What Next for Mali As Wagner Fails to Defeat Insurgents?
Previous Malian governments and their French allies were unable to bring the country’s security situation under control, and this contributed to the 2020 and 2021 military coups that brought Assimi Goïta to power, writes Peter Fabricius for the Institute for Security Studies.
Fabricius wrote that the Goita-led military government replaced the French with the Wagner Group in 2022. After some initial battlefield successes, however, the Russian private military group gradually found itself just as unable to defeat the insurgents as the French, he wrote.
The ISS analyst cites a report by The Sentry – a U.S. organisation that exposes “multinational predatory networks” – which says security in the West African country is now worse than before Wagner’s entry, with an increase in attacks on civilians and civilian casualties.
