DAKAR/BAMAKO (Reuters) -A two-month-old fuel blockade by al Qaeda-linked militants has all but paralysed the capital of Mali, turning the screws on the military government and raising concern that the jihadists might try eventually to impose their rule on the West African country.
Security analysts say the group known as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which has been operating for months within 50 km (30 miles) of Bamako, currently has neither the intention nor the military capability to seize the city of 4 million people, which it briefly attacked last year.
But the JNIM strategy of gradually starving Bamako of fuel, forcing schools to shut and depriving businesses of diesel-generated electricity poses the gravest challenge yet to the military leaders who took power in 2021.
The jihadists’ likely goal is to trigger another coup, half a dozen security analysts and diplomats told Reuters. It would be Mali’s third since 2020, further depriving the country of a viable power centre and allowing JNIM to amass more weapons and funds.
In the long run, JNIM is seeking negotiations either with the current government or a post-coup administration, which would be a milestone in its hunt for political legitimacy, according to a Control Risks client note published last week.
“With JNIM’s activity putting unprecedented pressure on the government, we warn that the risk of a collapse of the regime, whether through a coup or another form of political crisis, will be very high over the coming weeks,” the note said.
A source close to JNIM did not respond to a request for comment about the aims of the fuel blockade.
A statement it issued in early September announcing the blockade said its target was “these bandits who are in power”, who it accused of persecuting Malians especially outside the capital.
Mali’s communications ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
ESCALATING ATTACKS AS MILITARY STUMBLES
Spun out of an ethnic Tuareg uprising in 2012, JNIM has for over a decade been advancing from northern Mali into the centre of the country and inside neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.
Assimi Goita, Mali’s current military leader, seized power promising to turn the tide in the fight against the Islamist group, but his government’s strategy of severing defence cooperation with France and the United States and instead leaning on Russia has been a failure.
JNIM has escalated attacks on military posts this year, boasting of killing soldiers by the hundreds while amassing pilfered weapons and working to control territory around urban centres.
Last week, it reached a deal for a hefty $50 million ransom payment for two Emirati hostages.
JNIM has also advanced into southern Mali for the first time while expanding operations in the west, putting it in a position to enforce the fuel blockade by attacking convoys from coastal countries including Ivory Coast and Senegal.
Its focus now appears to be Bamako.
“The fuel blockade is more than an act of economic warfare – it is also a terrorist tactic,” said Justyna Gudzowska, executive director at investigative research group The Sentry.
“It instils fear among Bamako’s ruling elite and the general population, creating the perception that the capital is under siege and that JNIM is closing in.”
Upheaval in Mali would have a destabilising effect on neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, where soldiers similarly took power in coups. The three countries have formed a political and security alliance.
“If Mali collapses, everything collapses,” said a senior diplomat in Bamako. “If the current balance of power collapses, the alliance of the Sahel states collapses.”
TENSIONS IN MILITARY LEADERSHIP
Bamako residents, mindful of authorities who do not hesitate to prosecute critical speech, have mostly been measured in describing the fuel scarcity and have yet to stage protests.
“It’s been complicated, these past weeks,” said Abdoulaye, a part-time driver for a ride-hailing app who has tasked his brother with waiting in line overnight for fuel – and who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals.
Even without protests, JNIM could exploit rumoured tensions among the country’s top military leaders that could make Goita’s position untenable.
Mali arrested two military generals and dozens of other soldiers in August, accusing them of participating in an alleged plot to destabilise the nation.
“I don’t think the regime is strong enough to hold onto power indefinitely,” said one security analyst who was not authorised to speak to the media. “There are too many forces, both from a political angle but also from the armed groups’ angle, that are trying to put pressure.”
TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS AND HIJABS FOR WOMEN
Though remote for now, the possibility of a JNIM takeover of the capital would be alarming for many Malians. Outside of Bamako, JNIM has announced travel restrictions and issued a decree that all women must wear the hijab on public transport.
“What JNIM’s rule would look like if it seized control of Bamako’s institutions is difficult to predict, but its brief occupations of towns and villages elsewhere in Mali paint a grim picture: restrictions on movement, extrajudicial executions, and severe curbs on education,” Gudzowska said.
The anxiety has been further stoked by a drumbeat of warnings from foreign embassies – including the U.S., Britain and Italy – that their citizens should leave the country.
For now, neither Malians nor foreigners are fleeing the country in droves. There has been no major uptick in airline ticket purchases nor any signs of the fuel crisis affecting air travel, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Whether that situation holds is an open question.
“No scenario at this point can be excluded,” the senior diplomat in Bamako said. “We cannot rule out the possibility that JNIM might try to enter the city.”
(Reporting by Portia Crowe and Mali newsroom; additional reporting by Giulia Paravicini and Anait Miridzhanian; editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Mark Heinrich)
(Reuters) -Mali has announced it will require U.S. nationals to post bonds of up to $10,000 for business and tourist visas, after the Trump administration said the West African nation would be added to its visa bond programme.
The U.S. embassy in Mali said on Friday it will require bonds of up to $10,000 for tourist and business visas under the pilot programme effective October 23.
The funds will be returned to travellers if they depart in accordance with the terms of their visas, according to a U.S. government notice.
In a statement on Sunday, Mali’s foreign ministry said the government “deplores the unilateral decision by the U.S. government”, adding that it undermines an earlier bilateral agreement on long-stay multiple-entry visas.
“In accordance with the principle of reciprocity, Mali has decided to introduce an identical visa program, imposing the same conditions and requirements on U.S. nationals as those applied to Malian citizens,” the statement said.
U.S. State Department figures for the period 2015-2024 show that fewer than 3,000 non-immigrant U.S. visas are issued to Malians each year. Figures for the number of visas issued by Mali to U.S. citizens were not immediately available.
President Donald Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration a focus of his presidency, boosting resources to secure the border and arresting people in the U.S. illegally.
The State Department said in August that visa applicants from Zambia and Malawi will be required to pay bonds up to $15,000. Zambia’s government voiced concern about the “unnecessary financial strain” this would cause.
(Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo and Fadimata KontaoWriting by Anait MiridzhanianEditing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Frances Kerry)
Russia, not long ago a rising military force in Africa, is now struggling to maintain its footprint on the continent.
The Kremlin’s new official guns-for-hire military force, the Africa Corps, has failed to replicate the financial success and political sway once held by Russia’s private Wagner Group mercenary outfit. And some of Wagner’s own African ventures have unraveled since 2023 when its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, rebelled against President Vladimir Putin and then died when an explosive device blew the wing off his plane at 28,000 feet.
Mali’s military government has sought to calm anger over a blockade by Islamist militants on major highways where lorry drivers have been facing ambushes and arson attacks.
In a rare acknowledgement of the seriousness of the situation affecting the landlocked country, Prime Minister Abdoulaye Maïga has said measures are under way to improve security on the routes.
The blockade – a potentially serious escalation of Mali’s jihadist insurgency – is particularly affecting the supply of fuel, which could cripple the country.
Several analysts say the aim of the al-Qaeda-linked militants is to impose a blockade of the capital, Bamako.
When did it start?
The blockade appears to have started with the kidnapping and subsequent release of six Senegalese lorry drivers along the Dakar-Bamako corridor in early September.
This is not a new tactic by al-Qaeda’s Sahel affiliate – Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) – but the scale is increasingly ambitious.
They have imposed a blockade on two key locations: the Kayes region – which serves as the gateway for all food supplies entering from Senegal by road and train, and Nioro-du-Sahel – which sits on the main route linking Mali to Mauritania.
Reports say Islamist fighters have erected checkpoints to restrict the flow of goods and extort “taxes” from traders.
They are said to have torched fuel tankers, lorries and buses, abducted foreign drivers and attacked convoys carrying fuel imports from Senegal and Mauritania.
Entire villages have reportedly been brought to economic standstill, with markets shuttered, transport halted and public services disrupted.
Suspected JNIM militants have also ambushed fuel lorries from Ivory Coast in Bougouni, in Mali’s southern Sikasso region. Several lorries were torched.
“Economic asphyxiation” is the militants’ goal, Mamadou Bodian of Senegal’s Cheikh Anta Diop University told the BBC.
He and others point to a strategic shift by the militants, who no longer rely solely on military confrontation to assert territorial control.
