While the Russian paramilitary organization continues to expand its tentacles, at the risk of further destabilizing the northern half of the continent, Algerian diplomacy is officially concerned about it for the first time.
After a long period of restraint, the Algerian government decided to burst the abscess. On May 2, 2024, Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf officially complained to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, during a meeting in New York. Algiers can no longer support the presence in Africa, considered threatening, of the paramilitary group Wagner, renamed “Africa Corps” a few months ago.
As expected, Russia made no public comments. It nevertheless agreed a rare event, to form a joint commission with Algeria to study the question. This is a dilemma for the Maghreb country. How can we continue to be a strategic ally of Moscow, at a time when its interests are threatened by the growing influence of an armed militia renowned for its abuses throughout its neighborhood in Africa (Mali, Niger, Libya, etc.)? What will Algeria do if Russia ever washes its hands of it? Algerian academic Toufik Bougaada believes that Algeria “will simply ask to distance Wagner from its vital interests across the continent”.
A repressed fear
It must be said that as early as April 2022, during an exchange with American Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which had leaked on social networks, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune denounced in very clear terms the presence in Libya and the region of the Wagner Group, referring to it as a group of “mercenaries”.
He will talk about it again, a few months later, in an interview for Le Figaro at the end of December 2022, regretting the resources invested by the Malian junta to afford the services of the Russian group’s mercenaries. To the question about his opinion regarding “the presence of men from the Russian Wagner militia in this region”, Abdelmadjid Tebboune simply replied: “The money that this presence costs would be better placed and more useful if it went towards development. of the Sahel.”
In a dispatch dated December 30, 2022, relating to this interview, the public agency Algérie Presse Service (APS) avoided the passage where the Wagner Group was mentioned. A sign that the question remained, until this date, a taboo in Algeria. And to think that in October 2021, the French press estimated that Algiers “did not take a dim view” of Mali’s use of mercenaries from the Wagner Group, in order to combat the jihadist offensive in the area. In September 2023, the mysterious appearance in Algeria of Sergei Surovikin, a former general in the Russian army, who had just been dismissed because of his links with Wagner, fueled speculation that reinforced this thesis of secret connections between Algiers and the organization. controversial paramilitary.
What made the Algerian authorities react now? A priori, the sudden and synchronized deterioration of relations between Algeria and its southern neighbors, particularly Mali and Niger, suggests that the regimes in these two countries, carried by successive coups d’état and heavily supported by the Group Wagner, were driven by a feeling of power which now authorizes them to attack their big neighbor to the north.
The cancellation by the Malian junta of the Algiers peace agreement, signed in 2015 between the government of Bamako and the rebel groups of the Coordination of Azawad Movements which reigned over North Mali, will be the first act of this open animosity between the two countries. This decision was taken, it should be noted, the day after the capture of the town of Kidal (north-eastern Mali ) by the Malian army, aided by mercenaries from the Wagner Group.
Like a spider web
The resurgence of the conflict with rebel groups in North Mali pushed the different factions of the Coordination of Azawad Movements (known to be close to Algiers) to reorganize and create a new coalition on May 2, 2024, called the Permanent Strategic Framework. for the defense of the people of Azawad (CSP-DPA), to face the Malian army and its allies.
This Malian rebuff will quickly be followed by a dramatic turn of events in Niger, which accused Algeria of mistreating its nationals who live on its soil and which summoned the Algerian ambassador to Niamey on April 3 to officially protest. . In Niger, the Russian presence is more visible and more assertive. At the beginning of May, Russian army troops were authorized to invade an air base, located near the international airport in the capital Niamey long occupied by the American army (which was itself asked to leave the country by the ruling military junta).
“The presence of Wagner can only aggravate the situation in the region because it will only replace French influence with militia influence.”
Bouhania Goui, Algerian specialist in international relations
That said, what further justifies Algiers’ anger is the presence of Wagner’s mercenaries also reported near its border with Libya, to the east, alongside Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who is fundamentally anti-Algerian. Galvanized by the support given to him by the United Arab Emirates, the commander-in-chief of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army continues to contest the legitimacy of the Tripoli government, which is nevertheless recognized internationally and wants to undermine any approach to rapprochement with Alger.
Taking advantage of the instability reigning in the region, partly due to the withdrawal of French troops and the withdrawal of international forces, Russia, through its sprawling organization, has also infiltrated Sudan for several years. The Russian paramilitary organization is also there alongside a dissident general, Mohamed Hamdan Dogolo, known as “Hemeti”, who threatens to divide the country (already previously split into two ).
This presence extends Russia’s influence in Africa, which now extends from the Sahel in the east of the continent to Eritrea, whose diplomacy is also close to Russia. According to some sources and analyses, the Wagner Group has operations in nearly thirty countries around the world.
A story of looting
Bouhania Goui, an Algerian specialist in international relations whom we interviewed, believes that Algeria “seriously fears the role that the Russian Wagner militia plays in sub-Saharan countries”. He judges that this presence “can only aggravate the crisis and jeopardize political decisions in the region because it will only replace French influence with militia influence”.
For our interlocutor, the uncontrolled activism of the Russian paramilitary group is likely to fuel instability in this area and contribute to the emergence of fallible states. Mali is one. Undoubtedly, this situation will accentuate the so-called soft (illegal migration) and hard (arms trafficking, drug trafficking, organized crime) threats to Algeria. According to Bouhania Goui, Algeria complained to the Russian government, which nevertheless wishes to maintain “excellent relations”.
In addition to its security role, the Russian militia has access to significant natural resources, such as gold, diamonds, and oil in these African countries. These resources help replenish the Russian state coffers and circumvent Western sanctions that have been introduced against Moscow due to the war in Ukraine.
What scares Algeria the most in the current situation is this objective alliance which is being woven, like a spider’s web, across the entire extent of the region (from Sudan to Mauritania, via Libya or Niger), between Russia and the United Arab Emirates, with China more conquering than ever, these three countries being united within the enlarged Brics+ group.
There is a sort of hidden game between new powers who are coming to “eat the carcass of Françafrique, the French neocolonial empire in decline, to use the words of the famous French historian Gérard Prunier”, as Courrier International wrote in March 2023. A little over a century ago, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the French and British rushed to divide up the territories abandoned by the Sublime-Porte (the name of the Ottoman government), with Algeria in the lead.
