‘Callous’: Are Malian troops and Russian mercenaries attacking civilians?

Grainy camera footage showed them lying still in the blistering heat of the desert – six or seven bodies, maybe more. Wet, red spots in the sand and belongings scattered across the landscape were signs of what had happened. As the camera shifted back and forth, it caught a dirtied pair of jeans in the sand, curiously without its owner.

It was February in northern Mali. The group lying dead in the sand were reportedly returning from a wedding in the Gao region when they were attacked, not by armed groups, but allegedly by the Malian army and allied Russian mercenaries of the Wagner group. At least 20 people who had been travelling in two vehicles were killed, including children and old people.Mali’s military government, in a rare move, promised to “investigate” soldiers alleged to have been involved in the deaths as an outcry from rights groups mounted. Weeks later, there aren’t yet any results. Analysts were not surprised – saying the incident was only one of several reported killings of civilians by state forces in the insecure West African country. The Malian army has long been accused of abuses against civilians, and now Russian fighters, who have made inroads in the country in the wake of declining French military presence, are fast building a similar reputation.“The most striking difference with France’s former military presence has been Wagner’s callous strategy, characterised by wanton violence against civilians,” Constantin Gouvy, a Sahel researcher with the international affairs think tank, Clingendael Institute, told Al Jazeera, comparing the Russian fighters with French troops who were once Mali’s main support against invading armed groups before they exited the country in 2021 when Bamako and Paris fell out.

Mali has since sacked an 11,000-man United Nations peacekeeping mission, as well, and turned exclusively to Russian paramilitaries. Wagner troops were almost immediately spotted deep in enemy territory upon their deployment in 2022 and were accused by rights groups of collaborating in civilian “massacres” alongside state forces and pro-government ethnic fighter groups. However, analysts say that since August 2023, after the death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, the fighters appear to have intensified their involvement in Mali and expanded their scope of operations – at the cost of civilian lives.

Bamako is eager to weaken armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) and has targeted villagers in the north that it sees as sympathetic to them. But battles with Tuareg groups, some of whom are fighting for a secessionist state of “Azawad”, have become a key focus, and have reawakened a decades-long independence war in the north.

The travellers in the Gao convoy from February are believed to have been Tuareg.Mali’s troubled past
Between 1,000 and 1,500 Russian Wagner fighters are on the Malian front lines, which is the group’s main active battleground in the region. Wagner soldiers are similarly present in the Central African Republic and Sudan.Since 2023, Russia has sought to control the group more directly.

Some experts say Moscow is eager to avoid Wagner getting as powerful as it was under Progozhin, who staged a rebellion that embarrassed Russian President Vladimir Putin and senior defence officials just months before his death.