by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Ignore the Anglo-American propaganda now circulating from Kiev that Russia’s military has suffered a grave military defeat in the Sahara desert, when Tuareg (Touareg) forces destroyed a Russian Wagner unit and Malian government forces in five days of battle at Tinzaouaten, on the desert border between Algeria and Mali.
“Russia’s Wagner Group has suffered significant battleground losses in Mali,” the Financial Times, a Japanese-owned propaganda agency in London, claimed in reporting from Kiev and Lagos (Nigeria). “Graphic videos posted on Russian Telegram channels showed a sandy landscape strewn with dozens of bodies, some wearing Russian Orthodox crosses, and multiple burnt-out vehicles…Some pro-Kremlin military commentators have blamed the failure of the Mali operation on the clean-up imposed on Wagner after Prigozhin led an uprising against the Russian defence ministry last year. He died with several other Wagner leaders in a plane crash believed to be a Kremlin-directed assassination.”
The Guardian reported the source for a similar story to be an official of the Ukrainian military intelligence service (GUR) in Kiev. Videoclips of the battle published on the internet carry advertisements for the Ukraine regime and appeals for donations.
This is what the US, French and British propaganda agencies and intelligence services want readers, especially African and Arab readers, to think.
What has really happened is a different story. This is already surfacing in the Moscow press because the Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry, and intelligence services want it understood that the Wagner men lost their lives at Tinzaouaten last week following a series of military mistakes driven by a strategic miscalculation which flies in the face of years of Russian diplomatic effort in the region. In a word, don’t fight the Tuaregs on their ground – negotiate with them instead.
“We are against any unilateral steps,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s last official statement on armed conflicts in the Sahara had declared in 2021. At the same time, the Ministry made the distinction between Islamic terrorism and anti-colonial national liberation movements. “We are assisting the G5 Sahel [Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger]…We are supplying these countries with the necessary armaments enabling them to strengthen their potential to eradicate the terrorist threat. We regularly train servicemen from those countries in the Russian Federation; we train peacekeepers and law enforcement officers at our Defence Ministry’s educational establishments…According to the available facts, our Western colleagues are not too enthusiastic about this.”
Tipping in favour of the Malian government like this has meant a negative Russian attitude towards the Tuaregs. Nonetheless, “the Tuaregs have lived there forever,” a Moscow reporter close to military intelligence reported this week. “Previous advances of the Wagner units in the liberation of Kidal and other areas of northern Mali do not cancel the fact that the Tuaregs are there in their thousands, and this is their desert.”
Marc Eichinger, a French expert on the region who has been based for seven years in neighbouring Niger, comments similarly: “You have Tuaregs from the same families on both sides and they hate the foreigners no matter who they are. They have a perfect knowledge of the landscape and it’s a big mistake to chase them in the desert. The French are happy not to be involved any more. You need much bigger means to fight them and if they feel at risk they just wait until the foreign army goes away.”
Map of operations of the Malian armed forces (FAMA) and Wagner group fighting Tuareg forces in the Mali-Algeria border zone, July 25-27. Click on source to enlarge view. In the battlefield video frame which is the right lead image, one of the Wagner soldiers had feigned dead, and after he was kicked by one of the Tuareg fighter, the film records that he got up and started to run with a stone in his hand. He was then shot by one of the fighters. According to Marc Eichinger, “you can find the Tuareg representatives in Bamako [Mali] and in Niamey [Niger]. If you surrender, they don’t shoot you because alive, you have a market value. The Tuaregs and the Tubu tribesmen are good fighters in the desert. The desert is huge and very hostile, so if you start chasing them at home, you are dead. You can only go from one water supply source to another one. Having armoured vehicles doesn’t help, it’s too heavy, the same with body armour.”
The Russian reports of what happened at the battle of Tinzaouaten include press releases by the Mali armed forces (FAMa) and by the Wagner group, aka Africa Corps, as well as leaks from Russian military intelligence and the Defense Ministry in Moscow. The Anglo-American press reports have ignored Malian, Russian, and Tuareg sources.
The Russian dead have been counted between 20 and 80; those taken prisoner number between 15 and 20, some or all of whom have been returned for ransom.
The senior leader of the Wagner group, Anton Yelizarov, has been reported captured alive and returned; he was reported to be the successor in command of Wagner’s African formation after Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, the overall Wagner leaders, were killed on August 23, 2023.