Analysts fear that, if successfully implemented, the embargo announced by JNIM on Kayes and Nioro-du-Sahel could paralyse western Mali.
What does the army say?
The Malian army initially downplayed the blockade, with spokesman Col Souleymane Dembélé dismissing reports of a siege as an “information war orchestrated by foreign media”.
Footage circulating on social media of besieged vehicles on the Dakar-Bamako corridor had been taken out of context, he insisted. ”The video of the bus being set on fire dates from April and has no connection with the so-called blockade.”
According to the army spokesman, “no systemic interruption of transport has been observed” in western Mali and the real challenge facing people in the Kayes region is “the rainy season and not the actions of terrorist groups”.
Col Dembélé also characterised JNIM’s increased activity as “the last gasps of an enemy at bay and in retreat”. It is a refrain often used by Malian officials since the junta seized power five years ago.
Last week, the army said it had conducted an airstrike on a JNIM camp in Mousafa, in Kayes, killing “several dozen militants” and destroying a site allegedly used for logistics and planning.
Reinforcements were sent to Kayes and Nioro-du-Sahel, it said, with the military announcing “hunting and destruction operations” along major roads and a “large-scale offensive” on the Diéma-Nioro corridor.
State media reported that hostages were freed during the operations, but did not say how many.
Such efforts by the army do not appear to have lessened locals’ fears nor the disruption to their lives. Residents report that militant checkpoints remain in place, while transport companies have suspended operations and lorry drivers continue to face intimidation.
Why is this part of Mali so important?
Kayes is said to account for approximately 80% of the country’s gold production, and is also deemed Mali’s “gateway to Senegal”. It is a logistics hub where international trade routes converge.
Mali is a landlocked country heavily dependent on neighbouring ports for fuel, food and manufactured goods, so control of Kayes is essential.
The blockade not only disrupts local life, but directly threatens Bamako’s economic stability.
“The Kayes region has become a major strategic target for JNIM, which considers it a vital space,” says the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute.
“The jihadists intend to disrupt the country’s supplies, to destabilise, or even suffocate the Malian economy, isolate the capital Bamako and increase economic pressure on the Malian transitional regime,” it says.
Map
The blockade also signals the geographic expansion of JNIM’s insurgency.
Traditionally, the group’s operations have been concentrated in northern and central Mali – in Mopti, Segou and Timbuktu. However, JNIM has in recent years made significant inroads into southern Mali, including Sikasso and Koulikoro regions.
By turning its attention to Kayes, the group is not only widening its footprint but threatening to encircle Bamako.
What else is at stake?
Since 2012, Mali has been in the grip of a profound security crisis fuelled by violence from groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) organisation, as well as other armed militia.
Local and international media warn that JNIM’s recent isolation of parts of southern Mali could pave the way for similar incursions into neighbouring coastal countries.
The crisis underscores the limits of Mali’s reliance on military force, supported by Russian Africa Corps mercenaries, as the Wagner Group is now known, whose role in operations is not officially acknowledged.
By disrupting trade routes from Senegal and Mauritania, JNIM has shown it can project influence westward, raising fears of an expansion into those countries.
The Union of Senegalese Truckers (URS) blamed militants and described the recent abductions of lorry drivers as a threat to regional trade.
Mali is Senegal’s main African trade partner, accounting for more than $1.4bn (£1bn) in exports last year. The Bamako-Kayes route carries fuel, cement, foodstuffs and manufactured goods critical to both economies.
There is a risk that what began as a tactical disruption may evolve into a prolonged siege, eroding confidence in Malian state institutions and exposing its fragility.
JNIM’s “choice to target buses and tankers is not insignificant – it aims to strike at the heart of Mali’s social and economic mobility”, Bamada.net reported last week.
More than a local flare-up, the siege of Kayes is a warning sign that the jihadist insurgency in Mali has entered a new phase with the repercussions of economic sabotage reaching well beyond Mali’s borders.
More BBC stories on Mali:
[Getty Images/BBC]
Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.
RUSSIA’S Wagner mercenaries are still waging a secret war earning £8million a month to reign terror for brutal warlords in Mali.
It’s a standard play for the mercenary army that terrorises, maims and murders on behalf of the Russian state in exchange for blood gold to feed Putin’s war machine, experts told The Sun.
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Wagner troops (pictured in Mali) have been paid £8million a month to reign terrorCredit: AP
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The merciless thugs have been stirring up violence, corruption and conflict across the war-ravaged stateCredit: AP
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The shadowy army is kept at an arm’s length from the Kremlin but does its biddingCredit: AP
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The French military say they caught the Russian mercenaries burying bodies near an army base in northern MaliCredit: AP
Mostly recently, the poverty-stricken and failed state of Mali has become a zombie host for the Russian state’s spiky tentacles.
And dirty business is booming.
In late 2021, the military junta who took power in a coup invited Wagner to bring in its weapons and hardened fighters to crush the Islamic State terror group.
In reality, they booted out the last of the UN peacekeeping force and France’s troops and propped up Mali’s corrupt military regime – leaving a succession of atrocities in their dusty wake.
US intelligence claims this so-called “security” costs Mali £8million per month.
The de-facto army offers a “broad portfolio” of “violence, atrocities and human rights violations,” according to Professor Salvador Sánchez Tapi, a conflict analysis expert at the University of Navarra.
“[Wagner] are following the same template everywhere – adapting it to the particular case of each host nation (civil war, military coup, colonial background),” he said.
In Mali, “anything related to buttressing the junta takes precedence over improving the overall security situation in the country”.
GHOST ARMY
The role of the murky mercenary army in half a dozen countries across the continent is often difficult to track.
They usually wear no identifiable uniforms, their vehicles are unmarked and their faces masked.
An arm’s length from the Kremlin – Wagner provides them with a level of deniability and unpredictability that is essential to their mission.
Mali’s government has denied the presence of Wagner troops, stating only that they have a contract with Russia to provide “instructors”.
However, the Russian Foreign Ministry, its milbloggers, Western governments and human rights groups have repeatedly stated otherwise.
Investigators have accused the armed thugs of turning Mali into a playground for manipulation – deepening violence, corruption and conflict and earning huge profits for Moscow.
It appears to be a clear business model.
The more instability and fighting they stir up in these powder keg countries, the more Wagner gets paid to crush it and prop up unlawful, corrupt regimes.
As Vladimir Putin reaps the blood-soaked rewards, the true cost has been paid by ordinary Malians.
MOURA MASSACRE
In March last year, 500 civilians were slaughtered by Malian armed forces and foreign soldiers in the remote town of Moura.
It was the single worst massacre to have taken place for decades in a country that is defined by brutality and violence after decades of coups, terror and civil war.
The UN accused Wagner of being directly involved in the slaughter that saw villagers gunned down by helicopters as they gathered at a Sunday market.
For five days, troops overseen by Russian mercenaries carried out rape, torture and the summary executions of roughly 500 people, according to witnesses, Western military officials and diplomats.
“From Monday to Thursday, the killings didn’t stop,” Hamadoun, a tailor that was working at the market when the helicopters arrived, told The New York Times.
A cattle trader, Bara, added: “They terminated all the youth of this area.”
Of those killed, a handful were alleged to be members of an al-Qaida affiliated terror group – but the rest were unarmed villagers.
The extensive UN account of the murderous rampage lists it as the worst atrocity committed by Russian forces outside of Ukraine to date.
The rest of Wagner’s murderous campaign inside Mali has been more covert, but still devastating.
In Mali and the Central African Republic, “Wagner fighters are documented as having targeted civilians at a significantly higher rate than both state forces and major insurgent or terrorist groups,” Westminster said in July.
Numerous witnesses reported to Human Rights Watch (HRW) that foreign, non-French speaking, armed men were present at harrowingly similar attacks on village populations.
Each time, they described the foreign soldiers as “white”, “Russian” or “Wagner”.
On February 3, “foreign” soldiers attacked the village of Séguéla – leading to beating and arrests and the grim discovery of the bodies of eight locals on its outskirts.
Then throughout July, dozens of villagers from Mali’s hinterlands were reported missing during Wagner’s “counter-insurgency operations”.
On August 6, troops occupied a village and rounded up 16 male villagers and a boy. Their bodies were later found on the settlement’s outskirts.
