Just under a year ago, Russian power failed to save Bashar al-Assad from a lightning, Turkish-backed offensive. Today, Russian mercenaries cannot keep the road to Bamako, Mali’s capital, open against Tuareg and jihadist rebels. The myth of Russia’s ruthless counter-insurgency prowess, born in Grozny and exported to Syria, is melting away.
The current conflict began in Mali in 2012 when Tuareg separatists, many of whom had returned from Libya after Gaddafi’s fall, reignited a northern rebellion; jihadist fighters quickly inserted themselves into the conflict. A year later, with the Islamists now in control, France was invited to help restore government control. After a few years of relative stability, things began to worsen from 2017 onwards, with political violence some nine times greater in 2020 than in 2016. Two coups later, France withdrew in 2022 whilst Wagner, the Russian mercenary outfit, entered.
Upon the entrance of the Russians, the Royal United Services Institute described how the ‘Syrian model’ of counterinsurgency was being exported to Africa. This referred to how Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015 to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime against insurgents. Russia, with its own experience at home in Chechnya and its disregard for notions of human rights, seemed to offer more effective methods than the West for counterinsurgency.
Russia has not delivered as promised. A recent report highlights how the security situation in Mali is now worse than before Russians first entered the country. Since the report, Bamako, Mali’s capital, has been blockaded by the jihadist group Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), creating widespread shortages of fuel. Western governments have called its citizens to evacuate the country. Russian activity in Mali is again being compared to Syria – but this time, it is not a flattering comparison.
The Malian rebels, without any major external support, have often given the Russians a beating. Deadly ambushes against the mercenaries calls Russian combat effectiveness into question. The capital has remained under economic siege since September. Most damning of all is the suggestion that a rival jihadist group has, in fact, caused more damage to JNIM than the Russians.
Viewing counterinsurgency as a military problem has led to Russia encountering the same issues encountered by the French. The Islamist rebels have adopted effective social media methods to gain civilian support, promoting anti-Russian content, much like what was used across the Sahel against the French. JNIM, on the other hand, focuses on appealing to local communities, especially on religious grounds – for example, preaching at local mosques.
Russia’s interests in Mali are straightforward: they want gold. Russia hopes to gain access to Mali’s goldmines and other resources in return for their security offerings, and to get paid. This is also failing. Mali, seeing the warning signs of the Central African Republic, where giving control over resources to the Russians has yielded little advantage, have held out. Further, the Russian mercenaries (now the ‘Africa corps’) have had issues getting their salaries paid.
This partly explains the lack of military success in Mali – there have been reports of the Russians being unwilling to fight unless they are promised payment, and that they are not investing further military resources into the country as a result. However, a British intelligence report in July estimated a presence of 2,000 Russian mercenaries in Mali equipped with sufficiently powerful equipment, and, of course, the Malian army itself. Failing to put down a group of rebels estimated to number 6,000 is deeply embarrassing – especially if the cause is not getting paid.
The resource demands of the war in Ukraine has created a strain on Russian global commitments. The Assad regime fell when Turkish-backed rebel groups were able to rapidly conquer Syria in face of Russian unwillingness or inability to continue protecting the government. Russia also failed to protect its ally Armenia from losing territory during the 2023 Nagorno-Karabakh war against Azerbaijan (also backed by Turkey).
Russia has been expanding its presence in Africa since the start of the Ukraine war, filling the gap France had left. The gap partly came about because of strong anti-French sentiments in the region – France was somewhat pushed out – but it was partly voluntary, as France reordered their security priorities towards eastern Europe. Russian expansion in Africa is not necessarily reflecting their strength, as is becoming clear from their impotence in Mali.
Even if JNIM does not ultimately topple the entire country, their ability to continue exerting strong economic pressure on the capital for months on end reflects poorly on the regime’s guardians. The episode is further demonstrating tactical and operational Russian weaknesses, as has already been seen in Ukraine. Like in Syria almost a year ago, it is also displaying the strains of Russia’s global overstretch.
[Photo by Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
Peredur Morgan is a Policy Fellow at the Pinsker Centre, a UK-based foreign policy think tank focusing on the Middle East. Peredur is currently completing an MPhil in Political Thought & Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge, having previously studied at the London School of Economics and UC Berkeley.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
