Everyone is once again glued to their screens watching war. This time, though, there is a sense that this time it might be one not in their own country, but in the one next door.

Last night, an increasingly desperate or psychopathic (take your pick) Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, did what his behaviour has long intimated he would do — and declared an all-out war on the Russian state.

It began in typically surreal fashion when, on Friday night, Prigozhin filmed another of his hysterical monologues. The set-up was as normal. He leaned forward and snarled at the camera, a Wagner flag hanging on an anonymous blank wall behind him. This time, though, instead of the usual jeremiads about military incompetence and the top brass’s victimisation of his troops, he went a step further.

Glowering at the viewer, he accused the Russian army of shelling a Wagner base. Incredibly, he  claimed Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had driven to the city of Rostov in southern Russia to personally take command of the attack. Even by his standards, it was an astonishing attack on Moscow.

Over the last year, Prigozhin’s war of words with the defence establishment, notably Shoigu and Russian Commander-in-chief Valery Gerasimov, has burst into open hostility. He accused them of everything from negligence to deliberately failing to supply his troops with badly needed ammunition. But to accuse them of shelling fellow Russians fighting on the front lines? This would have been inconceivable last year.

The reaction was immediate. First, the Russian MoD publicly rejected his claims, calling them an “informational provocation”. Then, something more extraordinary happened. presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Putin has been appraised and will take all “relevant steps”. Previously, Putin has stayed out of the Wagner–Military spat. Apart from anything else, to have his generals bickering is no bad thing for a dictator — Stalin did the same thing during the Second World War. First, having them at each other’s throats means they’re not trying to cut yours. And second, it can spur them into greater and more extreme action on the front as they seek to outdo each other (especially in a system where failure can carry the most severe of penalties) and thereby gain your favour.

Such latitude was given to Prigozhin — a former convict turned caterer turned oligarch — that it seemed clear that the relationship between him and Putin was a particular one. In Russia, they call it krysha, which literally means “roof”. In the late Eighties, as gangsterism grew in direct proportion to the failure of communism, and with it the implosion of the Russian state, it expanded to mean a different kind of protection; not from the elements, but from organised crime. Simply put, if you wanted to prosper, you needed a krysha — someone who would protect you —  in return for a slice of the profits of course.

When gangsterism took over the Russian state, it took with it many of its practices. Putin became the top mobster in a mobster state, and, among many other things, he became Prigozhin’s krysha. This gave Prigozhin the freedom to do almost whatever he wanted, including found his own private army.

For a while it worked. Wagner sent its soldiers — generally a mix of the desperate, psychopathic and criminal — in “‘meat waves” at the enemy. It was Wagner troops who did the hard yard in Bakhmut, dying in their thousands so Putin could claim some sort of victory over the ruins that the city is today.

That, though, is over. This morning Wagner troops, accompanied by armoured vehicles including T-90S “Bhishma” tanks, rolled into the city of Rostov as Prigozhin claimed his forces were now “blockading” the city and getting ready to march on Moscow. Armed, masked men with tanks and armoured vehicles began surrounding government buildings there. The UK’s Ministry of Defence reported that Wagner units were now “moving north through Vorenezh Oblast, almost certainly aiming to get to Moscow”.

Suggested reading

The Wagner Files

By David Patrikarakos

But as Wagner acted, so did the Russian state. On Telegram, the Russian Ministry of Defence sent a message to the “mercenaries of Wagner PMC”: “You have been tricked into Prigozhin’s criminal adventure and into participating in an armed rebellion… Many of your comrades from several units have already realised their mistake, [are] seeking help.”

Then more and more senior public faces joined the condemnation. One of Russia’s leading military commanders, General Sergei Surovikin, went on TV to urge Wagner mercenary fighters to “obey the will and command” of President Putin and return to their base. Meanwhile, the General Prosecutor’s Office has now launched a criminal case on “armed rebellion”.

Finally, it was the turn of Putin, who in late morning Ukraine time went on Russian TV. “Russia’s future is at stake,” he said, describing Wagner’s actions as a “stab in the back”. Without specifically mentioning Prigozhin, Putin said the high “ambitions” of some have led to “high treason”. He then warned of “inevitable punishment” for those dividing Russian society and said a counter-terrorism regime was now in place in the capital Moscow and several other regions. All “necessary orders have been given” to deal with the crisis, he concluded, at the end of a short TV address in which he made no specific mention of Wagner or Prigozhin.