Again, in each incident witnesses reported the involvement of “foreign” and “white” armed men that appeared to be Wagner soldiers.
Overall, the new HRW report claimed that Mali’s armed forces – backed by Wagner troops – killed at least 175 civilians between April to September this year.
The Malian Foreign Ministry has denied these claims.
A local man told HRW: “The army… kills people without fearing any consequences. The jihadists also kill, kidnap, and burn without fear of being held accountable.
“And we, the civilians, are caught between a rock and a hard place in our own country.”
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A Wagner-linked plane crashed in Mali in September, reportedly killing dozens of its troopsCredit: East2West
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A man carries the haunting black insignia of the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group in NigerCredit: AFP
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Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels often document Wagner’s shady presence across Africa
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The mercenary thugs have dug their claws deep into AfricaCredit: Telegram
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The guns-for-hire were loyal to warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin till he met his fiery end in AugustCredit: Reuters
BLOOD GOLD
Intelligence suggests Russia’s interest in gold has increased tenfold since the start of Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine.
To finance that bloodshed, the Kremlin has intensified its plundering of Africa’s riches and resources, said Zoltàn Kész, a leading investigator of the “Blood Gold” report.
He told The Sun: “It’s clear that Wagner’s priority is not stability.
“The security situation has undoubtedly deteriorated since their arrival.”
The fellow at 21 Democracy added: “Violence targeting civilians in Mali has risen 38 per cent so far in 2023 compared to 2022, with Malian state forces alongside Wagner Group perpetrating 160 incidents.”
In Mali, the hefty bill of £8million for Wagner’s brutal services is settled in gold and by tax revenues from Western mining companies, Kész explained.
Their investigation hopes to uncover these “deadly bargains” made between Wagner, the ruling junta and Western companies, which lands this blood gold onto our fingers.
Only this week, Mali announced an agreement with Russia to build what will be their largest gold refinery, effectively allowing Putin “to control all gold production”.
“The price is being paid in lives across Africa and Ukraine,” said Jessica Berlin, another of the report’s authors.
A WORLD OF WAGNER
Wagner forces first cut their teeth in Crimea in 2014 before fighting in proxy wars throughout the Middle East and finally Africa, collecting almost a decade of accusations of war crimes and gross human rights abuses.
Despite the brutality and violence, there is a method to the Kremlin proxy force’s madness.
And a series of terrifying outcomes could lie ahead.
Tapi fears that “Russia might end up using the territory of these countries to deploy weapons to reach Europe.”
And with the increased military presence, a future war with the West could be waged through proxies.
“They may control terrorism, [either] neutralising the threat or deflecting it at will towards the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.”
Options could also be explored to “gain control of the routes used by criminal networks to smuggle narcotics, arms, human beings, terrorists etc into Europe,” Tapi warned.
“We may see Russia using the territories under its control to destabilise the Maghreb [north western Africa] and Europe alike.”
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A Russian flag hangs on a monument to fallen Wagner soldiers in CARCredit: AFP
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Another Russian flag is paraded in the streets of Burkina Faso as Russian influence sweeps across AfricaCredit: AP
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An undated picture of Prigozhin in an African nation surrounded by local supporters
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Russian mercenaries spotted in Khartoum, Sudan in late 2019Credit: Telegram
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Wagner-linked Telegram channels shared their hopes for a new USSR to lead top world domination
KYIV — Mercenaries from the Russian Wagner Group are back fighting on the front line in Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian military official told POLITICO on Wednesday.
Several hundred fighters from the group once ruled by now-dead warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin were spotted fighting in the ranks of different Russian military units on the eastern front, said Colonel Serhiy Cherevatyi.
After Wagner was thrown into disarray following an aborted insurrection against the Kremlin in June led by Prigozhin — who subsequently died in a fiery plane crash in August — many of its troops were either welcomed to Belarus by its ruler Alexander Lukashenko or deployed to African countries where Russia has interests.
“Wagnerites were not hiding. Maybe they thought it would scare our soldiers. In fact, that showed Russia needs new meat for the grinder,” said Cherevatyi, deputy commander of Ukraine’s eastern group of troops for strategic communications. “Wagner as an organization was finished in Bakhmut. Now their more fortunate soldiers are sent to Africa, where there’s more money. The less fortunate ones are back to Ukraine.”
He added that Ukrainian wiretapping and reconnaissance had been used to confirm that former Wagner forces were back on the Donbas battlefield, but warned, “We know everything about them.”
Ukraine’s National Resistance Center previously reported that fewer than 1,000 Wagner mercenaries remained in Belarus as of September.
“Currently, 200 of them remain instructors in the special units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense of Belarus. The rest are those who do not want to be recruited either to the new PMCs or to the Russian defense ministry,” the resistance center said, citing its sources on the ground.
Earlier, CNN reported that Wagner fighters are back in Ukraine, citing Ukrainian soldiers fighting around Bakhmut. Wagner’s Telegram channels have been quiet on Ukraine, currently posting news from Belarus, Niger, and Mali.
“I see nothing special in their return. Wagner is no longer a powerful force. Those who returned are far from being in a good fighting mood, as they know what to expect here,” Cherevatyi said. “Furthermore, they are now under the control of the Defense Ministry.
“They used to call themselves soldiers of fortune but now they are more like misfortune soldiers.”
French President Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday that French troops would be withdrawn from Niger in the next couple of months, in the wake of a coup d’état in the Western African country this summer.
The military withdrawal from Niger comes after French troops were ousted from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, amid growing anti-French sentiment across the continent and military failures in containing jihadist terrorism in the Sahel region.
Macron also said France would imminently withdraw its ambassador, who had been living under effective house arrest in the French embassy in the capital Niamey, according to French authorities.
“France has decided to withdraw its ambassador. In the next hours, our ambassador and several diplomats will return to France,” Macron said during an interview with French TV channels.
Macron also said the military cooperation between France and Niger was “over” and that French troops would return before the end of the year. “In the weeks and months to come, we will consult with the putschists, because we want this to be done peacefully,” he added.
The military junta, which came to power in July, had set France an ultimatum to withdraw its troops that were involved in anti-terrorist operations in North Africa. France at the time pledged not to withdraw troops unless requested by the deposed Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum.
1,500 French troops are stationed in several bases across Niger.
In the weeks after the coup, France also said it would consider supporting a possible military intervention launched by the African regional body ECOWAS against the putschists in Niamey. With the decision to withdraw, that prospect appears more and more unlikely.
A group of high-ranking military officers in the West African nation of Gabon announced on public television Wednesday that they were “putting an end to the current regime” and annulling the results of national elections. The statement came just after the country’s election authority declared President Ali Bongo Ondima the winner of another term in office.
Bongo has been in power in the country for 14 years, following in the footsteps of his father who led the nation for more than four decades before him. The status and whereabouts of the seemingly-ousted leader were not immediately clear Wednesday. French news agency AFP reported that the area around his residence in the capital Libreville appeared to be quiet, but that gunfire was heard elsewhere during the officers’ announcement.
If the coup attempt in Gabon is successful, it will be the eighth in West and Central Africa since 2020. The last one, in Niger, took place in July. High-ranking military officers have also seized power in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Chad.
This video grab shoes the spokesperson for the mutinous soldiers speaking on state television as they announce that they had seized power in Libreville, Wednesday Aug. 30, 2023.
GABON 24 via AP
“All the institutions of the republic are dissolved,” announced an officer on television, surround by a dozen or so fellow troops. “The government, the Senate, the National Assembly and the Constitutional Court.”
He also announced the closure of the country’s borders “until further notice.”
The August 26 election “did not meet the conditions for a transparent, credible and inclusive ballot so much hoped for by the people of Gabon,” the commander said. “We have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime.”
“To this end, the general elections of 26 August 2023 and the truncated results are cancelled,” he said, claiming to speak on behalf of a “Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions.”
The army said it had restored internet to the country Wednesday after a three-day blackout. Bongo’s government had imposed the shut-off to prevent “false news” from spreading, it claimed. The national broadcasting authority had also banned several French channels, accusing their election coverage of “a lack of objectivity and balance.”
Getty/iStock
The recent presidential, legislative and municipal elections in Gabon took place without election observers. Before the polls closed on Saturday, Bongo’s main rival Ondo Ossa — who won 30% of the ballot according to the previously announced results — accused Bongo of fraud and said he was the real winner.
