support peacekeeping missions on the continent — preferably through the African Union — by giving them the tools they need to fight their own wars and not have to rely on outside mercenaries. They should also act more robustly to address the sources of instability in the most fragile African states.
As we have argued before in this space, the Biden administration should compete with Russia’s aggressive maneuvering, as well as China’s, for influence in Africa by focusing on what the United States does best: building the infrastructure of democracy. That takes time. But in the long term, it is the key to ending chronic instability and crippling poverty, reining in corruption and jump-starting economic development. Then leaders in fragile states will no longer have to rely on these modern-day ronin to stay in power.
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