Burkina Faso reportedly reached a deal with Russia’s Wagner Group in which the mercenary team will help the West African country deal with rising jihadist violence in exchange for a mine.
Key points:
- Ghana’s president says his neighbor traded a gold mine for Wagner Group support
- The mercenary group is also linked to illegal diamond, oil and gas mining in Africa.
- France has criticized Wagner’s “policy of looting” on the continent
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo made that claim about neighboring Burkina Faso during his visit to the United States, where he is attending the US-Africa summit.
Speaking about the increasing violence related to al Qaeda and the Islamic State group in the West African region, Akufo-Addo said that Burkina Faso allocated a mine to the Wagner Group as a form of payment for its deployment of fighters to the country.
“To have [Wagner] operating on our northern border is particularly harrowing for us in Ghana,” Akufo-Addo said as he stood with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the summit on Wednesday.
For six years, Burkina Faso has been fighting to stop the jihadist violence that has killed thousands, displaced nearly 2 million people and made swaths of land inaccessible.
Lack of faith in the Burkina Faso government’s ability to contain the jihadist insurgency has led to two coups this year.
After the latest coup in September, the Wagner Group was among the first to congratulate the new junta leader, Ibrahim Traore, raising questions about his relationship with Russia and what role it played in catapulting him to power.
People with close ties to Burkina Faso’s ruling junta said pressure had been mounting for months on the leader of the first coup, Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba, to work more closely with Russia, but he refused.
The Associated Press was unable to independently verify Ghana’s allegations, and the Burkina Faso government did not immediately respond to questions about the Ghanaian president’s claim.
Akufo-Addo’s comments came on the heels of a trip to Moscow by Burkina Faso Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela to further strengthen relations with Russia.
The visit was planned to “consolidate the efforts of the international community to combat the terrorist threat” in the region, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
France and its European allies withdrew thousands of troops fighting Islamist militants from neighboring Mali earlier this year when relations with the military junta soured after they agreed a deal with Wagner, which includes Russian army veterans, to operate in the country.
Wagner in Africa
The Wagner Group was founded in 2014 by hospitality mogul Yevgeny Prigozhin, nicknamed “Putin’s chef” due to his close ties to the Russian leader.
It was first deployed as a pre-invasion force before Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Since then, his mercenaries have been accused of a long list of war crimes, including the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The group has already established footholds for Russia in at least half a dozen African countries, including the Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali.
Earlier this year, it was linked to at least six alleged massacres of civilians and the extrajudicial killings of 300 people in the Mali village of Moura, according to the African Center for Strategic Studies.
Last year, a UN expert group said Wagner was involved in “serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law” alongside local armed forces in the Central African Republic.
In 2020, the Pentagon said it had evidence that Wagner’s mercenaries had planted land mines and other explosives in Libya.
Gold, diamonds and oil
As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s costly war in Ukraine continues to attract crippling sanctions from the international community, the loot from Wagner’s operations in Africa has become particularly important to Russia.
Wagner’s mercenaries have been accused of robbing and killing gold miners in the Central African Republic and Sudan.
The group is also accused of making its way into the illicit diamond trade and controlling oil and gas interests in Syria.
A new mining concession was awarded earlier this month to Nordgold, a Russian mining company that has operated in Burkina Faso for more than a decade.
A permit for industrial exploration has been granted to the company Nordgold Yimiougou SA in Sanmatenga province in the Central North region, said a statement from the Burkina Faso Council of Ministers.
The four-year agreement is estimated to contribute about $8 billion ($12 billion) to the state budget. Burkina Faso is one of the largest gold producers on the continent.
Both Nordgold and the Wagner Group are Russian companies, although no connection between them is known.
The pace of Islamic extremist violence is increasing in Burkina Faso and moving closer to the capital, Ouagadougou, which could make the desperate junta welcome the support of Russian mercenaries, said Laith Alkhouri, chief executive of Intelonyx Intelligence Advisory.
“This could have major negative implications for Burkina Faso and the region,” he said.
“Wagner’s mercenaries have operated with impunity and are unlikely to be held accountable for human rights violations.”
‘Putin’s chef’ says Wagner must be ‘invulnerable’
A statement attributed to Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin did not directly address Ghana’s concerns.
But he accused Western governments and intelligence services, including the CIA and United Nations armed missions, of committing some of the crimes Wagner is accused of in Africa, including possession of vast mineral resources, illegal mining and the organization of coups.
“Wagner must be invulnerable to protect those whom Western hawks try to humiliate, rob or destroy,” he said.
France has been especially angry about Wagner’s role in Mali, but also in the Central African Republic and Mozambique.
Asked if France could corroborate Akufo-Addo’s comments, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre told a news conference that Paris and its European partners remained available to cooperate with Burkina Faso on the matter. which he described as a “deteriorating security and humanitarian situation”. “.
“Regarding Wagner, our message is well known. Wagner has distinguished himself in Africa for a policy of depredation, a policy of plunder, which damages the sovereignty of States,” he said.
ABC/Reuters/AP
