On December 7, 2022, a 12-member delegation from Burkina Faso led by the Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyélem de Tambèla embarked on a very secret trip to Moscow.
Only after questions arose about the absence of so many of his top officials in Ouagadougou had the government issue a statement saying the prime minister had flown to Moscow “on a private visit.” There was no mention of the four high-ranking military, four ministers and three officials who accompanied him on this “private” visit, nor what had sent them on such an important mission.
The delegation transited through Mali’s capital, Bamako, and was escorted to Moscow via Istanbul by officers from Mali, a military regime that has moved firmly into the Russian camp.
The main reason for the visit was to request weapons and training to counter jihadist extremists linked to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda who have intensified their insurgency.
Failure to contain the insurgency led to the overthrow of the president-elect, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, by the military a year ago and then a second coup, on September 30, in which Captain Ibrahim Traoré seized power.
The question of the 64,000 rubles is whether during the visit they recruited Wagner’s mercenaries who have settled in neighboring Mali where they have been responsible for atrocities against the civilian population.
Like Mali, Burkina Faso has lucrative mining operations and would therefore present both a commercial and a geopolitical prize for Wagner.
Some members of the delegation met with Wagner officials in Moscow, but it has not been said whether the “private” army of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin would find its way to a new battlefront.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo Addo claimed that Burkina Faso had reached an agreement with Wagner to deploy there in exchange for a gold mine in the south of the country. The outcry with which Ouagadougou denied the claim shows, if nothing else, that it is a sensitive issue.
The Burkinabe might also be concerned about Wagner’s record in the CAR and Mali, and what they might be getting into.
Indeed it seems likely that the support requested from Russia — trainers, small arms, armored personnel carriers, ammunition, artillery, trucks and maintenance vehicles could be used to equip the vigilante militia force of up to 50,000 that the Burkinabe junta is preparing to fight the jihadists alongside the army .
Fears of an ethnic civil war
Human rights groups fear that targeting certain groups suspected by the militias of working with the jihadists could precipitate an ethnic civil war.
Pro-government militiamen killed 28 Fulani civilians, including children, in the western city of Nouna late last year, according to Daouda Diallo, executive secretary of the Collective Against Impunity and Stigmatization of Communities.
It is not difficult to understand why the Burkina Faso authorities are eyeing Moscow or implementing such desperate measures. Western diplomats estimate that the jihadists have killed 2,000 Burkinabe soldiers and more than 10,000 civilians in just two years of fighting.
In fact, the requested weapons were not very different from those that the previous regime required of France. Paris took the heels on the request, one of the causes of the coup.
What it has done is drive another stake into the heart of France’s neocolonial empire. Before he was overthrown in 2014, Burkinabe’s long-term president Blaise Compaoré, was France’s most important security partner in the Sahel.
President I broughtAsked why he had opened a dialogue with the Russians, he shrugged and asked: “Do you have an alternative?”
Congo Brazzaville: ‘Coming out of the forest’
Meanwhile, Wagner Group has been seeking other opportunities to expand its presence in Africa and has opened a dialogue with President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the oil-producing nation of Congo Brazzaville.
Congo-B is a tempting target. Its main port, Pointe-Noire, faces the Gulf of Guinea and is not that far from Nigeria’s deepwater operations, surely the biggest hydrocarbon target in Africa.
Prigozhin’s overtures to Sassou Nguesso eventually led French President Emmanuel Macron to invite Sassou to a reception, though not a particularly large one, in Paris in late December.
No one knows if it will be enough to keep Wagner out. For now, Sassou’s plans to bring Wagner to Pointe-Noire appear to be on hold.
A French contact said Macron, who normally doesn’t care too much about Africa, has been concerned “because the Russians are coming out of nowhere everywhere.” So much so that the president has created a discreet group to study the Wagnerization of ancient French Africa.
bring it all back home
At least in the minds of the Russian leadership, the war with the West has spread to Africa with some success, especially their project to dismantle Françafrique.
At the same time, Wagner is returning the loot from Africa to Russia.
Wagner’s hands in Africa were said to have been horrified to see the profits from his African companies go towards the construction of a massive skyscraper in Saint Petersburg that now serves as Wagner’s corporate headquarters.
More than 1,000 Wagner veterans from the Central African Republic have been withdrawn to Russia, where they are likely to be used in the new offensive in Ukraine.
Having installed his puppet Faustin-Archange Touadéra as president for life, Wagner’s empire in the Central African Republic is now augmented by an army of locals they have trained. The big question is whether some of them will provide a new source of labor for the Ukrainian meat grinder.
The exact range of African troops in Ukraine is unknown. Only one victim: the student from Zambia Lemekhani Nyirenda, killed in action in Ukraine in September — has been publicly announced. Other than that, Prigozhin recently appeared on social media talking to Malian troops in Ukraine.
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If Wagner is a terrifying prospect in Africa, he is also terrifying to some in Russia. Prigozhin was once extremely coy about his pivotal role at Wagner, stating that he was just a cook. He now he can’t keep his mouth shut or stay away from social media.
As part of his publicity blitz, in early January Prigozhin accompanied ex-convicts to the southern Krasnodar region as they returned from the front after having won their freedom after surviving six months of combat. Some of them were missing limbs. He gave a speech for the cameras: Don’t drink, don’t take drugs, don’t rape women and don’t kill your neighbors.
Prigozhin himself served nine years in prison for theft, so his sage advice carries some weight.
The survivors you congratulated are indeed the lucky ones. Vladimir Osechkin, the founder of Gulugu.net, a human rights NGO that campaigns against corruption and torture in Russia, estimates the survival rate for Wagner’s ex-convicts in the Ukraine at 15-20%.
Julia Ioffe, writing in DiskHe quotes sources in Russia as saying that the Russian prison population has dropped by 23,000 since Wagner began his recruitment drive.
Wagner’s troops have been turned into a human battering ram that has been used to pound the Ukrainian cities of Soledar and Bakhmut, the scenes of some of the fiercest fighting in the past month. Soledar reportedly fell to Wagner on Wednesday, though the Ukrainians are yet to admit defeat.
While the prize of a shattered city might seem worthless enough on one level, Wagner has shown the world that the Russians are still in the fight, even if it takes countless casualties to prove it.
There has even been speculation that if there is to be a coup against Vladimir Putin, only one man is believed to have the personal army and is in right-wing nationalist circles to carry it out. And the veterans of the Central African Republic now back in Moscow know a thing or two about installing presidents for life. MD
Phillip van Niekerk is the editorial director of Scrolla.Africa
