How Wagner mercenaries have captured a nation

Over the past five years, the Wagner Group has insidiously gained almost complete control of the CAR’s entire security apparatus and is using it to eliminate opponents of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra or anyone who tries to stop it from seizing gold mines and other loot. That’s according to a major new report by The Sentry. Architects of Terror: The Wagner Group’s Blueprint for State Capture in the Central African Republic, meticulously details how Wagner operatives – masquerading as ‘Russian military instructors’ – first set foot in the chronically chaotic former French colony in 2018 and then systematically infiltrated the various arms of the security structure – or created new ones – to prop up Touadéra. In 2013, 15 South African soldiers were killed when they were overrun by Seleka rebels racing to topple then President François Bozizé. Wagner stepped into the chaos to help Touadéra tighten his grip on power. But the result ‘was a campaign of terror’, The Sentry says. The Daily Maverick notes that armed groups on both sides continued to commit atrocities against civilians and that partly as a result, 5.6% of CAR’s population died in 2022, ‘more than twice as high as estimates for any other country in the world’. But the Touadéra regime, backed by Wagner, is committing most of the atrocities, perpetrating ‘widespread, systematic, and well-planned campaigns of mass killing, torture, and rape throughout the country’ under the cover of a counter offensive against anti-Touadéra armed groups. The Sentry was told that Wagner’s motto is ‘leave no trace’, in other words, kill everyone, including women and children. It says Wagner fighters, CAR soldiers and militiamen trained by Wagner have committed crimes ‘that could qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity’.

Full report in The Sentry

Full Daily Maverick report