Sergei Shevchenko, the commander of the combat unit known as the 13th assault detachment, was killed, along with another well-known Wagner fighter Nikita Fedyanin, who directed the Grey Zone, the Wagner group’s Telegram publication.
Left: publication of the Wagner combat unit with their Typhoon troop carrier, before the battle in the Grey Zone Telegram channel. Right: Screen shot of one of the Wagner unit vehicles after the battle.
Left to right: Anton Yelizarov; Nikita Fedyanin.
Some of the Russian reports claim the Tuaregs were assisted by the French, by Ukrainian mercenaries, and by a decision of the Algerian government to close the border and block the movement of a thousand-man force of the Tuaregs into safe haven, forcing them to turn and fight the advance of the Russians and Malians. None of these claims can be corroborated.
The Ukrainian claims are dismissed in the Moscow military reports. “Ukraine allegedly supplies weapons to the Tuaregs, including UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles, drones],” comments Yevgeny Krutikov. “However, the Tuaregs do not have drones at all. They also do not have guns from Ukraine. But about the intelligence information that the Ukraine allegedly supplied to the Tuaregs, it’s more difficult to say. Such assistance is theoretically possible. In particular, the Ukrainians in Africa have worked under the wing of British intelligence MI6 as information couriers. But in that case, it was not Ukrainian data, but British. The only likelihood in which Ukrainian citizens can be involved is to have listened in on the radio communications of Wagner [men] speaking in Russian…It is possible that in the African zone there are some singles or small groups [of Ukrainians] affiliated mainly with MI6. But it is necessary to distinguish between the real situation on the ground and the information war.”
On July 30, a Telegram channel reportedly speaking for the Tuareg forces announced in French: “CSP-DPA [coalition of Tuaregs and Arabic-speaking rebels known as the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development] does not have a Ukrainian partner, and we are alone against Wagner and AES [Alliance des États du Sahel, Alliance of Sahel States] countries.”
For a neutral backgrounder on the evolution of the 60-year Tuareg fight for the homeland in northern Mali they call Azawad, read this from Le Monde Diplomatique.
Source: https://mondediplo.com/
To begin to understand the Tuaregs and Libyan Berbers like the former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, start here.
In the accounts of the Forces Armées Malienne (FAMa) – the Malian Armed Forces – and in the Wagner bulletins republished by Boris Rozhin of Colonel Cassad, Mikhail Zvinchuk of Rybar, The Militarist, and other military blogs, the battle of Tinzaouaten was the culmination of operations which began on July 22. Their objective moving northeastward from the Malian towns of Kidal and I-n-Afarak was to attack concentrations of Tuareg forces and drive them out of Tinzaouaten, closing the Mali-Algerian border against their return.
In the first clash, Wagner says it struck at about 100 Tuaregs equipped with large-calibre machineguns mounted on 10 pickup trucks. Wagner claims to have killed 50, and begun pursuit of the remainder eastward towards Tinzaouaten.
A severe sandstorm then struck, cutting off the Wagner unit and the Malians from their air support, and allowing the Tuaregs to position themselves on high ground for a counter-attack they launched in daylight (right). They shot down one of the Russian helicopters and damaged the second, forcing it to retreat to base. There was no retreat, however, for the Wagner unit on the ground, and they were overwhelmed by the larger Tuareg force. The battle ended late in the afternoon of July 27 when the last radio message was received from Shevchenko to say: “The three of us remain, we continue to fight.”
In Moscow this week, the military intelligence assessment is that it had been “assumed that the occupation of Tinzaouaten would be a spectacular point for the end of the war with the Tuaregs and would symbolize the strength of the government of Mali… The Malian command apparently imagined a raid on Tinzaouaten would be a copy of the recent triumphal procession in I-n-Afarak. Therefore, there was no heavy equipment in the column, but there were bloggers. There were no sappers, there was no advanced guard, it was not supported by aviation, and the weather forecast a sandstorm. From the beginning, the idea of this march was ill-conceived.”
“The Wagner group management did not participate in the planning of the operation. The Russian African Corps [AK], whose responsible officers are not even in Mali, but in Burkina Faso, Niger, and the Central African Republic, were in general accord, but not on the particulars, although it was the AK officers who arrived at the battlefield on the evening of July 27 and participated in the ransom of prisoners. A large group of Russian military doctors also arrived.”
