The Morass Of Russian Interventions In West Africa
Betting on Moscow was the wrong call for Nigeria's neighbours
Edition #5 of The Relevant Information
The dramatic collapse of the Malian military in 2012, in the face of an offensive by a coalition of Al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghrib’s (AQIM) Saharan Emirate, the Movement for Jihad and Monotheism in West Africa (MUJAO) the mostly Tuareg Malian jihadi Ansaruddeen group, and the Tuareg separatist National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA from its French acronym), left a deep gash - a perpetual fear - in the security psyche of West African and Western states.
This fear was that an insurgency tied to a transnational jihadi network, could overwhelm the capacities of a state in the West African portion of the Sahel, and use territory it controls to organise attacks on other states in the region, or Europe.
It was in that context that France intervened in Mali with Operation Serval in 2012, and then doubled down with Operation Barkhane in 2014, with Paris taking the lead on what was a multinational effort to defeat the emerging Al-Qa’ida-linked (and subsequently also Islamic State) insurgency in the wider Sahel region.
Parallel to the French intervention campaigns, the US began a long running background programme to train, advise, arm and support specialised direct action units across the whole of West Africa, especially the key frontline states of Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, Chad and Niger.
The European Union on the other hand, came in with a number of security assistance programmes that cost money, ate time, and ultimately achieved nothing.
The French-led international effort to combat jihadi insurgencies in the Sahel was tolerated rather than welcomed by local militaries and security services, especially in the frontline states of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and even Chad, specifically because it was French led.
France’s neocolonial policy of Francafrique is still a very fresh memory, and French meddling in local politics to bolster the governments of corrupt, unpopular and ineffectual “democratic” presidents who coincidentally gave no pushback when France overstepped the bounds of partnership and reverted to colonialist dictation to ostensibly sovereign West African states, only served to increase resentment of France.
However France’s political fumblings were still tolerable until it became clear that militarily it was overpromising and severely under delivering. This further alienated local militaries who were partnered with the French Armed Forces in fighting the insurgencies.
Exposure to US training and capabilities further soured local militaries on France and French-led efforts, as they considered the US to be fundamentally superior to France, one that could be a better partner if it would divest from France in the Sahel and actually take the lead.
This was something that Washington was not willing to do.
So by the time the wave of coups hit the region and local military regimes were in the market for new security partners to help train their regime security apparatuses and simultaneously fight jihad insurgencies, the US due to its own policy leanings was out of contention, which left Russia and Turkey as the frontrunners.
While Turkey was willing to sell drones and armoured vehicles, and even willing to utilise private security contractors to provide training to local praetorian guards, it was not interested in taking the role France was kicked out of, which is significantly enabling and supporting the fight against local Islamic State and Al-Qai’da affiliates.
Russia however, was interested in exactly that role.
Thus by December 2021, the first elements of the Russian paramilitary organisation, Wagner Group, were arriving in Mali. By 2023, regional intelligence services estimated that Wagner had over 2,000 fighters on the ground in Mali, backed by a small air wing of attack helicopters and reconnaissance drones.
In Burkina Faso, Russia’s security and military presence has been restricted mostly to arms sales, strategy advisers, and helping the Ibrahim Traore military regime to train a new specialised security unit for his personal protection, plus standing up specialised direct action units for the counterinsurgency campaigns.
A max of 300-400 Russians mostly from the “Bears” 81st Volunteer Spetsnaz Brigade - a paramilitary unit affiliated to Russia’s GRU military intelligence - are at any time deployed in Burkina Faso.
The performance of Russian forces in Mali, has cooled the appetite for the regime in Burkina Faso to commit to a significant investment in Russian forces deploying on its territory to join the fight against Jamaa’tu Nusratul-Islam wal-Muslim (JNIM) and Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP).
Meanwhile in the neighbouring Republic of Niger, the initial lean - after their military coup last year - towards requesting Russian advisors and paramilitary combat forces, has also cooled off into a ‘wait and see’ attitude. This change in attitude has been informed by an analysis of the effectiveness of Russian forces in Mali, and Russian training strategy in Burkina Faso.
While Niamey is eager to troll its brother and larger neighbour Nigeria , and also blackmail the EU in particular with shows of cultivating a security relationship with Moscow, there is for now a clear consensus in the ruling regime that building their security strategy around a partnership with Russia, may not be the best decision.
The Malian military had bought into the hype that Russian paramilitary forces with their free rein in the field, their attached air support, and their aggressiveness were going to steamroll JNIM and ISSP.
This hype ignored that Wagner’s lone African success story, in the Central African Republic, happened in a context of barely organised rebels who were more focused on plunder than in waging war.
In Mozambique were Wagner had to fight a better organised and much more committed opposition in 2019, it lost and left the country in disgrace after seven months of operations.
Yet, the insurgents Wagner fought in Mozambique in 2019, were rookies compared to the seasoned fighters and commanders in JNIM and ISSP, or even the separatist Azawad movements in the north of Mali.
In the two years Wagner has been active in Mali, it has failed to meaningfully degrade the capabilities of JNIM or ISSP or the Azawad separatist coalition. Rather it has largely raped, massacred and looted communities amongst the Fula and Tuareg ethnicities that are considered insufficiently pro Bamako.
The inevitable result of this strategy of ‘no hearts, no minds’ has been to fuel the growth of JNIM especially, but also ISSP, and to a far lesser extent the Azawad separatist movement, which has resulted in JNIM being now in a position to stage major assaults on the capital Bamako, for the first time in almost a decade.
Asides from the war crimes and massacres of civilians that have accompanied Russian boots on the ground in Mali, there has been nothing of significant military impact that Bamako can show for its investment in deploying the Kremlin’s expeditionary paramilitary forces to fight for it.
The Russians and their Malian Army partners have been unable to meaningfully defeat any of the actors that increasingly pose existential threats to Mali.
A much vaunted offensive to restore Bamako’s control over parts of the north outside its authority, fizzled out when a combination of Azawad separatists and JNIM funneled a joint Russo-Malian assault convoy into an ambush that set off a two day battle, in the area of Tinzaouaten close to Mali’s border with Algeria. At the end of that battle, 80+ Russians were dead, as well as nearly 50 Malian soldiers.
Just yesterday 21st November 2024, another half dozen Wagner troops were ambushed and killed in Mopti region, in Central Mali, by fighters from JNIM, as the jihadi group expands its war against a Malian State that is arguably being weakened by its partnership with Russian paramilitary groups which are not fit for purpose.
Regional states are worried that as JNIM grows stronger in Mali and Burkina Faso, and as these two countries investment in Russian security interventions continue to provide diminishing returns, the risk of collapse of these two states increases, which will leave the region to deal with a security crisis that there’s very little confidence it can contain.
Attrition from combat, is ensuring that specialised direct action units trained by the US in the past continue to get degraded, while similar units trained by the Russians so far are largely not fit for purpose for a variety of reasons.
Everyone, including the junta in Mali that is increasingly desperate to contain the JNIM threat in particular, are interested in Nigeria picking up the slack and backfilling somewhat for the gap created by expulsion of French forces and reduced cooperation with the US, by both Mali and Burkina Faso. But, a combination of regional politics and Nigerian disinterest, means that this unlikely to happen.
Ultimately, the choice to pick Russia as their preferred security partner has ensured that the regimes in Mali and Burkina are in a morass, unable to meaningfully degrade their core security threats especially JNIM and ISSP, who are now becoming existential crises for these regimes and the states they rule.
This also leaves the wider region in the quagmire of an insurgency contagion that is continuing to spread out of these countries to their neighbours.