Russia has supplanted France. Issouf Sanago/AFP/Getty Images
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“A phased shift is happening in the world. And it’s a good thing.” That is Yevgeny Prigozhin’s bullish assessment on Telegram of the Wagner Group’s growing impact on the Global South. Under his leadership, the quasi-private mercenary force has quickly cemented itself as the most trusted security partner for governments in central Africa, supplanting France and creating enormous anxiety in the West.
In the process, Prigozhin has become the state-sanctioned tip of Russia’s foreign policy spear — a position that is unlikely to change anytime soon, despite recent reports suggesting that there is a growing rift between him and Vladimir Putin. The footprint of the Wagner Group has become indispensable, both for Russia’s war aims in Ukraine and for its longer-term stability. And Prigozhin is something of an enigma: he both represents the will and the policies of the Kremlin, while also being one of the few — and certainly the most prominent — voices inside Russia that can effectively challenge Putin’s state. While Kremlinology is a difficult art, it appears very possible that Prigozhin serves as controlled opposition for Putin: a hawk who can appeal both to domestic ultra-nationalists upset with the course of the war in Ukraine and to security-obsessed regimes abroad. In that sense, we should see Prigozhin more as a shadow defence minister than an entirely independent actor.
When asked about growing calls from within the House of Commons to declare his force a terrorist organisation — which the British government now plans to do within weeks — Prigozhin wrote on his Telegram channel: “The Wagner PMC has been fighting ISIL, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organisations everywhere, and very successfully.” If Wagner is a terror group, Prigozhin sarcastically wrote in Russian, then perhaps al-Qaeda and the Islamic State should become humanitarian charities, they could even hold meetings inside Westminster. “I’m all for such an arrangement,” he wrote.
It’s remarkable smugness from the head of a fighting force responsible not just for brutal torture, executions, even possible war crimes — but for filming and broadcasting the atrocities to serve as propaganda. He presides over a group, staffed with special forces veterans and conscripted prisoners, that has helped Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad regain his grip on power in Syria and delivered some of Russia’s only recent territorial gains in Ukraine. And now, thanks to him, Russia is being venerated as an anti-colonialist, anti-terrorist power by governments and citizens in Burkina Faso, Mali, the Central African Republic, and further afield. As Jonathan Batenguene, a Cameroonian political analyst, explained to me, there is a rising perception in Africa that Russia is a “reliable partner in the struggle against terrorism”.
Prigozhin’s play in the Sahel should be a wakeup call to the United States and France in particular. Their decades of counter-terrorism operations in the region have not brought security: self-interested efforts have, in some cases, only fomented more militancy and violence.
If the West hopes to both stabilise central Africa and deny Russia new trading partners, it will need to get serious about solving the region’s substantial security challenges — and acknowledge its own role in creating them. One problem has been that the West has spent far too much time pursuing its own counter-terrorism objectives — that is, denying groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda a base from which to launch attacks on Europe and North America — and far too little considering how best to foster long-term stability. Even when state-building has been part of a counter-terrorist strategy, it has often not gone to plan: the United States’ long-running investment in Iraq or France’s long-suffering relationship with the Malian government are prime examples.
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SubscribeNo country has trusted the US or UK since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Not easy to make the Wagner Group look like the good guys but Bush, Blair, Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy have managed it.
Why no mention of Gadhafi’s threat to create a pan-African currency shortly before his demise?
Implicit in the entire article is that idea that we are always the good guys – which lets face it – is a bit of a stretch. For example – I suspect the US blowing the Nordstream pipeline was not seen as undisputed good in most of the world.
The Russians did it.
The Russians did it.
Implicit in the entire article is that idea that we are always the good guys – which lets face it – is a bit of a stretch. For example – I suspect the US blowing the Nordstream pipeline was not seen as undisputed good in most of the world.
No country has trusted the US or UK since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Not easy to make the Wagner Group look like the good guys but Bush, Blair, Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy have managed it.
Why no mention of Gadhafi’s threat to create a pan-African currency shortly before his demise?
