“Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”
—Isaiah 49:16
Some are saying it’s al-Qaeda. Some are saying it’s Tuareg nomads. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
It appears that Tuareg rebels in Mali and their al-Qaeda affiliates are waging war against Wagner and Mali’s military forces. There is precedent. The rebel groups first got together in 2012 when the Tuaregs partnered with — or were, perhaps, co-opted by — AQIM, “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” which has been dubbed “one of the wealthiest terrorist organizations in the world.” Amazing how that happens, you know, organically.
Much ink has been spilled about recent coups in Africa which have seen support from the Russians, including military contractor Wagner, whose late leader was recently blown up in an airplane flying out of Moscow. I boldly suggested the one person we could rule out as a culprit was Vladimir Putin.
It is strange that as soon as Prigozhin is killed, we have an uptick of fighting by jihadi forces who have Wagner in their sights, but maybe it’s just a coincidence.
Not long after Prigozhin’s 24-hour rebellion against Putin and his negotiated “exile” in late June, he was seen shortly thereafter in St. Petersburg in jeans and a polo alongside a dignitary from the Central African Republic just as the Russia-Africa summit blossomed nearby. Putin was also in attendance.
By all accounts, Russia is making incredible inroads in the African continent, and Africa is welcoming the support.
Instead of siding with the West, significant populations of the African countries in question, from Niger to Burkina Faso to Mali to CAR (Central African Republic), are open to making a deal with non-Western actors like Wagner for military support in exchange for access to national resources such as gold mining that is used to fund Wagner’s global military efforts.
Why is Africa abandoning the West? Here’s an anecdote. A few months ago, an acquaintance from church hitched a ride with me, and he was telling me where he was from and the languages he spoke. His home happened to be one of the nations in Africa we’re speaking of here. When he told me one of his languages was French, I noticed a charge to his voice. “French,” he said, was the language of the “colonizers.”
Indeed, the French are a hated people in many of these countries. For many Africans, the French language remains in wide use but is widely disdained for what it represents — colonization by the West. The alliances these nations are forming with Russia is an emphatic rebuff to Western support, which has poured billions into Africa over the years with the caveat that American military be able to setup shop in places where — and this is an editorial statement here — we have no business setting up shop.
The reaction by media and military pundits to Wagner rolling into the heart of the African continent over a glistening red carpet has been to forewarn the world about the consequences of such an occupation. The consequences, they say, could involve a surge in Islamic jihad coming both to the African continent in greater measure and to the Russian border directly.
This particular article from a Fellow of the Deep State’s Foreign Policy Research Institute lays everything out, including where Russia’s borders are most permeable for theoretical jihadi armies to invade should the mood strike them. There are some revealing moments throughout this article that show the signs of brewing proxy wars.
Just how would a “massive influx of jihadist fighters” get organized to invade Russia? Why, a shift in targeted propaganda, of course.
Notice the softened language on certain matters. The West wasn’t kicked out of these African countries; it’s just no longer “the primary supporter of such regimes.”
These think tank insiders are able to presage such things because it is no secret that al-Qaeda has close ties to the West and that its resources can be leveraged in proxy conflicts, even as our leaders feign shock when someone points this out.
What’s the matter? Current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had no trouble keeping Hillary Clinton informed of such matters back in 2012.
Oof, there’s that date again. 2012. The year the Tuaregs hooked up with al-Qaeda in Mali.
There has even been a strong nostalgia expressed in some of these publications for the days of the U.S.-backed mujahideen that knocked down attack helicopters with CIA-supplied stingers when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, ca. 1979-89. Think of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Hanks in CIA’s favorite film, Charlie Wilson’s War.
When we speak of future proxy military operations around the world, it appears Africa is shaping up nicely to be the next theater.
But let’s be generous. Suppose the U.S. is neither directly nor indirectly funding, supplying, or stoking the jihadi flames of this or that al-Qaeda-related group, and suppose we have really tried hard to be agents of peace in the region. It is, nevertheless, less than clear that our visiting forces, and all of the U.N. troops to boot, ever had any measurable success in keeping these terror activities at bay.
Ok, now let’s take a middle road. If you, the United States, secretly support one terror group behind the scenes as part of an international protection racket, you may have no control over another terror group that pops up organically and kills and kidnaps a bunch of civilians. Can you then say, “Let us setup a military base in your country and we’ll protect you from jihadis” when you don’t really have the power to rein in all of the jihadis? For a nation like Mali that recently ejected the U.N.’s 17,000 “peacekeepers,” military occupation with no discernible positive results for the nation being occupied sure looks a lot like…well…colonialism.
Regardless of the truth or falsity of the West’s hand in fomenting terror in the region, some Africans are willing to entertain the possibility. With that mindset, and with the help of Wagner, the theater of global conflict might have just shifted from Ukraine to Africa. Expect jihad.