According to Mikhail Zvinchuk, editor in chief of Rybar: “In narrow circles, they are already trying to justify the defeat of the columns by the fact that the Americans, the French, the British, the aliens [Ukrainians] joined in planning of the operation. In fact, we see another example of serious underestimation of the enemy…Despite the initial successes and damage to the separatists at the beginning of the offensive, to consolidate the success was impossible because of the limited strength [of the Wagner unit]…Most likely, the commander on the ground [Shevchenko] decided that he was at war with dumb monkeys and would be able to clean them up. The fact that the Tuaregs have waged successful combat operations in their native desert for twelve years already was probably ignored. Alas, it is for such mistakes that the reputation has been lost, not only of the African Corps, but also of the power of Russian weapons. We hope the adventure at Tinzaouaten will be a lesson for the military leadership on the ground.”
“Underestimating the enemy in the face of the Tuaregs and inventing excuses only complicates the task of preparing and planning the battles to come. And it would be better for the Russian side to train the Malians for this as soon as possible. In the end, we have gone through it ourselves.” https://t.me/s/rybar
The Tsargrad internet video and news platform in Moscow has romanticized the military prowess and exploits of the Wagner group in the past. It now claims that “usually, the Tuaregs have withdrawn o Algeria during the Malian operations, and then returned. But this time the Algerians blocked their passage, and the militants had to fight. The [Russian] aircraft could not work properly due to a sandstorm, and the Tuaregs managed to cut off one of the columns. Thus, Wagner fell into a trap.”
Tsargrad has also promoted Ukrainian source claims that the Tuaregs had outside, foreign help. “In principle, I doubt that the sheep herders themselves would be able to defeat a platoon of our elite “musicians” [Wagner forces], and even bring down two helicopters.”
Tsargrad continues to defend Wagner but blames Yelizarov for lacking the military skills of the former commanders, Prigozhin and Utkin.
Other Moscow reporters blame Fedyanin for impulsiveness. On July 21, he had been critical of the “mentality” of the Malian forces for their reluctance to engage the Tuaregs in combat. “Anyone who has been on foreign business trips knows how difficult it is sometimes to organize the advance of a column with allies, because of, let’s say, their mentality. In the Middle East and Africa, local life goes slowly.”
The scapegoating now under way in the military blogs signals the likelihood of a fresh purge by the Defense Ministry of the Wagner leftovers in the Africa Corps. “The traditionally difficult relationship between the Wagner group and the structures of the Ministry of Defense has not been overcome,” reports the National New Service (NSN). “At the same time, it is obvious that the scale of the conflict is growing, and the Wagner group, even with all its experience and organization, may not have enough resources to win. The overall success of Russia on the African continent depends on the coherence of various groups of Russian security forces in the region.”
Ignorance of the politics of the Sahel region and of its racial and tribal politics has long marked Russian thinking since the Soviet period. Prejudice was also displayed by the Kremlin towards Qaddafi, the Berbers, the Tuaregs, and also the Polisario movement in the western Saharan war with Morocco. This contributed to President Dmitry Medvedev’s and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s agreement not to oppose the US, French and British operation to kill Qaddafi and take over Libya in 2011. For more details, read the Soviet-Libya story in Chapter 7 of the book.
The shift towards Israel by the Kremlin over the past twenty-five years followed the collapse of Russia’s gas and aluminium interests in Libya: that story has been documented here and here. Resistance to the pro-Israel shift by the Russian Foreign Ministry has proved a failure.
Left: Libya’s President Muammar Qaddafi on his first visit to Moscow, April 27, 1981, with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to his left; behind and to Qaddafi’s right, Abdelati al-Ubaidi, then Libya’s Foreign Minister, later Prime Minister. Right: The Jackals’ Wedding, published in February 2022.
There are just four references to the Tuaregs in the Foreign Ministry archive over the past quarter century. In 2012, asked what his response was to the Tuareg claims against the Malian government, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took the side of Mali against the Tuaregs. “We consider this as a real threat of dissolution of sovereign UN member state. Most analysts see here one of the real manifestations of continuing crisis over Libya, which resulted in greatly complicated efforts to ensure the unity of the Libyan state. Now the negative consequences flow over its borders and pop up directly in Mali. We have already said that in principle Russia did not see anything unnatural in coming to power of Islamist politicians in various states. It is important that this was a constitutional manner to be the means of general election based on the will of people. When the attempts to seize power by force, to undermine constitutional order and to dismember the state are taken, we cannot interpret such action otherwise, as undermining the foundations of modern international law… We shall provide political support for efforts to restore the territorial integrity of Mali and transfer of the situation in political and constitutional channels. Hopefully, it will be another lesson for all of us, particularly in relation to other situations in the Middle East [Syria war] and North Africa [Libya war].”