Ossa’s campaign manager Mike Jocktane said Monday that Bongo should hand over power “without bloodshed,” insisting a partial count showed Ossa was clearly ahead. He didn’t provide any evidence.
The government of France, the former colonial power in Gabon, was following developments “with the greatest attention,” Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne said Wednesday.
China also said it was “closely following the developing situation” and called for Bongo’s safety to be “guaranteed.”
Johannesburg — Hundreds of people joined demonstrations in Niger’s capital city of Niamey on Thursday, protesting against sanctions imposed on the country by many of its neighbors in the wake of a military takeover. Amid concern that Russia could seek to expand its already-growing regional influence, some coup supporters were seen brandishing Russian flags.
Anti-Western sentiment — particularly aimed at former colonial power France — has served as a backdrop for the events in Niamey since the sudden detention on July 26 of the country’s elected president by the commander of his own elite guard.
Nigeriens, some holding Russian flags, participate in a march called by supporters of coup leader Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani in Niamey, Niger, July 30, 2023.
“Given ongoing developments in Niger and out of an abundance of caution, the Department of State is ordering the temporary departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel and eligible family members from the U.S. embassy in Niamey,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
The embassy remained open for limited emergency services. Kathleen FitzGibbon, recently confirmed as the new U.S. Ambassador to Niger, was not yet in the country.
The Pentagon has suspended security cooperation with Nigerien military forces since the soldiers’ seizure of power, but the U.S. has not called the dramatic upheaval a coup, with the White House referring to it instead as an “attempted power grab.”
Pressure from abroad on a key U.S. partner nation
Niger has become an important U.S. partner in a tumultuous region of Africa. Labeling what has happened there a coup would, under U.S. law, require a review of all American assistance to the country, and likely a complete cutting of those ties.
There was no indication that the nearly 1,100 U.S. soldiers in Niger were due to leave the country.
“There are no changes to the U.S. military force posture in Niger during the Department of State-led ordered departure,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday in a statement, adding that the State Department had not requested any U.S. military “personnel or equipment as part of the ordered departure.”
Niger’s elected President Mohamed Bazoum, who has been held under effective house arrest for more than a week by the commander of his own elite guard unit, and Niger have been seen as a key ally in the Sahel — a vast region across North Africa plagued by terrorism. It is also a region where Russia has managed to increase its influence in recent years, including through the deployment of Wagner Group mercenaries in Mali, which borders Niger.
On Sunday, four days after the coup, crowds of protesters attacked the French embassy in Niamey, prompting France to begin evacuation flights. France, the former colonial power in Niger which still has about 1,500 troops based in the country, working in partnership with Niger’s forces, has been accused of failing to protect the Nigerien people from Islamist extremism.
Thursday was Independence Day in Niger, marking the country’s 1960 independence from France. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Bazoum in a telephone call Wednesday that the White House remained committed to restoring his democratically elected government.
People, some carrying Russian flags, demonstrate in Niger’s capital Niamey to show their support for the military rulers who seized power in a July 26 coup, on August 3, 2023.
Djibo Issifou/picture alliance/Getty
President Biden, in a statement released Thursday to mark Niger’s independence, said the country was “facing a grave challenge to its democracy.”
“In this critical moment, the United States stands with the people of Niger to honor our decades-long partnership rooted in shared democratic values and support for civilian-led governance,” Mr. Biden said, adding a call “for President Bazoum and his family to be immediately released, and for the preservation of Niger’s hard-earned democracy.”
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional bloc that includes Niger and 14 of its neighbors, imposed sanctions against the country Niger and has since confirmed that it is prepared to authorize the use of force if Bazoum’s government is not restored by August 6.
Coup leader stands firm, and finds some support
In a televised address Wednesday night, coup leader Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani said his junta “rejects these sanctions altogether and refuses to give into any threats, wherever they come from.”
Tchiani called the ECOWAS sanctions against Niger “illegal, unjust and inhumane,” and insisted that he would not bow to any international pressure to reinstate Bazoum.
Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, second from the right, and other army commanders are seen in Niger’s capital, Niamey, July 28, 2023, after claiming control over the country.
Balima Boureima/Anadolu Agency/Getty
An ECOWAS delegation led by Nigeria’s former military head of state, Gen. Abdulsalami Abukbakar, was in Niamey this week to mediate with the coup leaders, and West African defense chiefs were meeting Thursday and Friday in Abuja, Nigeria, to discuss the situation.
Nigeria’s military defense spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Tukur Gusau, told journalists “a military solution will be the last option” to resolve the crisis in neighboring Niger.
He was to present a military contingency plan, however, on Friday to ECOWAS heads of state, who will then decide on the bloc’s action if the coup leaders miss the Sunday deadline to reinstate Bazoum.
Niger’s former army chief of staff, Gen. Salifou Mody, who has a role in the junta now ruling the country, travelled to Mali Wednesday to meet that country’s own post-coup transitional authorities. It was the first visit abroad by a member of Niger’s post-coup leadership.
There was speculation in African media that Mody had travelled to Mali to discuss the possibility of Wagner forces being deployed to Niger to back up the junta. Mody later travelled to Burkina Faso, where a military coup also toppled a civilian government last year. There he met transitional leader Capt. Ibrahim.
A statement by the Burkinabe presidency said the meeting had “focused on the situation in Niger, which is calm and under control according to the head of delegation.”
General Salifou Mody, one of the Niger officers who seized power in a military coup last week, visited Mali on Wednesday, according to the Mali presidency, amid speculation of a possible interest in the Wagner mercenary group, which has a presence in the country.
Mali’s transitional president, Assimi Goïta, hosted Mody and a large Nigerien military delegation on Wednesday, according to pictures and a statement posted on Facebook by the Mali presidency.
Mody called the meeting “part of a complex regional context,” the Mali presidency said, and thanked Malian authorities “for their support and accompaniment since the seizure of power by the CNSP,” referring to the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland where Mody is vice president.
Hundreds of Wagner contractors are stationed in Mali at the invitation of the country’s military junta, to quell an Islamist insurgency brewing in an area where the borders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger meet.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin last week celebrated the coup in the landlocked West African country, saying his private military company could also help with situations like the one unfolding in Niger.
The dramatic ouster of Niger’s President Bazoum last week alarmed Western leaders, including the US and France, which are both key stakeholders in Niger’s crackdown on local Islamist insurgencies.
US officials have warned that the Russian mercenary group could now seek new opportunities in Niger. “I would not be surprised to see Wagner attempt to exploit this situation to their own advantage as they’ve attempted to exploit other situations in Africa to their own advantage,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Wednesday.
Miller added that “any attempt by the military leaders in Niger to bring the Wagner forces into Niger would be a sign, yet another sign that they do not have the best interests of the Nigerien people at heart.”
A number of CNN investigations, and others by human rights groups, have established Wagner’s involvement in and complicity with atrocities against civilian populations in Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic, where they have been employed to assist local defense forces against rebellions and insurgencies, and suppress opposition.
The coup has provoked a split reaction from countries in the Sahel region, where the threat of militant extremism in recent years has destabilized local governments and led to volatility.
On Monday, Mali and Burkina Faso’s governments said they would consider any military intervention “an act of war” against them and put their armies on standby.
Mali presidency’s statement said General Mody told his host he had come to explore “ways and means to strengthen our security cooperation, at a time when some countries are planning to intervene militarily in our country.”
The statement comes after the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on Sunday threatened to use force if Niger’s ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum, was not reinstated within one week.
ECOWAS also imposed a travel ban and asset freeze for the military officials involved in the coup attempt, as well as for their family members and civilians who accept to participate in any institutions or government established by the officials.
Burkina Faso and Mali expressed their solidarity with Nigerien authorities and said they would not participate in any measures against Niger by ECOWAS, calling the sanctions “illegal, illegitimate and inhuman.” Guinea also expressed its solidarity with Niger on Monday.
PARIS — An ongoing military coup in Niger is threatening to destabilize one of the last Western allies in Africa’s Sahel region.
On Wednesday night, Niger’s top military brass announced on national television they had overthrown the country’s president Mohamed Bazoum, who was democratically elected in 2021.
