ABIDJAN – The pivotal role played by Russia’s Africa Corps mercenaries in putting down a mutiny in Niger at the weekend has revealed just how dependent on Moscow the west African country’s ruling junta has become.
The growing reliance on Russian mercenaries is also at odds with the junta’s insistence that its 2023 coup was about reclaiming the nation’s sovereignty and independence from foreign powers, according to analysts.
On Saturday, after a night of intense fighting in the capital Niamey, Niger’s military government asked for, and obtained, the Africa Corps’ help in wresting back control from disgruntled soldiers who had attacked several sensitive sites and hunkered down in a key military base at the airport.
Russia’s ambassador to Niamey, Viktor Voropaev, himself boasted on the same day that the intervention helped “repress a mutiny”.
“The Africa Corps played a decisive role through the provision of ground and air support to help loyalist forces retake Air Base 101, one of the capital’s most strategic sites, from the mutineers and largely eliminated the remaining threat they posed to the government,” Charlie Werb, an analyst at Aldebaran Threat Consultants, told AFP.
Werb argued that the mutiny was the consequence of a worsening security landscape in Niger, with the junta having failed to quell a deadly, long-running jihadist insurgency.
Like its paramilitary predecessor, the Wagner group, the Africa Corps is officially in the Sahel region to help tackle that violence.
But for Lou Osborn, co-founder of the collective All Eyes on Wagner, which tracks the mercenary outfit, “what the Russians are promising above all is this praetorian guard service, to protect the regime and they are keeping that promise”.
Swapped dependencies
Beverly Ochieng, an analyst at Control Risks, argued that the Africa Corps had an interest in keeping General Abdourahmane Tiani in power against any opposition not just the jihadists.
“In order to maintain its presence, its foremost mission is to ensure that the government prevails no matter what threats are underway,” Ochieng said.
“So it was not choosing a side, it was still fulfilling the obligation of protecting and responding to the government’s requirements.”
Like its fellow junta-ruled neighbours Burkina Faso and Mali, Niger turned to Russia for security after breaking with France, its historic colonial ruler, in the wake of the coup.
Despite trumpeting pan-African and pro-independence messages, all three have welcomed Russian mercenaries to help fight jihadists loyal to either Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group, who have run rampant across the three countries.
In a report on the August 29 mutiny, the Timbuktu Institute argued the junta’s rhetoric sits uncomfortably with the reality.
“While Abdourahmane Tiani’s government has made security sovereignty one of the pillars of its legitimacy, the intervention of an outside partner to help contain an internal crisis raises a central question: how far can the pursuit of strategic autonomy go when it comes hand in hand with growing dependence on Moscow?” the Dakar-based think tank said.
Werb argued that “outside support does not necessarily contradict the bloc’s sovereigntist stance”.
But “it nonetheless shows that the three governments have only swapped security dependencies and that the narrative primarily functions to legitimise their rule”, the analyst added.
In any case, the mutiny “highlights the fragilities of a regime whose stability increasingly rests on a Russian partnership now liable to extend beyond the sole framework of the fight against jihadist groups”, the Timbuktu Institute said.
In the line of fire
Ochieng said the mutiny “demonstrates deep divisions and grievances within the security apparatus”, in a country whose soldiers are “constantly in the line of fire, fighting militants”.
Whether Saturday’s events alter the balance of power in the Niger-Russia relationship is another matter.
Niger received no help in fighting Saturday’s abortive uprising from its allies in Burkina Faso and Mali, with which it has formed a confederation claiming to maintain a 5 000-strong joint army.
Even the Russians have not managed to end the jihadist problem. Analysts argue that the Africa Corps’ failure to prevent the fall of Kidal in northern Mali in April exposed the mercenaries’ limitations, while the local soldiers who receive Africa Corps training are still unable to push back the militants.
But Sergei Eledinov, a retired Russian military officer turned African security expert, insisted that the Sahel countries did not have a better choice.
“Judging a military deployment by whether it has solved a political crisis that, by definition, it cannot solve, would be misguided,” Eledinov said.
Moscow’s growing presence in the Sahel also comes as part of a wider Russian expansion across Africa, jostling for influence with France in Paris’s former colonies.
“They’re still in the expansion phase,” said Osborn, pointing to Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville as examples.
Niger’s state television accused France of being behind the mutiny, repeating the junta’s regular talking point that Paris is trying to destabilise its ex-colony.
Those accusations, frequently rejected by France, have been taken up by Russia with the foreign ministry calling the mutineers “extremists seemingly incited by European former colonial powers”.
– Nampa/AFP
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