The last reference to the Tuaregs was in a foreign ministry press briefing by Maria Zakharova in 2015. “The situation in the country as a whole remains tense, with persistent confrontation between Mali’s government and the Tuareg-led opposition. The situation is further complicated by interference from radical Islamist groups who continue to perpetrate terrorist attacks against the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), Malian servicemen, and civilians. We agree with the assessments cited by Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General Mongi Hamdi in a briefing at the UN Security Council on October 6 concerning the need to improve the efficiency of MINUSMA and increase the impact of its activities.”
The lack of sympathy for the national aspirations of the Tuaregs contrasts with the Foreign Ministry’s explicit balancing of Russian support between the sides in the Western Sahara war, the Polisario Front and Morocco. Lavrov declared in 2021 “Everywhere there are resolutions approved by consensus, which are laying the international legal foundations for solving this or that problem. In Western Sahara’s case, the resolutions imply a direct dialogue between Morocco and the Polisario Front. This dialogue should be resumed as soon as possible. These talks should start and facilitate the elaboration of compromise solutions meeting the interests of both sides. Instability in North Africa and the Sahara-Sahel zone is affecting the general situation and is behind the lack of progress with a Western Sahara settlement. This does not add anything positive. We believe that the developments in the Sahara-Sahel region must on the contrary induce the sides – Morocco and the Polisario Front – to make more active efforts to generate hope in this sector.”
“If the situation is left as is, the terrorists may try to exploit the desperate plight of the Western Saharan population to spread their tentacles there. We know that various extremists, including militants from Al-Qaeda, Islamic Maghreb, and ISIS are thinking that way. Their plans are quite extensive. We have become alarmed: Morocco and the Polisario Front are not only unable to resume direct talks but in November 2020, both withdrew from the ceasefire arrangement that had lasted for nearly 30 years…A year ago, the United States recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the whole of Western Sahara. This is not helping anything. On the contrary, this directly contradicts and undermines the generally recognized principles of the Western Saharan settlement, under which the final status of this territory can only be determined by a referendum. We hope that no sudden moves of this sort will be forthcoming in the future and that everyone will use their capabilities to induce the sides to sit down at the negotiating table rather than to support one side against another.”
The doctrine of “no sudden moves” was repeatedly flouted by the Wagner group under Prigozhin, not only in Africa but also at home, and led to his demise last year. The subsequent Defense Ministry reorganization of the Africa Corps has brought the two lines of Russian military and foreign policy thinking closer in line together. At the same time, the escalation of the US and NATO war against Russia’s international trade, especially in the gas and oil sector, and the rising value of Russian arms exports to the Sahel and sub-Saharan African states, have reinforced the balancing act between governments but tipped it against national liberation forces like the Polisario and the Tuaregs.
King Mohammed VI of Morocco meets President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov in the Kremlin on March 15, 2016.
Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune at the Kremlin with Putin, June 15, 2023.
In his only direct statement on Mali on February 8, 2022, President Putin claimed there were commercial Russian interests in Mali but not strategic ones. “Regarding Mali, President Macron raised this issue many times, we discussed it with him, and President Macron is aware of our position on this matter. The Russian government, the Russian state have nothing to do with the companies that are working in Mali. As far as we know, the Malian leadership has no complaints about the commercial activities of these companies. Following the logic that may be applied to NATO, the current member states and potential members, if Mali has opted to work with our companies, it has the right to do so. However, I would like to point out – I will talk about this with President Macron after this news conference – I would like to point out that the Russian state has nothing to do with this. It concerns the commercial interests of our companies, which coordinate their activities with the local authorities.”
Russian bauxite, iron ore and goldmining groups, Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal and Alexei Mordashov’s Severstal Resources and Nordgold, are substantial investors in Guinea, Liberia, and Burkina Faso. The principal goldminers in Mali are Canadian — Barrick Gold and B2 of Canada. For the time being, they have employed the Wagner group for mine security. There is no sign of a Russian oligarch lobbying the Kremlin, the foreign or defense ministries for support to oust the Canadians from their mine licenses, despite the Canadian government’s warmaking against Russia in the Ukraine.