“We, the Defense and Security Forces, united within the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland, have decided to put an end to the regime you know,” Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane said, according to Agence France-Presse. “This follows the continuing deterioration of the security situation, and poor economic and social governance,” he added.
A change of regime in Niger could be a blow to the West — and more specifically to France and the United States, who have strong ties to the West African nation.
For both Paris and Washington, Niger is a strategic country in the fight against Islamist terrorism. Viewed as “one of the most reliable U.S. allies” against al Qaeda, Islamic State and Boko Haram, it’s also one of the last Sahel nations that hasn’t deepened cooperation with Russia to the West’s detriment.
According to Le Monde, there are no obvious signs of Moscow’s footprint in the Niger coup, which is mostly driven by internal matters.
However the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary outfit led by Yevgeny Prigozhin that is active in Africa, claimed credit for the coup Thursday.
“What happened is the struggle of the people of Niger against the colonialists,” Prigozhin said in a voice message posted in a Wagner-branded Telegram channel. “This is actually gaining independence and getting rid of the colonialists.” ㅤ “This shows the effectiveness of Wagner,” Prigozhin continued. “A thousand Wagner fighters are able to restore order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the civilian population of states.”
The same channel also posted a photo of Prigozhin shaking hands with an unidentified man on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit being hosted in St Petersburg by President Vladimir Putin. The posts appeared intended as a demonstration of strength by Prigozhin, who led a mutiny last month in which his troops marched to within 200 km of Moscow before standing down.
For France, Bazoum’s forced departure would mark yet another setback in the region, only months after French troops had to withdraw from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, effectively ending the Barkhane operation.
Paris, whose influence in West Africa has been significantly waning in recent years, has reportedly deployed about 1,500 French soldiers in Niger. The government in Niger has expressed satisfaction at the bilateral military agreement. The country was supposed to be a “laboratory” for a new type of military relationship based on equal-footing cooperation between France — a former colonial power — and African governments.
The French foreign affairs ministry issued a statement overnight expressing “concerns” about the events, adding it “firmly condemns any attempt to seize power by force.” The ministry also released a warning message for French citizens living in Niger, urging them to limit movements and follow safety instructions.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Bazoum overnight and expressed the U.S.’s “unwavering” support. “The strong U.S. economic and security partnership with Niger depends on the continuation of democratic governance and respect for the rule of law and human rights,” according to a statement.
For France, the coup’s timing is challenging, as French President Emmanuel Macron is on a five-day visit to the Indo-Pacific region with his Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu and most of his staff. Blinken is currently also in the region.
Douglas Busvine contributed to this report. This story has been updated with comments by Prigozhin.
British authorities have launched an investigation after officials mistakenly sent emails meant for U.S. military intelligence to the government in Mali, a Russian ally.
Officials from the U.K. Ministry of Defense were supposed to be sending emails to the Pentagon, but accidentally sent them to Mali’s government instead, the Times reported Thursday. The mistake was the result of a typo, as the Pentagon’s domain name is “.mil,” while Mali’s is “.ml.”
The Ministry of Defense said Friday they were investigating the incident.
“We have opened an investigation after a small number of emails were mistakenly forwarded to an incorrect email domain,” a spokesperson for the ministry said, Reuters reported.
According to the Times, while most emails sent to Mali were innocuous — containing information such as dates when the employees from the foreign ministry were on holiday — others contained “detailed descriptions” of British research into hypersonic missiles.
However, the Ministry of Defense said the Times’ claims were misleading.
“This report misleadingly claims state secrets were sent to Mali’s email domain. We assess fewer than 20 routine emails were sent to an incorrect domain & are confident there was no breach of operational security or disclosure of technical data,” the ministry said Friday. “An investigation is ongoing. Emails of this kind are not classified at secret or above.”
According to Reuters, the spokesperson said all sensitive information is shared “on systems designed to minimize the risk of misdirection.”
“The MOD constantly reviews its processes and is currently undertaking a program of work to improve information management, data loss prevention, and the control of sensitive information,” they said.
Earlier this month, an investigation by the Financial Times found that millions of emails meant for the Pentagon have been sent to Mali as a result of the same typo. Some of these emails included sensitive information, such as diplomatic documents, tax returns, passwords and officers’ travel details, the investigation found
Troops from Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group, who are relocating to Belarus following last month’s aborted mutiny, will not go back to fight in Ukraine and will stay in Belarus to train local troops, their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said Wednesday.
“We did a lot for Russia. What is happening at the front now is a disgrace. We want no part of it,” Prigozhin said in his first appearance since his troops marched on Moscow in a failed uprising last month.
In a shaky mobile phone video shot at dusk, Prigozhin can be seen in silhouette wearing a baseball cap. He speaks to a crowd of men who appear to be Wagner fighters and break repeatedly into applause and cheers.
“Therefore we have taken the decision to be in Belarus for a while. In this time, we will turn the Belarusian army into the second most powerful in the world and, if needed, we will take its place,” Prigozhin pursued, in a jab at Russia, which currently has the second largest army in the world.
He then hinted his troops could later go to Africa, where Wagner has been active in Mali and the Central African Republic.
Prigozhin’s deputy, Dmitry Utkin, whose nom de guerre gave the mercenary army its name, speaks: “This is not the end. This is the beginning. The biggest task in the world will begin very soon,” he said before switching to English: “Welcome to hell.”
After months of tension with Russia’s military leadership, Prigozhin turned his troops against the Russian authorities last month. He led his men deep into Russian territory, taking the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don and only stopping a few dozen kilometers from Moscow.
The mutinous warlord then went off the grid after he struck a deal with the Kremlin and Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko under which Wagner fighters would be spared prosecution in Russia, while he and his men would go in exile in Belarus.
He resurfaced a few days later, posting a voice message on social media to thank the supporters of the aborted uprising while signalling that Minsk had offered options for his troops to continue operating from Belarus.
Since then, there have been contradicting reports about Prigozhin’s whereabouts. Lukashenko initially confirmed Prigozhin had popped up in Belarus three days after the rebellion, on June 27, before later saying that he wasn’t actually there — and could even be in Russia.
Last week, the Kremlin said the Wagner boss was in Moscow on June 29, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin together with other Wagner commanders.
Vladimir Putin had an iron grip on Russians’ views of the world. Then Yevgeny Prigozhin ripped that facade apart.
In the aftermath of the Wagner Group boss’ aborted uprising, Putin and his propagandists — national broadcasters, high-profile politicians and social media influencers — have struggled to explain how Prigozhin, an archetypal Russian hero, suddenly turned into the country’s most infamous traitor.
Five Western security officials, almost all of whom spoke privately to discuss sensitive matters, told POLITICO Putin was still fundamentally in control even though the mutiny had significantly tested his authority.
But the Russian leader’s inability to dominate public perceptions of what happened over the last week highlighted a potential fragility within his leadership, according to two of these officials. Putin and his propagandists failed to react quickly when Prigozhin launched his dramatic insurrection and in the subsequent days, their messaging veered from deafening silence to claims that it was all a Western plot.
“It’s certainly one of the most challenging, or even the most challenging, situation that Putin has faced,” said Jakub Kalenský, a deputy director at the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a joint NATO-EU organization tracking state-backed influence campaigns. “It will also be a challenge in the information space. Prigozhin himself controlled quite a significant part of his propaganda machine,” he added. “Now, we have different branches of the propaganda machine controlled by different people.”
As Wagner troops sped toward Moscow last weekend, state-owned media outlets — where three-quarters of Russians still get the majority of their news — initially downplayed the mutiny. One even broadcast a documentary on Silvio Berlusconi, the now-deceased Italian leader, as the uprising unfolded.
At the same time, influential users of Telegram, the social media platform favored by Russian speakers, were divided on how to portray the events. A vocal minority — some with hundreds of thousands of followers — sided with Prigozhin’s criticism of Russia’s military leaders, though made it clear they were not attacking Putin.
And once the crisis was over, with the Wagner boss on his way to exile in Belarus, Kremlin-backed broadcasters attempted to shoehorn the rebellion into age-old narratives that any attack on Russia must be tied to Western aggression.
Prigozhin himself was a key figure in Putin’s propaganda machine. His own Telegram followers number almost 1.4 million people. Groups associated with the mercenary leader remain a linchpin in Russia’s global online influence campaigns, while American authorities have connected him to interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Prigozhin’s status as the archetypal strongman made it hard for the Kremlin to accuse him of being a traitor to Russia.
