The Russians are getting the boot from the Sahel, and it’s all thanks to an unusual alliance between Tuareg separatists and a local branch of Al-Qaeda. These rivals have teamed up in Mali to drive back the Africa Corps, Russia’s paramilitary force.
When the French withdrew from the region, the Russians stepped in and picked up operations. However, maintaining control in the region is no easy feat, and the Russians are figuring that out. The Sahel’s harsh geography, the war in Ukraine, and now, jihadist groups partnering with Tuareg separatists, are all weakening Russia’s position
Without reinforcements or easy extraction points, this could turn into an embarrassing retreat from the region for Russia.
Hey all. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re talking about Africa, specifically the central African country of Mali, which is in the transitional zone where the tropics bleeds into the desert and an area called the Sahel. What we’ve had is over this past weekend, Tuareg forces, their local ethnic separatists and a branch of Al-Qaeda which operates in this area.
Both of these have been militant forces operating in the area for quite some time, decided to coordinate their attacks, their normally quite robust rivals, and attack the city of Kadal in the northern part of the country, in the Sahara, as well as a number of other places throughout the country. And in doing so, they forced Russia’s Afrika Korps into full retreat.
The Afrika Korps is the successor to what used to be called Wagner, basically, a group of people who have had the ethical part of their brain. Mellon scooped out and basically sent to kill people for the power of Russia. In the case of the in general in Mali, in specific, they cut security agreements with local governments that are not particularly nice to their people, and in exchange, they get mining concessions, most notably.
And for them, definitely, what they’re after is gold, because it allows the Russians to evade sanctions more effectively. They just fly gold for payment instead of having to worry about, say, the US dollar system. Anyway, the quick back story is as Ukraine war got going really, really hard in the last couple of years, Wagner became more a group of paramilitaries.
With the ethical center scooped out, Ragnar became more and more important to the Russians in manipulating not just events in Ukraine, but throughout the world, because they were basically soldiers for higher that would carry out the interests of the Russian state, which in general is to cause as much trouble in as many places as possible to cause problems for Western governments.
So in the case of the Sahel, the target was always France, where in French former colonial territories here and the French had troops throughout the countries in order to fight the jihadist remnants of al-Qaida. And in that they were doing, I would argue, a relatively decent job.
For the French, Al-Qaeda was the target, and they would cooperate with anyone who had helped them against al-Qaida in this case, including the Tories. And the government of Mali was like, well, you’re cooperating with one of our secessionists against the militants. We don’t like that. It’s a sovereignty issue. And then the Russians came in and the French were booted out.
And some version of that has happened throughout what is once known as French West Africa. And the French footprint in the region now is basically zero. And we have Russians now across the entire band. But as as I said, what happened when this went down is the cell is not a particularly great place for anybody. There’s not a lot of water.
So you don’t have population density, which means you have these isolated populations, posts like Cadle that have a few tens of thousands of people. And that’s it, which means that any sort of rebel group or militant group can run fast and free through the rest of the country, just like we saw in Iraq or Afghanistan and the war on terror, just like we see sometimes in northern Mexico with the cartels, just like we see in Syria with ISIS.
You can’t really impose any sort of control over this region long term, because you can’t have the civilizational tools that are necessary to do it. And so now it’s the Russians turn to get their asses kicked. And so the issue here for the Russians is unlike France, which is not involved in any sort of broader military conflict, and unlike France, which actually has some expeditionary capacity, the Russians don’t.
They’re involved in a large war. So only so many forces can be dedicated to the Afrika Korps or Wagner or whatever you want to call it. And in addition, there’s no chance of backup, which is a real problem. So the Russians only have about 2500 troops in region, and that includes their logistical tail. So most of what they have been focused on is destabilization and wealth extraction.
And now that the actual fight has been joined, they are not doing very well. I always assume that by this point, countries be working to remove the Russians for any other reasons, because they are really a trouble. But when it comes to the countries of the Sahel, where state capacity is so low, getting any sort of assistance is good, especially once you’ve kicked out the French.
So the the Russians are still fighting these groups in other parts of the country. They’ve only evacuated Cadle. But if the Tuareg, Al-Qaeda, it’s not an alliance that’s too strong. But if their truce holds, they can keep up the attacks. The Russians really have nowhere to go. You’re looking at a potentially a particularly embarrassing retreat they can’t count on the Russian state airlifting them out because the capacity isn’t there.
And it’s just way far, too far away. Whether or not this will be the beginning of the end of the Russian presence across the cell. We’ll see. But there is a relatively embarrassing retreat in store now that will probably continue from north to south across the entire country.