The big question that let alone never answered, is banned from being asked due to modern ” racism” obsession is “Why is Africa the global non performer in every single facet of industrial, commercial, financial, democratic, agricultural, educational, cultural and media activity and progress?” How come that thousands of years ago The Romans could build roads and buildings that Africans are still incapable of doing?
Please can someone enlighten me?
Firstly I think you mean specifically sub-Saharan Africa, given that north African civilisation and construction of complex building predates the Romans.
One of the answers to your question lies in geography. Africa is a gigantic landmass (most world maps do not portray its size accurately using the Mercator projection) with very few navigable rivers for access to its interior, deep ports for heavy shipping or coastal plains for agriculture and settlement. It is a continent of high plateaus, mountains, jungles and deserts where people in the interior are not just cut off from the rest of the world but the rest of Africa. It has tropical diseases, droughts and floods making mere survival a daily struggle for much of its history. In the 21st Century, people fear overpopulation but it was population density and ease of movement between peoples, thereby spreading ideas and trade, which were the greatest determinants of economic progress throughout history.
Compare Africa to the United States. North America is blessed with all the things Africa lacks. The Americas, however, were cursed by one geographical factor: they were isolated between two vast oceans, meaning they had no interaction with outsiders. Once this obstacle had been overcome, they flourished, the north in particular.
It’s a puzzler, isn’t it?
Darwin!
(* as the late Clement Attlee, PM, said “ never use two words when one will do.)
Firstly I think you mean specifically sub-Saharan Africa, given that north African civilisation and construction of complex building predates the Romans.
One of the answers to your question lies in geography. Africa is a gigantic landmass (most world maps do not portray its size accurately using the Mercator projection) with very few navigable rivers for access to its interior, deep ports for heavy shipping or coastal plains for agriculture and settlement. It is a continent of high plateaus, mountains, jungles and deserts where people in the interior are not just cut off from the rest of the world but the rest of Africa. It has tropical diseases, droughts and floods making mere survival a daily struggle for much of its history. In the 21st Century, people fear overpopulation but it was population density and ease of movement between peoples, thereby spreading ideas and trade, which were the greatest determinants of economic progress throughout history.
Compare Africa to the United States. North America is blessed with all the things Africa lacks. The Americas, however, were cursed by one geographical factor: they were isolated between two vast oceans, meaning they had no interaction with outsiders. Once this obstacle had been overcome, they flourished, the north in particular.
It’s a puzzler, isn’t it?
Darwin!
(* as the late Clement Attlee, PM, said “ never use two words when one will do.)
The big question that let alone never answered, is banned from being asked due to modern ” racism” obsession is “Why is Africa the global non performer in every single facet of industrial, commercial, financial, democratic, agricultural, educational, cultural and media activity and progress?” How come that thousands of years ago The Romans could build roads and buildings that Africans are still incapable of doing?
Please can someone enlighten me?
Just ignore Africa. No permanent good comes from anything any outside country does. The locals destroy everything and then look to the world to bail them out, cycle after cycle after cycle. No interference and no outward migration. If there’s famine, do airdrops. Africans must learn to live as responsible nations that plan and invest for their futures, rather than needy teens to be constantly rescued. It’s called independence
Just ignore Africa. No permanent good comes from anything any outside country does. The locals destroy everything and then look to the world to bail them out, cycle after cycle after cycle. No interference and no outward migration. If there’s famine, do airdrops. Africans must learn to live as responsible nations that plan and invest for their futures, rather than needy teens to be constantly rescued. It’s called independence
The growth of the Wagner Group into a state continues apace. From Ukraine to Sudan, and indeed great tracts of Africa and who knows where else, it no more plans to give up its territorial gains to the Russian Federation or to anyone else than the East India Companies or the Crusader military orders ever did. In the end, those did have to. But that took a long time, and it was hardly without acrimony.
The growth of the Wagner Group into a state continues apace. From Ukraine to Sudan, and indeed great tracts of Africa and who knows where else, it no more plans to give up its territorial gains to the Russian Federation or to anyone else than the East India Companies or the Crusader military orders ever did. In the end, those did have to. But that took a long time, and it was hardly without acrimony.