Issue No. 36

Guns for Gold

Military support in exchange for looting, mining or resource extraction concessions is nothing new to governments nor Private Military Contractors (PMCs). From the Middle Ages to the late 19th century, London and Paris would wield privateer navies, essentially government-licenced pirates, to undermine their imperial competitors and enrich their empires. Fast forward a couple of hundred years, and a notorious PMC known as 'Executive Outcomes' in Sierra Leone in the 1990s did not solicit cash from Sierra Leone's economically fragile government but sought lucrative mining concessions instead. In Darfur and southern Sudan (now South Sudan), the Janjaweed and Popular Defence Forces were given carte blanche to rape, pillage, and murder as long as they fought the supposed 'enemies' of the Omar al-Bashir regime, who were nearly entirely non-Arab civilians.

In recent years, this dynamic of military support in exchange for minerals or oil has been brought to the fore by the now-infamous Russian 'Wagner Group.' Formed in 2014 by 'Putin's chef' and now-deceased confidant Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group was established to provide deniable military support to the Donbas separatists fighting the Ukrainian army. In the decade since, it ballooned and morphed into an influential resource-extractive military wing of Russian foreign policy operating in Ukraine as well as in parts of the Middle East and Africa. Particularly in Africa, it perfected the art of 'elite capture' by offering few-strings-attached military assistance to vulnerable juntas facing pressure from internal foes, economic fragility, former Western allies and/or jihadist movements. Russia has further particularly directed its outreach to African states that are rich in exploitable resources.

Today, Africa Corps is building upon Wagner's varying presence in a string of African countries, almost from the Red Sea to the Pacific. Barring Sudan and Mozambique, the Africa Corps/ Wagner Group had predominantly focused on the mineral-rich, largely Francophone Sahel. The region that encompasses Chad, Burkina Faso, and Niger has been consumed by rising violent extremism, including Dae'sh-affiliated groups, ethnic-based conflict, and a spate of military coups in the past decade. Africa Corps/ Wagner forces now form the Praetorian guard for a number of military regimes, serving to 'coup-proof' them from their own armies. A broader disillusionment with decades of French colonialism and coercion has further played into the Sahelian pivot towards Moscow, which is typically perceived in less strictly colonial terms.

Prigozhin's untimely death at the hands of an apparent Moscow-ordered intervention in August 2023 accelerated the process of integration of Wagner into Russia's formal security apparatus. It was rebranded 'Africa Corps' in December 2023, a moniker referencing an earlier 'Afrika Korps'—the shock Nazi troops that served under Ernst Rommel in North Africa during World War II. The integration process has been overseen by Russia's deputy defence minister Yunusbek Yevkurov, who has sought to retain much of the internal structure of the PMC and the loyalty of the veteran fighters by allowing the continuation of Wagner traditions. Still, fresh troops from the Russian army have been injected into the new Africa Corps, while recruits have also been solicited using the traditional Wagner recruitment networks. 

At the heart of the restructuring of Wagner is to hand the defence ministry, and by extension, Russian President Vladimir Putin, far greater control of these disparate forces. The incorporation of Wagner into the Russian Ministry of Defence could come at a cost, however. Moscow was previously able to operate with a degree of 'plausible deniability' that had stretched increasingly thin as Prigozhin’s operations expanded across Africa. This deniability was helpful in the case of the numerous atrocities carried out by Wagner forces in Mali, and elsewhere, against civilians. More broadly, across Africa, the behaviour of Wagner troops was largely dependent on a unit-by-unit basis, which has somewhat improved with the postings to the continent increasingly viewed as a reward in contrast to the high-casualty battlefields of eastern Ukraine. Consequently, as a division reporting to the Defence Ministry, Africa Corps troops could theoretically be held accountable to Russia for any human rights violations committed during military operations. 

The restructuring of Wagner has been mirrored by the Kremlin's increased outreach to its African allies to reassure them of continuing support and establish more direct ties to pliant governments, most recently in Niger and Sudan. In the latter, the Kremlin has spied an opportunity to finally realise its long-coveted military base on the Red Sea to complement its base on the Mediterranean Sea in Latakia, Syria. Last week, a senior Sudanese army official and Sovereign Council member Yasir al-Atta revealed that Moscow could receive a "logistical support centre, not a fully military base, in return for urgent weapons and ammunition supplies." Facing dwindling ammunition and a likely protracted armed conflict, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) is searching for any state that can provide it with immediate weaponry, including soliciting Mohajer-6 drones from Tehran. 

The prospect of a Russian military base on the Red Sea raises several questions about its implications for deep ties between the Russian PMC and the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It is also unclear what the convergence of interest between the SAF and Russia might mean for the relationship between the Sudanese army and Kyiv. Ukrainian special forces were reported to have been supporting the SAF in 2023, in part due to the links between Wagner and the RSF. Whether or not these relations suffer, Moscow will be particularly keen to remain profiting from Sudan's lucrative gold mining in largely RSF-controlled areas in Darfur. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it has been estimated that Moscow has profited USD 2.5 billion from the African gold market to help fund the European war.

Russia's presence in the Horn of Africa is far less pronounced than in the Sahel but growing nonetheless. In particular, Eritrea and Russia have become increasingly close allies, with a military accord signed between the two states in 2023. Others, however, are less amenable to a Russian presence and vice-versa, including Kenya that has deepened its close alliance with the US. It is important not to overstate the current Russian presence in the Horn, but Moscow remains fundamentally opportunistic in the 'Cold War II' battle for influence with the West and will continue to insert itself into any instability that arises.

By the Horn Edition team