On Telegram, where influencers focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have become national celebrities, once active groups became eerily quiet as users struggled to decipher who was going to win, according to Eto Buziashvili, a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, who tracks Russian-speaking social media.
Many of these high-profile Telegram channels have been vocally critical of Russian military leaders during the invasion of Ukraine, and routinely backed Prigozhin’s criticism of how the war has been waged.
Prigozhin himself was a key figure in Putin’s propaganda machine | Pool photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/AFP via Getty Images
Yet once the mercenary leader’s march on Moscow fizzled out, many of thesesocial media users did not openly attack Prigozhin, and instead called for peace between Russians — while continuing their criticism of the Kremlin’s military strategy in Ukraine. Russian-language Telegram accounts urged Wagner Group forces and the Russian military not to resort to outright civil war. “Everybody basically said ‘let’s just not do this,” Buziashvili added.
In the days following the failed insurrection, national media has shifted gears to call for unity, while portraying Putin in everyday events — including, on Thursday, at a local textile conference — to show the country had moved on. The state’s international broadcasters, which have deployed a more aggressive disinformation playbook, also quickly tried to link the aborted mutiny to NATO.
For Bret Schafer, head of the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s information manipulation team, the confused response to Prigozhin’s rebellion is reminiscent of the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukrainelast year.
In February 2022, the Kremlin’s disinformation industry was also caught off guard — mostly because Putin had categorically disavowed military action, even hours before his troops invaded. Russian influence operations are often developed over months, if not years, and struggle to shift into new narratives when required to do so almost overnight.
“Russia does well in propaganda campaigns because they have so many tentacles,” said Schafer. “But it doesn’t respond particularly well in moments of confusion where there’s a lack of clarity of what’s going on.”
All eyes are on Moscow — but no one knows what they’re looking at.
Are there more uprisings in the works? Will Vladimir Putin escalate his brutality in Ukraine to compensate? Are his nukes secure? Will everything somehow return to a tense, war-time status quo?
These types of questions have gripped conversations after a failed mutiny saw the Wagner Group’s mercenaries march within hours of Moscow before turning back.
While Putin and Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin continue to spin dueling narratives about the rebellion, one thing appears certain: the Russian leader’s veneer of invincibility has shattered.
That does not mean the end of the Putin regime is imminent. But a host of hard-to-imagine and even bizarre scenarios are now being teased out as everyone speculates over what comes next.
There are “more unknowns than knowns,” said a senior Central European diplomat, who like others was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters.
POLITICO lays out a few of those knowns — and unknowns — about what will now unfold in the world’s largest country.
Putin’s next act: Repression? More war? Ousted?
Images of Wagner troops capturing a major military headquarters before marching toward Moscow with few consequences, only to turn around without even facing arrest, have prompted confused musings about what the strongman leader’s potential next move.
Often, it’s a crackdown.
“What I think naturally follows from this now is even more repression in Russia,” said Laurie Bristow, who served as British ambassador to Russia from 2016 until 2020.
That hasn’t yet happened, though. In fact, despite deriding the mutiny’s leaders as having betrayed Russia, Putin claims to be offering those involved a way out.
On Monday, he said Wagner soldiers would be free to join regular forces, go home or head to Belarus — heightening speculation that the Moscow regime’s once-dominant position of power is withering.
Putin said an armed mutiny by Wagner mercenaries was a “stab in the back” and that the group’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin had betrayed Russia | Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Image
One Eastern European diplomat said their assessment is that Prigozhin was “used by a particular group of the Kremlin/FSB elite dissatisfied with the current leadership” in the defense ministry. And, the diplomat added, Putin could still change the terms of his deal with the Wagner boss at any moment.
That has just created more speculation about what the coming months will entail.
Edgars Rinkēvičs, Latvia’s foreign minister and president-elect, listed a host of options, from “Putin trying to put more repression in place back home” to the Russian leader “trying to maybe launch some offensive in Ukraine, trying to show to his own public that he’s in full control.”
And while most experts believe Putin will hold on to power, for now, there is recognition that the West needs to consider a scenario where he is replaced. Powerful figures within Putin’s orbit and the FSB intelligence service are likely already eyeing the unfolding events — and Putin’s muddled response — to spot any opportunity.
“Chaos always carries risks, but there will come a time when the position of Putin is eroded and he is replaced,” said a Western European diplomat.
Speaking on Tuesday night alongside a group of European leaders, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte insisted NATO allies do not want instability.
“I refute what Putin suggested yesterday, that we in the West want Russia to descend into domestic chaos,” Rutte said. “On the contrary, instability in Russia creates instability in Europe. So we are concerned. These developments are further proof that Putin’s war has achieved nothing but more instability — above all, it has inflicted intolerable suffering on the Ukrainian people.”
John Lough, a Russia specialist at Chatham House, said he believed Putin is unlikely to still be in power a year from now.
How that process unfolds — via coup or planned succession — would, of course, influence who comes next.
Emily Ferris, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a leading London-based security and foreign policy think tank, argued the next Russian leader will likely be “a placeholder that’s very similar to him — somebody that has the ear of the security services, has some sort of security background, is able to control the oligarchs.”
“The person that comes after that,” she added, “would be where the change comes from.”
Wagner’s next boss: Putin? Prigozhin? Belarus?
The mutinous Wagner Group is, remarkably, not dead yet. Who it’s working for, however, is unclear.
On Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed that Prigozhin had arrived in his country, where the Wagner boss said he will be allowed to keep operating his paramilitary firm.
The pledge befuddled many — why would Putin let a rogue force operate next door under the guise of a charismatic, traitorous leader? What is Belarus getting out of this arrangement?
Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik via AFP/Getty Images
Officials in the region are anxiously eyeing the situation as they try to sort it out.
Minsk has long been a close Moscow ally, and even let Russia launch attacks on Ukraine from within its borders. Earlier this month, Putin also said he had stationed a first batch of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Now, some of the Wagner fighters are apparently heading there.
“We have to monitor very closely all the movements of Wagner Group,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur warned Tuesday when asked whether the arrival of Wagner personnel in Belarus poses a regional risk.
“It seems that there is much more to discover regarding the deal of Prigozhin and Lukashenka,” he said in a text message.
Asked about the presence of Wagner in Belarus, former U.S. Army Europe commanding general Ben Hodges said on Tuesday that this poses “not more risk for Ukraine … but potentially strengthens Lukashenko’s hand vs. his opposition and/or a future push by Russia.”
“I imagine,” Hodges added, “he’ll also look at this Wagner connection as a business opportunity for himself in Africa.”
Speaking in the Hague on Tuesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Wagner’s presence in Belarus is “really serious and very concerning” and that in his view the move requires a “very tough answer of NATO.”
Wagner forces are already in several African countries, including Mali and the Central African Republic, helping prop up anti-Western governments in exchange for access to natural resources. And Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has vowed they will keep working there. But not everyone is convinced that work will always be for Moscow.
“Could Lukashenko be now smarter than Putin?” exclaimed a second Eastern European diplomat. “That would be the ultimate blow to Moscow!”
Moscow’s next chapter in Ukraine: Deflated troops? Fewer mercenaries? Dueling paramilitaries?
Officials are working through how Wagner’s failed mutiny will impact the battlefield in Ukraine — both in terms of how many Wagner members return to fighting in Ukraine and how their mutiny affects the regular Russian military’s thinking.
“One of the things that we should be watching very closely over the next few days is whether morale takes a dive in the Russian army,” said Bristow, the former British ambassador.
But, he added, “We should be very cautious not to think this means that Ukraine does not still face a long, hard fight.”
Rescuers work in a 24-storey building hit by Russian missiles in Kyiv | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
A senior Central European defense official underscored that if Wagner troops are no longer involved in Ukraine, it could change dynamics.
“Wagner Group was for many months the most effective fighting force on the Russian side in Ukraine,” the official said. “If the group is disbanded and will no longer be deployed in Ukraine, it will reduce Russia’s military offensive capacity.”
And it’s not all about Wagner: the weekend mutiny could also impact the calculus of oligarchs, companies and commanders within Russia who control their own armed groups.