Contemptuous and concise: Putin in crisis mode.

Neither man can back down. The lines are drawn and irrevocable. Putin was clear in his speech: he has ordered Russian forces to destroy Wagner. Prigozhin has seized Rostov. Heavy fighting is now reported to be ongoing in the Voronezh Region between Wagner forces and the Russian Military and National Guard. Overhead, the Russian Air Force is targeting Wagner Positions with Guided-Bombs and rockets.

Suggested reading

Vladimir Putin's dangerous madness

By David Patrikarakos

This is now a civil war. Russians are killing Russians inside their own territory. How long it lasts, and how large it grows, is all yet to be determined. The odds are stacked against Prigozhin. The last coup attempt in Russia was against Boris Yeltsin on 3 October 1993 and it did not go well. The Russian army should be able to deal with him and his forces easily, but then again, they were supposed to be able to conquer Ukraine in three days.

In Ukraine, everyone, including state apparatuses, is waiting to see what will happen. For a long time, many thought that the public spat between Wagner and the Russian military was all for show; nothing more than more Russian disinformation, designed to confuse and deflect.  But there is a sense that this is serious — and could be to the country’s benefit.

As the crisis continued to build, I got a text from a source in Ukrainian intelligence. “I told you it was all real,” the message read — accompanied by a smiling face emoji.

But despite the obvious differences between a failed Arab state of 18 million and a dual-island nation of 1.3 million, the two countries have become strange bedfellows. As unlikely as it may seem, Trinidad has become one of the world’s key recruiting grounds for Isis, a status linked to the country’s other big wheeze: drug trafficking.

I was reminded of the connection between the Caribbean, the caliphate and cocaine last week after hearing of the death of 80-year-old Yasin Abu Bakr, an imposing 6ft 6in former TV producer and ex-cop who, as leader of the Jamaat al Muslimeen movement, in 1990 pulled off an attempted coup in Trinidad. For the better part of a week, Abu Bakr was effectively the head of state, making him the only person to ever lead an Islamic coup in the Western Hemisphere.

I met Abu Bakr in Port of Spain, Trinidad’s capital, in 2018 while researching a book on tribalism. Initially, I was drawn to him after more than 100 Trinidadians left home to join Isis and the jihadi cause, lured by a mix of fundamentalist ideology, warped romanticism and, in many cases, money. These young men travelled not just to Syria but also Iraq, often taking with them, and usually against their will, scores of women and children.

Given its small population, Trinidad has provided disproportionate numbers of jihadis to the ISIS cause. The US and Canada, with a combined population of some 350 million, larger Muslim communities and a seemingly more fertile breeding ground for anti-Western sentiment, are believed to have exported just 300 or so men and women to the Levant for jihad.

More from this author

Why did Tottenham erupt?

By David Matthews

Yet in Trinidad, just 6% of the population are Muslim, and, of these, an estimated 90% are of Indian descent. While most are arguably “moderate”, a small minority has no strong attachment to their communities — thanks to a combination of atomised families, absent fathers, rampant drug addiction, gang culture and social marginalisation. Such a perfect storm feeds the worst excesses of identity politics, making young, impressionable and often desperate men vulnerable to the chest-beating Isis propaganda machine.

But even before Isis existed as an idea, let alone as an organised terror group, the foundations of Islamic extremism were being laid in Trinidad. In the late Seventies, the island saw a revival of Islam that came off the back of an American black power movement underscored by the teachings of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, as well as the Islamic revolution in Iran and the assertion of a more muscular, global Muslim identity. This Islamic reboot differed from the prevailing, passive Trinidadian Muslim identity and capitalised on endemic corruption, a growing gang problem fuelled by a burgeoning cocaine trade and a sense of alienation felt by many youths who were unable to access a piece of the oil and gas pie being divvied up by foreign capitalists and their government cronies.

Without proper education and lacking job opportunities, those who felt left behind began to turn to Islam as a way out, and a means of clearing the streets of the drugs that went hand in glove with the new money. Located seven miles north of Venezuela, which has an ultra-porous 1,378-mile border with the cocaine capital of the world, Colombia, drugs continue to enter Trinidad by speedboat and leave on container ships, planes and private yachts, as well as in condoms carried inside the stomachs of drug mules.