In an attempt to clarify the military mistakes which the Wagner unit made and identify the strategic Russian objectives which continue in the region, the semi-official Vzglyad platform in Moscow published Yevgeny Krutikov’s essay on Monday evening. Between the lines Krutikov’s military intelligence sources intimate there was more advance planning for the move on Tinzaouaten than has been acknowledged to date; and thus more possibility of early warning to the Tuaregs through foreign intelligence listening posts.
“The Wagner group and the Africa Corps had been able to achieve what the French had promised but failed. “The new government of Mali, relying on the Russian PMC [private military company], was able to dislodge the Tuaregs from the majority of the territory it occupied in a short time. The city of Kidal, which the Tuaregs had held for ten years and called their capital, was liberated by the Wagner PMC in three months. Relying on Kidal, the government army and Wagner marched north into the desert, occupying large oases almost without a fight. The advance took two roads, since the rest of the territory, which was formally occupied by the Tuaregs, was an uninhabited desert. On July 22, government troops and Wagner triumphantly entered the oasis of I-n-Afarak on the Algerian border. This event was staged by the Malian authorities with some theatricality, as it foreshadowed an imminent victory over the Tuaregs. Indeed, by this point, only a narrow strip of desert along the Algerian border with the Tinzaouaten oasis remained under separatist control.”
“Simultaneously with the raid on I-n-Afarak, another group of government troops, with the support of the Wagners, moved on July 23 from the FAMa base in Tessalit towards Tinzaouaten. It was assumed that the occupation of Tinzaouaten would be a spectacular end point of the war with the Tuaregs and would symbolize the strength of the Government of Mali. Unexpectedly, the Tuaregs put up fierce resistance…Algeria itself is fighting both the same Tuaregs and the same jihadists, and does not want to allow them to enter its territory from Mali. Algeria began to deploy its troops closer to the border, but to get there means crossing the entire Sahara from north to south. On July 27, the Malian aviation was still able to attack the Tuareg positions, but by the end of the third day of the battle it became clear that Tinzaouaten could not be taken by surprise. The Malian army and Wagner began to retreat along another road towards Kidal through the wadi, the dry bed of the ancient Tamassahart River. As a result, the column was first blown up by a large improvised explosive device, and then was trapped in the lowlands of the wadi between a Tuareg detachment and an unexpected jihadist detachment.”
“Usually, Tuaregs do not cooperate with jihadists – they are different peoples, different ideologies, and they have fundamentally different goals. Moreover, they had previously attacked each other regularly. But in this case, they rallied against a common enemy, which the Malian intelligence could not reveal in time.”
“The incident has once again raised the question of the form in which military-political cooperation between Russia and the Sahel countries, which recently announced the creation of a confederation, is necessary and possible. First of all, it is worth remembering that at the heart of all the problems of the Sahel countries lies the long-term war against international Islamic terrorism, and in some places with various separatist movements (national, tribal, religious) …The status of the Africa Corps is also still not completely clear. Russian embassies in some Sahel countries have only recently resumed their work. There are also no attached Russian advisers in the armies of the countries of the Sahel Confederation, as it was in Soviet times. And it is not clear how the Russian presence will be integrated into the emerging general military command of the Sahel Confederation. The lack of official status of the Russian military presence with the local authorities creates risks that the Tinzaouaten story may repeat itself.”
Krutikov reports the lessons of the Wagner defeat at Tinzaouaten which are being learned in Moscow right now.
“It is highly desirable that the Sahel Confederation officially introduces a counter-terrorism operations regime. This, in turn, would make it possible to formalize Russian military assistance, as it was effectively done earlier in the Central African Republic. And then there will be fewer losses on the region’s external borders. As a matter of fact, it was precisely with this ideological trend that the attempt to put an end to the Tuareg separatists in two columns in three days was connected. If a Russian military specialist had been next to the Malian comrades at the time of making such a decision, there would almost certainly have been the decision – no raid on Tinzaouaten. And so Wagner turned out to be a hostage to the political ambitions of the local authorities. The main problem of the Sahel countries today is the war against jihadism and separatism. Russian law enforcement agencies are able to help solve this problem.”
As for the Tuaregs, it is Eichinger’s view that “Wagner/Afrika Corps have absolutely no chance to win — it’s just a matter of time.”
Leave a Reply