Rinkēvičs, Latvia’s foreign minister and president-elect, underscored that there are multiple private military entities in Russia — and that even more could emerge amid Putin’s weakening position.
“It’s not only about regular army in Russia, not about FSB,” Rinkēvičs said in a phone interview, “but also how this situation can develop if more and more oligarchs, or private companies or people in power are going to form their own private, mercenary forces, everyone needs to take this seriously.”
The nukes’ next owner: The Russian state? A future mutineer?
Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal is one element that sets it apart from most other countries undergoing political tumult. Officials are more than happy to see Putin weakened — but they also want to see nuclear weapons in stable hands.
In fact, even at this frosty stage of the relationship with Moscow, Washington still appeared to be checking in with the Kremlin over the weekend about its nukes. Speaking on Monday, Lavrov said the American ambassador in Moscow had passed along a message “that the United States hopes that everything is fine with the nuclear weapons.”
But experts and officials say that they are confident nuclear weapons won’t fall into the wrong hands.
“It’s very hard to imagine a situation where the Russian state loses control of its nuclear arsenal,” said Bristow, the former British ambassador.
Others agree — but say that Russia’s nuclear arsenal could still play a role in a future power struggle.
“We’ve pretty good sight on what they do for security,” said William Alberque, a former director of NATO’s arms control center who now works at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and has in the past visited Russian nuclear sites.
“I have very high confidence that their nuclear weapons remain secure and under the command of the 12th GUMO,” he said, referring to a directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense that manages Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
People near Rostow-on-Don greeted the Wagner group mercenaries with waves and open arms | Roman Romokhov/AFP via Getty Images)
But the 12th GUMO itself, Alberque said, could become a kingmaker in a future Russian game of thrones. Should Putin lose power, his successors may court the powerful directorate’s leadership — and whoever wins their backing would be in pole position to win a succession fight.
“If there were chaos in Moscow,” Alberque said, “if there was one or more pretenders, I think the smartest one would say, ‘I just talked to the commander of 12th GUMO.’”
Climate change headlines are rarely positive, but even against that yardstick, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) latest global warming predictions unveiled in mid-May marked a poignant moment for human civilisation.
In the next five years, the WMO warned, the world is likely to see an increase of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming over average pre-industrial levels for the first time.
While the weather events forecast by the United Nations’s weather body capture outlier spikes in temperatures, they serve as ominous portents of just how hard it will be for the world to achieve its hope of limiting the average temperature increase to 1.5C by 2100.
Yet, the warning signs have been around for a while and have been mounting.
Barbeques are no longer the only smoky markers of the start of summer. Devastating wildfires, like the ones that ravaged Canada earlier this month, signal the onset of rising temperatures with deadly regularity. Meanwhile, cyclones like Biparjoy, which slammed into western India in mid-June, are wreaking havoc with increasing frequency.
Eight years after global leaders gathered in a northeastern Paris suburb to seal the landmark 2015 climate agreement, no country is meeting the emissions cut goals needed to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C, according to the independent research platform Climate Action Tracker.
So is it all a lost cause? Or is there still hope? Are there any countries that are doing better than the rest in trying to mitigate the worst effects of climate change for future generations? And if so, what are they doing right?
The short answer: Most developed countries are falling far behind their climate pledges. But some developing nations – such as The Gambia, Costa Rica, Morocco and Mali – are taking bold steps to fight a crisis that, though not of their making, often hits them the hardest.
They are harnessing the power of the sun and innovating with agriculture in ways that serve as examples for others. But their journeys also reveal the limitations of how far they can wage this battle alone, without the Global North truly stepping up.
The mangroves of the Gambia River in Serrekunda on September 26, 2021. The Gambia and parts of Senegal gained a 51 percent increase in mangrove cover between 1988 and 2018 [Leo Correa/AP]
Gambian gambit
Nfamara Dampha remembers his first brush with an extreme weather event as if it had happened yesterday.
It was 1999 and 10-year-old Dampha stood with his parents and siblings on the verandah outside their house. A sudden torrent of rain caused by a thunderstorm – so intense that such phenomena are colloquially called “rain bombs” – had hit their village in The Gambia, the smallest country in mainland Africa. They were “too scared to be inside the house due to the uncertainty of whether its walls would survive or collapse”, Dampha said.
The storm had ripped off the roofs of most houses around them; walls of buildings lay collapsed and fallen trees blocked the roads. Dampha’s house survived but the fence was destroyed. As he waded through the water the next morning, the scale of the devastation hit him even harder: furniture, mattresses, clothes and books floated along water-logged streets.
Now a research scientist and senior climate change consultant at the World Bank, Dampha relived some of those memories when another rain bomb exploded on the West African country in July last year, affecting nearly 40 percent of the population and displacing thousands of people.
Yet today, the country is on the front lines of not just the global climate crisis, but also efforts to combat its most devastating effects. Dampha created a Household Disaster Resilience Project (HELP-Gambia) in 2017 to gather financial resources to support local resilience efforts such as climate change awareness, adapting agricultural practices to survive the growing vagaries of weather patterns and supporting green businesses, specifically for the most vulnerable communities in The Gambia.
His initiative is one among a series of similar climate-driven local movements across the country that have collectively turned the West African nation into a rare success story in the global fightback against climate change. In 2021, The Gambia was the only country in the world briefly on track to meet its Paris climate change commitments.
Central to The Gambia’s strategy is the concept of agroforestry. Traditionally, agriculture and forests have often been viewed as competitors for land, with increased food demands leading to deforestation. Agroforestry, on the other hand, involves land use practices in which trees and forests coexist. The county unveiled a national agroforestry strategy in 2022 that set the target of restoring 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) of degraded forests in a decade.
This builds on longstanding reforestation efforts that saw The Gambia regain 6.6 percent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2005. Research also suggests a 51 percent increase in mangrove cover – which helps curb erosion and reduce the intensity of floods – across The Gambia and parts of Senegal between 1988 and 2018. All of this is aimed at cutting the country’s net carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
As the rain bombs have shown and as the nation’s long-term strategy document says: “The Gambia has no choice.”
A thermosolar power plant at Noor II Ouarzazate, Morocco, November 4, 2016. Morocco is increasingly supplying solar power to Europe [Youssef Boudla/Reuters]
Power of the sun
To the east of The Gambia, much-bigger and landlocked Mali has a power crisis: 83 percent of its population lacks access to electricity.
Until recently, the country’s solution lay in decentralised diesel-powered mini-grids – sets of small electricity generators – to supply rural areas. Now, it is converting those into small solar grids.
It has already deployed one such system, with support and a $9m loan from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD). The 4MW solar mini-grid system is designed to supply clean energy to 123,000 people across 32 villages. It could help Mali cut total carbon dioxide emissions by 5,000 tonnes – a thousand such mini-grids could almost wipe out the country’s carbon footprint.
And this project is part of a broader trend. Between 2010 and 2019, Mali doubled the number of people connected to renewable mini-grids using solar, hydro and biogas technologies, reaching 11 million people – or more than half the country’s population – in 2019. If these grids now serve up the power they can, the county could dramatically reduce its energy access problem.
But that is not all. Tania Martha Thomas, a researcher at the Paris-based Climate Chance Observatory, an international group that monitors trends on climate and biodiversity, said these solar mini-grids – which store electricity in batteries for local use – save thousands of women hours of labour. They would previously need to travel long distances to collect water, which can now be pumped using electricity.
Further north, Morocco is leading a North African solar revolution that could serve not just the region’s energy needs but also those of Europe across the Mediterranean at a time when Russia’s war in Ukraine has disrupted oil and gas supplies.
Morocco’s giant solar farms already export electricity to Spain through two undersea cables. But last year, as the war in Ukraine intensified, the country struck a deal with the European Union to ramp up exports further. The biggest of the new projects on the horizon involves laying what will be the world’s longest high-voltage submarine cables, taking solar power from Morocco’s Sahara desert past Portugal, Spain and France all the way to the United Kingdom. The target is to provide up to 8 percent of the UK’s total energy needs by 2030.
Egypt and Tunisia are also hoping to export solar power to Europe.
Yet, if the world is to truly neutralise global warming, it will need more than the export of energy. It will need countries to learn how to turn things around from the brink of disaster.
Costa Rica, a tiny country in Central America, could offer valuable lessons.
