Wagner's Africa momentum tested by deadly clash with Mali rebels

In late July, the Malian army and its allies in the Wagner Group/Africa Corps battled Taureg rebels — and possibly jihadists — at Tinzaouaten in far northern Mali.

The battle resulted in dozens of casualties, especially for Wagner, as the mercenaries themselves have acknowledged. The Taureg claim to have killed some 84 Wagner soldiers, but there has not been any confirmation of the number dead on the Russian side to date.

The clash shows, first, that Wagner and Russia do not have unstoppable momentum in Africa; and second, that no national or foreign government can kill its way out of the Sahel conflict.

Mali is currently ruled by a military junta that seized power in August 2020. For nearly four years, the junta has defied regional and international pressure to permanently cede power to civilians. The junta also expelled French forces and a United Nations peacekeeping mission, fulfilling the longstanding wishes of some Malians — how many is difficult to measure, but protests and criticisms against the French had surged even before the coup — for a redefined version of sovereignty.

The junta turned to Russia and the Wagner Group as security partners, earning rebukes from Washington and other Western capitals. The Wagner Group proved appealing to the junta in part because of the junta’s own exterminationist instincts vis-à-vis jihadists, perceived jihadists, and the northern rebels who had defied Bamako again and again since Mali’s independence in the 1960s. Together, the Malian Armed Forces and the Wagner Group have repeatedly massacred Malian civilians in the name of hunting jihadists.

Meanwhile, in the second half of 2023, Wagner helped the Malian Armed Forces in their push to recapture the key northern town of Kidal, which had been mostly under rebel control for more than a decade. The conquest of Kidal fed into narratives about a “rise in power” under the junta and a reclamation of supposed national unity and strength. Yet as the rebels melted into the desert and staged sporadic attacks, the taking of a fixed target proved to be merely one of the more straightforward pieces within a highly complex war in the north.

The battle at Tinzaouaten confirms that the rebels have not been broken. Moreover, the battle may be part of yet another reshuffling of the political deck in Mali, as it remains unclear whether rebels (in a formation currently called the Permanent Strategic Framework or CSP) and jihadists (here meaning the Group for Supporting Islam and Muslims or JNIM) are working together, as they sometimes have in the past.

Also unclear is the role of Ukraine. Did Ukraine provide intelligence support to the CSP, to help strike a blow at Russia’s ventures in Africa, as a Ukrainian official has claimed? The CSP made no mention of Ukraine when claiming victory. Yet Mali has already broken diplomatic ties with Ukraine, decrying “Ukraine's involvement in a cowardly, treacherous and barbaric attack by armed terrorist groups.” If Ukraine’s support is confirmed, it will be yet another instance of very strange bedfellows in the Sahel.

Where does this apparent defeat leave Wagner? Sometimes, Wagner strategically abandons a fight, as the example of their brief deployment in Mozambique shows. On the other hand, the mercenaries have a high tolerance for setbacks, as shown by their ability to withstand the death of their founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 and their willingness to deploy to turbulent theaters such as Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic. A willingness to absorb casualties could increase Mali’s (and other Sahelian governments’) confidence in Wagner and Russia. Wagner also has financial interests in Mali, including not just payments from the state but also its reported ventures into gold mining.

Yet the loss at Tinzaouaten suggests that Russia’s path to power in Africa is not as simple as pumping in men and money. The political-military landscape of northern Mali has flummoxed numerous actors, including successive governments in both Bamako and Paris. One could argue that Wagner benefits from instability writ large, even instability that the group itself helps to provoke and that then boomerangs back onto Wagner. Yet part of Russia’s appeal to ordinary people – an appeal that the Sahelian juntas seem to cater to – is in its image as a strong, supposedly anti-imperialist, tough-minded alternative to France and the West.

All this to say that the best way for Washington to “counter Russia'' in Africa is to let events run their course, and then be ready to offer a meaningful alternative (and not just an “I told you so”) once Russian ventures collapse.

The knottier problem for Washington, if it wishes to be a long-term partner to Mali and the Sahel, is this: state violence, whether applied in supposedly surgical ways or in more indiscriminate and punitive ones, will not bring stability to the Sahel. In different ways, Paris and Washington and Moscow have all promised Sahelian countries that these outside powers each understand the correct doses of violence to apply in order to remedy the region’s conflicts. But there is no correct dose of violence, no formula that kills certain actors and intimidates others while creating space for “the return of the state” (a slogan used by France) or the Malian junta’s mantra of a “rise in power.”

There is simply a war that keeps changing forms, and whose only serious reprieves and genuine breakthroughs come about through negotiations, deals, and compromises. When Wagner eventually exits Mali and the Sahel (nothing lasts forever), and when the military governments eventually either cede power or remold themselves into more benevolent-seeming autocrats, Washington should be ready not with the standard menu of “counterterrorism” and “good governance,” but with support for negotiations and ceasefires, even with the jihadists.