Mali: Civilians are Paying the Price of the Wagner Group’s Presence
In Mali, the number of civilians killed has soared since the end of 2021 and the military junta’s seizure of power following the double coup in August 2020 and May 2021. While cutting ties with its traditional allies, including France, Mali has turned to the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group. Many observers had feared the impact these mercenaries would have on Malian civilians, and their fears were well founded. Wagner’s deployment resulted in looting, sexual assaults, torture, summary executions, and more.
The majority of civilian casualties are attributed to the jihadist terrorist groups operating in the country, principally Nusrat al-Islam (affiliated to Al-Qaeda) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, Malian armed forces and the Wagner Group (of about 1,000 troops) are also being blamed.
As reported by MINUSMA, the U.N stabilization mission in Mali, the number of people killed rose exponentially by nearly 324 percent in the first quarter of 2022, compared to the previous quarter. According to a report by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) published on August 30, 2022, Wagner Group mercenaries targeted civilians in more than 71 percent of their activities between December 1, 2021 and July 31, 2022. The Russian private company’s men are believed to have been involved in the deaths of about 500 civilians this year.
Massacres involving Wagner have occurred in other parts of central and western Mali. For example, according to reports in the New York Times citing a confidential U.N report, “white-skinned soldiers” later joined by Malian armed forces rounded up all the adult men in a town near the border with Mauritania and killed 33 of them before burning their bodies.
The French-language pan-African magazine, Jeune Afrique, has collected multiple testimonies of rape and sexual assault against the Malian forces and Wagner mercenaries in the village of Nia Ouro on September 4, 2022. According to the testimonies, the women were ordered to go home, and the “white men”, while inspecting the houses, ordered the women to undress. They took pictures of them before, in some cases, touching them. Several sources speak of clearly of rape. This sexual violence was accompanied by looting: jewelry, gold, money, furniture, livestock,, and inhabitants were arrested. Many of the inhabitants had left to seek shelter in the neighboring towns of Sofara – near which there is a Malian special forces camp – and Tandiama.
Wagner was also involved in attacks on civilians in the regions Mopti, Segou, Timbuktu, and Koulikoro, all of which are Nusrat al-Islam’s main zones of activity. According to information gathered by Human Rights Watch, Russian paramilitaries participated in harsh interrogations at the Diabaly military camp in the Niono Cercle in central Mali, where 35 detainees were tortured. Their bodies were found about ten kilometers from the detention site. In a memo released in August, MINUSMA reported that Malian forces, accompanied by “foreign military personnel”, conducted a sweep in Hombori (central Mali) on a weekly fair in April in which at least 50 civilians were killed and more than 500 arrested.
But to date, the worst of the massacres remains that of the small town of 10,000 inhabitants, Moura, in central Mali: the worst episode of atrocities in the country in a decade. The Moura massacre took place from March 27 to 31, 2022. Located in an area controlled by jihadists from Nusrat al-Islam, the village of Moura was besieged for five days. The operation degenerated into a massacre of the inhabitants, suspected by the Malian military and Russian mercenaries of being either terrorists or collaborators. Witnesses and analysts say the death toll in Moura was between 300 and 400, with most of the victims being civilians.
The abuses and crimes committed by these mercenaries who serve the interests of the Kremlin have already been denounced and documented on many occasions by the United Nations bodies, Western countries and the main human rights organizations. Since the Malian forces began conducting joint operations with Wagner’s mercenaries, the distinction between civilians and combatants – already barely respected – has completely disappeared. Despite all of that, the Russian mercenary footprint is growing rapidly, as they have established bases and sometimes permanent presence in several regions in the center and the north of the country.
The forced departure of France from Mali had allowed jihadist factions to regain power and supremacy in parts of the country, particularly in the northeast with the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. The conflict is expected to intensify significantly, and violence against civilians is likely to explode.