A frog climbs a branch in a protected forest on the outskirts of San Jose, Costa Rica, Wednesday, August 24, 2022. Costa Rica went from having one of the world’s highest deforestation rates in the 1980s to being a nation centred on ecotourism, luring world travellers [Moises Castillo/AP Photo]
Green beacon of hope
Today, Costa Rica routinely ranks among the world’s greenest countries.
That wasn’t always the case. In the 1940s, three-fourths of the country was covered in rainforests before loggers ravaged the landscape, using trees to mint their fortunes. By 1987, forest cover was down to only 21 percent.
“It’s a super bio-diverse country that used to be a poster child for environmental destruction,” Stanford University researcher Kelley Langhans told Al Jazeera.
Over the past 35 years, she said, the country has adopted “a suite of innovative conservation finance and policy mechanisms” that have today made it a role model among environmental policymakers – giving it a reputation very different from the one it had until the 1980s.
More than half the country is now once again lush with forests. Costa Rica is one of only nine countries – Morocco and The Gambia are also on this list – whose steps to mitigate climate change are “almost sufficient”, according to Climate Action Tracker.
Under a key policy that has helped with this dramatic turnaround, Costa Rica pays communities and landowners that preserve the environment, including its tree cover, biodiversity and water cleanliness. This initiative is funded by taxes collected on fossil fuels.
The country has relied almost entirely on renewable energy since 2014. More than 7 percent of all passenger vehicles are electric, higher than in the US, Canada and the rest of Latin America. Electric vehicles are exempt from taxes and import duties, and owners have a range of other benefits – including free parking in designated spots as well as a waiver on annual road permit payments.
That impressive track record made Langhans and her colleagues decide to study whether Costa Rica could implement its reforestation strategy even better.
“We know that Costa Rica is interested in reforestation, so we wanted to know how, given limited land and money to achieve conservation goals, the country might be able to target reforestation to areas where it could provide people and ecosystems with the largest benefits,” she said.
She and her team found that reforesting an area 10 metres (33 feet) wide along the banks of Costa Rica’s rivers – which would roughly be equivalent to 1 percent of the country’s total land area – could significantly improve water quality by reducing sedimentation as well as nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. It would also assist carbon sequestration efforts – capturing carbon from the atmosphere.
These gains could be further amplified, the researchers found, if these reforestation efforts are concentrated in areas where people depend on rivers for drinking water.
But if showing success against climate change is hard, maintaining it is even harder – as The Gambia is learning.
Somalis who fled drought-stricken areas carry their belongings as they arrive at a makeshift camp for the displaced on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia, June 30, 2022 [Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP]
Can’t do it alone
Burdened with ever-increasing development needs, which are in turn exacerbated by extreme weather events, many developing nations are struggling to meet their climate goals alone.
Soon after The Gambia drew global headlines as the only country whose plans to combat climate change were considered compatible with the goals set in the 2015 Paris Agreement, Climate Action Tracker downgraded it a notch, to “almost sufficient.” This was after the country submitted its updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) plan – its blueprint to reduce carbon emissions.
Such plans have two components. One lays out what the country can do on its own, while the other outlines the steps the country wants to take – but that depends on international support. According to Climate Action Tracker, while The Gambia’s domestic efforts are still on track to meet Paris targets, it is falling behind on plans that need global help.
As the developed world is yet to meet its promise of $100bn annually in climate financing to developing nations – even for a single year since the 2009 pledge – the World Bank now estimates that $1 trillion will be needed each year for mitigation and adaptation.
Meanwhile, countries like The Gambia must fight crises in the present while preparing for the future.
The World Bank’s Dampha was previously the director of administration at The Gambia’s National Disaster Management Agency, where he saw closely how extreme weather events kill people, destroy livelihoods and leave behind a trail of destruction.
A 2020 study by Dampha concluded that most people leaving the country’s island capital city of Banjul are climate migrants.
“Earlier studies revealed that our capital city Banjul will be underwater by 2100 if the world’s mean sea level rises by just a metre,” he said. “If current conditions remain the same, Banjul’s loss to sea level rise could result in a total governance or state failure.”
Banjul is not just The Gambia’s administrative centre but also its economic hub.
During the COP27 conference in Egypt last year, countries agreed to a new fund to cover loss and damage suffered by vulnerable countries affected by climate disasters. Following the announcement of this new fund, African “expectations are high in view of the magnitude of the stakes around climate change”, said Mélaine Assè-Wassa Sama, a climate action project officer at Climate Chance Observatory.
Research suggests that in sub-Sarah Africa, as many as 86 million people could be displaced by climate change within their own countries by 2050, and 19 million in North Africa. Cyclone Freddy, which hit Southern Africa in March 2023, forced nearly 660,000 people in Malawi to move.
Without outside help, Sama told Al Jazeera, vulnerable African countries will struggle to fight against the effects of climate change for which they have little historical responsibility – no matter how hard they try with their limited domestic resources.
Dampha agreed. Currently, international financial support is negligible. “The estimated cost of the July 2022 rainfall event was more than the total climate finance received by The Gambia in 2018,” he said.
“Climate reparation or financing is not development aid or charity to those disproportionately impacted by the climate catastrophe,” Dampha said. “It is our moral obligation.”
Mali’s military rulers are proposing changes to its constitution, which would reinforce presidential powers.
It is a vote to approve or reject constitutional changes in Mali.
Supporters say the amendments will ease a transition from military rule to a civilian-led government.
The June 18 referendum is the first in a series of scheduled polls meant to pave the way for presidential elections in February 2024, which Mali’s military leaders committed to hold following pressure from regional powers.
But scepticism is growing.
After years of coups, political instability and social unrest, mistrust in authority continues to be a fundamental problem.
So is the referendum about actual change or just political theatre?
And are democratic elections even feasible in the future, given the West African country’s political and social tensions?
Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom
Guests:
Fatima Al Ansar – Consultant on peace and security in Mali and the Sahel region
Alex Vines – Director of the Africa Programme for Chatham House
Marie-Roger Biloa – President of Africa International Media Group and political commentator on African affairs
Rebels linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL have been active in parts of Mali and the Sahel for more than a decade now.
The chief of staff for Mali’s interim president, Oumar Traore, and three others have been killed in an ambush, the government said on Thursday.
The ambush took place in the rural area of Nara in Mali’s southwestern Koulikoro region, the statement said, without providing further detail on when the attack occurred or who was responsible for it.
A driver who was travelling with the delegation is still missing, it added.
Mali is one of several West African countries battling armed groups during the past decade.
Rebels linked to al-Qaeda and the ISIL (ISIS) armed group have seized swaths of territory across the region, killed thousands and displaced millions. In January, fourteen Malian soldiers were killed and 11 wounded in two separate attacks in central Mali after their vehicles struck explosive devices.
Frustrations against the authorities’ failure to quell the violence have spurred two military takeovers in Mali since 2020.
In 2022, French troops completed a withdrawal from Mali as relations soured between both countries due to two coups and the perceived ineffectiveness of the foreign military in tackling rebel activity.
There have also been growing tensions between the UN mission and Mali’s military government following the alleged arrival of Wagner Group operatives from Russia to bolster government forces.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on Monday for his country to build “a new, balanced relationship” with Africa, as the former colonial power seeks to reduce its military presence on the continent.
“The objective of this new era is to deploy our security presence in a partnership-based approach,” Macron said in a speech in Paris, ahead of a tour that will take him to Gabon, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo later this week.
In the future, French military bases on the continent will be “co-administered” with local personnel, the French president said, while there will be a “visible decrease” in the number of French troops stationed in Africa over the next few months.
The news comes as France has faced increasing opposition from local governments over its continued military presence in several of its former colonies, and was forced to withdraw hundreds of troops from Mali, the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso over the past year. Around 5,000 French soldiers remain stationed on various bases throughout the continent.
But Paris’ waning influence — particularly in the Sahel region — has also allowed Russia to expand its reach in Africa, including in the digital sphere through the use of disinformation campaigns, as well as on the ground with mercenaries from the Wagner group, who in some cases have replaced French soldiers.
The French president said his country would steer away from “anachronistic” power struggles in Africa, saying African countries should be considered as “partners,” both militarily and economically.
“Africa isn’t [anyone’s] backyard, even less so a continent where Europeans and French should dictate its framework for development,” Macron said.
