Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group have sustained heavy casualties in a new surge of fighting between government troops and rebels over the control of lucrative goldmines in Central African Republic (CAR).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The clashes come amid increasing instability in the anarchic, resource-rich country, which in recent years has become one of Russia\u2019s main hubs of influence in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The government offensive is led by some of the estimated 1,000 Wagner fighters stationed in CAR since 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wagner was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin, and has been deployed in about a dozen African countries as part of a Russian effort to project power on the continent and extract valuable resources. Last month, the US designated Wagner as a \u201csignificant transnational criminal organisation\u201d, in part because of its increasing role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In CAR, Wagner fighters have defended the regime of Faustin-Archange Touad\u00e9ra against successive rebel attacks on the capital, Bangui, and have been accused of human rights abuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The clashes started two weeks ago in a town near the border with Cameroon and Chad, pitting rebels against the Russians and the government troops. Violence flared again near the Sudanese border last weekend. Between seven and 17 Wagner fighters were among the dozens of casualties, rebel sources claimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have lost two [killed] and many injured, but we defeated them and confiscated many military trucks \u2026 We staged an ambush and they fell into the trap,\u201d said Ahmadou Ali, a senior leader in the rebel Coalition of Patriots for Change, in a phone interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Experts say reliable figures are difficult to establish, but that it is clear Wagner sustained relatively heavy casualties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A source close to CAR\u2019s national military said seven Russians had been killed in the ambush, one of the heaviest single losses by Wagner in Africa since battles against Islamist rebels in Mozambique in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ali said CAR\u2019s forces had not joined the fighting. \u201cIt was a battle between us and the Russians. They only used the government troops to legitimise things. The Russians have taken all over the country. They are everywhere: they guard the borders and you see them everywhere there are [valuable] resources. They stole all our resources,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though Touad\u00e9ra\u2019s grip on power remains strong, the new violence suggests greater instability in CAR than in recent years, analysts said. The country, one of the poorest in the world, is facing economic collapse. A series of shifts in the alignment of regional powers in recent months have also raised tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe government in Bangui is totally running out of money,\u201d said Enrica Picco, central Africa director for the international Crisis group. \u201cWagner don\u2019t fully control all the mining sites and there is still fighting at several. The group\u2019s move [into frontier zones] changed the conflict dynamics because the rebel factions there united in the face of the common enemy to protect their mining revenues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marie-Reine Hassen, a former diplomat and an opposition politician, said the president should give up power. \u201cHe\u2019s losing it and nobody wants him, I know he won\u2019t do it, but the country is a mess. People are dying of hunger, no clean water, no electricity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year there was another round of clashes after Wagner fighters attacked artisanal goldmines along the CAR border with Sudan. Dozens of miners were killed in at least three attacks and witnesses interviewed by the Guardian described \u201cmassacres\u201d by fighters they identified as being from Wagner, who swept through encampments full of migrant miners and mine workings during a six-week period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since Wagner arrived in CAR, it has tried to establish control over the flow of gold and diamonds as part of a broader push to secure resources. Analysts believe the group was initially promised gold and other mining concessions for its services in place of cash payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such concessions have gained in importance as the Russian rouble has come under pressure since Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. Precious metals, especially gold, could help Vladimir Putin\u2019s regime survive the economic impact of sanctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new clashes are a further example of how intervention by Wagner is often linked to an increase in civilian deaths, despite the group\u2019s boasts that they fight insurgents more effectively than UN peacekeepers or conventional troops deployed by former colonial powers such as France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A study by the NGO the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project found that civilians were targeted in more than half of the political violence involving Wagner in CAR, and 71% in Mali, where the Russian mercenaries were deployed in late 2021 to reinforce a military-led regime as French troops withdrew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn both cases, this exceeds the rate of civilian targeting perpetrated by allied state forces, as well as the major insurgent groups operating in each context,\u201d the NGO said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Human Rights Watch, in a report in May, said forces in CAR who witnesses identified as Russian appeared to have beaten, tortured and killed civilians there since 2019. It said Russia-linked forces in CAR did not wear a designated uniform and had no official insignia or other distinguishing features.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group have sustained heavy casualties in a new surge of fighting between government troops and rebels over the control of lucrative goldmines in Central African Republic (CAR). The clashes come amid increasing instability in the anarchic, resource-rich country, which in recent years has become one of Russia\u2019s main hubs of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11261,1648,4899,8607,11394,9204,1451,2272,11583,13175,7331,1065,8289,6848,9233,4024,10767,8440,7396,8041,5800,5575,6351,5918,2264,10453,10840,5661,12298,12773,11111,10954,11493,5252,9515,1152,5721,10634,5317,9477,6461,5572,10423,11712,7795,5612,5340,1134,11973,7039,13334,3805,9320,71,6858,5917,3457,5217,3852,5713,8840,6730,9178,5180,5465,11578,5815,6348,694,9318,10292,10943,8869,12790,36,594,7986],"class_list":["post-29442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accused","tag-africa","tag-african","tag-african-countries","tag-attacks","tag-border","tag-businessman","tag-cameroon","tag-capital","tag-car","tag-cash","tag-central-african-republic","tag-chad","tag-civilians","tag-collapse","tag-common","tag-conflict","tag-crisis","tag-data","tag-diplomat","tag-electricity","tag-france","tag-french","tag-gold","tag-government","tag-guard","tag-human-rights","tag-human-rights-watch","tag-hunger","tag-increase","tag-injured","tag-international","tag-interview","tag-invasion","tag-killed","tag-kremlin","tag-losses","tag-lost","tag-mali","tag-mercenaries","tag-migrant","tag-military","tag-mine","tag-miners","tag-mining","tag-money","tag-moscow","tag-mozambique","tag-one","tag-phone","tag-precious-metals","tag-president","tag-prigozhin","tag-putin","tag-rebels","tag-rouble","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-russians","tag-sanctions","tag-strong","tag-sudan","tag-troops","tag-ukraine","tag-un","tag-un-peacekeepers","tag-uniform","tag-us","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-wagner","tag-wagner-group","tag-watch","tag-water","tag-weekend","tag-world","tag-who","tag-yevgeny-prigozhin"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}