These narcotics often enter Trinidad with decommissioned Venezuelan military weapons, which explains the tendency of gangs in Port of Spain and elsewhere to have more firepower on the streets than most police forces. Perhaps that’s why an unofficial investigation by the government in 2009 found that up to 90% of cops were involved in illegality, ranging from “running and selling drugs, to colluding with gangs by renting out weapons to criminals, to performing extra-legal killings”.

Throughout the Eighties, the Islamist reboot was seen as a counterpoint to a society that was rapidly turning into a Sodom and Gomorrah for urban youth. Muslim militias took the fight to the dealers, drug lords and gangs on the streets of Port of Spain and beyond, becoming a vigilante force to be reckoned with. Indeed, as the new incarnation of Islam became more and more powerful, its more pernicious fringes — who were more concerned with financial gain than philosophical enlightenment — became enforcers, protection racketeers and, in many cases, out-and-out gangsters themselves.

More from this author

How drug dealers won lockdown

By David Matthews

Already well-developed in the US, Prislam — a brand of prison-based Islam that conferred protection to its adherents and access to criminal networks both inside and outside of jail — soon took hold, causing schism after schism. Initially, these took the form of pseudo-religious “Muslims versus apostates” conflicts aimed at legitimising gang-on-gang assassinations. Then came “Muslims versus non-Muslims” contract killings — until it became expedient for gang members to either align themselves with the Prislamic “Muslim City” faction or their non-Muslim uber-gang rivals, “Rasta City”.

Semantics aside, the names of both organised crime groups soon had little to do with Mecca or Haile Selassie, save for some members who happened to be Muslims or Rastas, as well as drug dealers, hitmen and government stooges. But something had to give. With cocaine and oil came the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty, unbridled corruption and gangster politics, which eventually gave rise to an unprecedented rejection of the government.

Enter Abu Bakr.

Over afternoon tea in the Jamaat al Muslimeen compound in Port of Spain, Abu Bakr, a sardonic, charismatic character formerly known as Lennox Phillip, told me how on July 25, 1990, he mounted the coup with some 113 black Muslim foot soldiers, using intelligence sources to determine when key police and military figures were indisposed or out of town. The plotters duly blew up the capital’s main police station, took the local TV news channel and stormed parliament, taking the prime minister, ANR Robinson, and a number of his fellow legislators hostage at gunpoint for several days. Trinidad being Trinidad, chaos ensued. Riots led to several hundred injuries and some 30 deaths.

Having taken the Trinidadian government to task for its complicity in ramping up the country’s drug problems and spiralling violent crime, Abu Bakr’s audacious move, in fairness, was more a citizen’s arrest of the government than a coup d’état, designed to seize control and take the reins of power. Abu Bakr’s power grab came to an end when he and his followers gave themselves up. After being charged with murder and treason, Abu Bakr was released from prison two years later as part of an amnesty deal.

More from this author

Black radicals don't need white saviours

By Tomiwa Owolade

“We were a community outreach organisation,” he told me in his modest office, adding he still believed that he could have reversed Trinidad’s crime epidemic if he had succeeded. “A hundred people would convert at Friday prayers. We got money from Libya. We were cleaning up the drugs on the street — we were doing good work. We had outreach centres, feeding centres, shops, businesses, land, medical centres… The Government feared us.”

That fear, Abu Bakr said, had led to the government violently clamping down on his organisation. With no recourse to the law, Jamaat al Muslimeen’s seizure of power was, he claimed, as much about self-preservation as it was about ending corruption.

“It’s a known fact that many people who said they were Muslims manifested themselves as something else,” he suggested. Certainly Jamaat al Muslimeen struck me more as a sort of Islamic scout movement than an insurgency. But for a few that wasn’t enough; the lure of jihad was too great. “The Trinidad-ISIS connection is not nonsense,” Abu Bakr told me. “Many people left Trinidad to fight for ISIS because of the lack of hope.”

Is there any sign of that hope being restored? If there is, it is hard to spot. Three years after our conversation, the drugs continue to flow into Trinidad — and violence continues to erupt. As Abu Bakr told me at the time: “This is the land of steel pan and carnival. This is supposed to be paradise. Yet for many, it is anything but.”