Wagner group in the Sahel: Russia doubled down its focus on conflict-ridden region
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00:00 In Paris, the French Parliament will vote later today on a text asking the EU to add
00:05 the Wagner Group to its list of terrorist organisations.
00:08 The Russian mercenary group, headed by Evgeny Prigoshin, has played a conspicuous role in
00:14 Ukraine.
00:15 It's also been accused of conducting human rights abuses on the African continent.
00:20 The European Union having already added Wagner to its list of sanctioned individuals and
00:25 entities earlier in the year.
00:27 Joining me now is Wassim Nazir, the France 24's Jihadism specialist.
00:32 Wassim, what led to Wagner committing these massacres?
00:37 Well actually it all began with other groups like Wagner, mercenary groups that acted in
00:43 Syria with extreme violence.
00:46 And what Wagner is doing today, what they have done in Africa and doing today in Ukraine,
00:50 is just to follow up at what already happened in Syria.
00:53 And we can look at a map to see what happened in Mali.
00:58 Those are the areas where Wagner is present in Mali.
01:02 And in orange dots are the areas of operations.
01:05 And we see that on the spot, on the ground, they didn't have any results against jihadi
01:10 groups still active in the areas that we see.
01:13 Regarding also the latest attack a few weeks ago in Sevaree, where Al-Qaeda targeted specifically
01:19 Wagner present at the airport of Sevaree.
01:23 We have another map where we can look at all the attacks that were made against civilians
01:31 in central Mali to answer your questions and that were conducted hand in hand with the
01:37 Malian army.
01:38 And at that time the Malians had arrested one of the wives of Amadou Koufar, number
01:44 two of Al-Qaeda in central Mali.
01:46 And regarding what she says, they conducted operations with Wagner.
01:50 And we see here on the map all the areas where they conducted operations.
01:54 And we see that those areas are the areas where massacres were committed, knowing that
01:59 they didn't get to catch Mohamed Koufar.
02:02 So they killed innocent civilians.
02:04 And the highest number of civilians killed on one time during like five days, it was
02:10 in Moura.
02:11 More than 300 persons were killed, knowing that the next day jihadis came back to the
02:16 town.
02:17 So there was no territorial control of Wagner, but just operations, spread operations on
02:22 Malian soil.
02:23 So what areas in the region are they actually operating?
02:26 Well actually today in Africa we know that they are operating in the Central African
02:31 Republic and we know that they are active in Sudan too, but militarily active in the
02:39 African Central Republic, in Libya and in Mali.
02:43 People are saying that they are active in Burkina Faso, but up to this point we don't
02:46 have any proof.
02:48 And we know that when they got active in Mali it was to fight jihadis, but we see, you can
02:53 see on a map now, that their presence in Mali was rather positive for jihadis, because by
03:01 kicking the French out, jihadis were permitted to have a stronghold in Mali without airstrikes
03:08 and without special forces operating against them in Mali, which helped them to spread
03:14 in the region, Niger, Burkina Faso, all the way to Togo, Benin, and the Ivory Coast next
03:21 door.
03:22 And we even see that all the yellow dots are Al-Qaeda presence, the green is Islamic State
03:27 presence, and in between, if you can see, the small white dots are areas where jihadis
03:32 are fighting each other.
03:33 Knowing even the presence of Wagner on the ground didn't even avoid that jihadis fight
03:39 each other today.
03:40 So the outcome of Wagner in Africa is rather positive for jihadi groups.
03:47 So with that in mind, are they having any significant impact at all on jihadist activity?
03:53 They are having a positive impact on jihadi activity in the Sahel.
03:57 The only strategic goal that they achieved was kicking France out.
04:01 Wassim Nazir, thank you so much for that.