Link to article: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/4/28/white-hands-the-rise-of-private-militaries-in-african-conflict
Ahead of the holy month of Ramadan every year, traders from neighbouring towns flock to the popular cattle market in the central Malian town of Moura. But on March 27 – one of those market days – military helicopters suddenly appeared in the sky. Malian troops and foreign soldiers descended on the busy market to target members of armed groups who had controlled the remote town for years. The bloodied operation lasted for more than four days, with about 300 civilian men, some of them suspected fighters, summarily executed in that period. One trader said dozens of men, including two of his brothers, were executed by Russian-speaking soldiers who “took them several meters away and executed them, point-blank”.
Described as “Non-French speaking white soldiers” and “white men with a bizarre language,” they are widely believed to be members of the Kremlin-linked group Wagner, the only Russian soldiers currently in the country. The Malian military denied Russian participation in the Moura affair and their presence in the country but says it cooperates with Russian “instructors” under a longstanding bilateral cooperation agreement with Moscow. This affair has highlighted the growing influence of foreign mercenaries across Africa. The number of private soldiers operating across Africa remains publicly unknown as they tend to operate secretly and in some cases, without democratic oversight from a countries government. But about 1000 of them are believed to be operating in Mali. In the Central African Republic (CAR), about 1,200-2,000 Wagner operatives are said to be present.
This is not the only group involved in Africa however, Cameroon engaged Israelis to train an elite battalion which has been accused of burning villages and conducting extrajudicial killings and torture in its operations against Anglophone separatists and Boko Haram. These private groups require less bureaucratic complications and that has made them more appealing in a number of African countries.
WIth African countries continuing to use these private groups as a sort of pegleg for their poor military, it will be interesting to see how long they can hold out paying these private groups to fix their problems that their policy and government has caused. Additionally, it will be interesting to see if these Kremlin backed private groups, specifically the Wagner group, will be called back to Russia due to the Ukraine conflict. I find it odd that all of these countries seem to be contracting the same groups, even though the problems have continued in other countries that have hired these groups, making me think that these private militaries have not solved the problems plaguing the country.