The future of the Wagner Group, a private mercenary conglomerate linked to Russian foreign policy, is uncertain, raising questions about its global footprint.
What transpired in Russia over the past month continues to be shrouded by unanswered questions. At the centre of the intrigue remains the Wagner Group – a private mercenary conglomerate based out of a plush, modern highrise in St Petersburg and led by Yevgeny Prighozin – which became synonymous with Russian foreign policy designs when it got contracts from Moscow across regions such as Africa and the Middle East. Wagner was seen as Moscow’s Swiss army knife, efficient and effective in various schemes and situations.
Fighters-for-hire is not a new concept, and neither is Wagner the first to benefit from this in modern conflicts. But they have always been controversial. On the peripheries of America’s campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, companies such as (the ominously named) Blackwater, run by former US Navy SEAL-turned-businessman Eric Prince, gained notoriety in replacing traditional armed forces in some conflict zones, mostly conducting protection assignments. In 2007, Blackwater contractors escorting a convoy of American diplomats following a car bombing in Baghdad got into an altercation that killed 17 civilians in the city’s Nisour Square. Already-strained relations between Iraq and the US plummeted.
While Blackwater was eventually made defunct in 2009, Prince has continued to envision a role of private armies backing American interests.
Whether Wagner or Blackwater, private mercenaries in war zones as replacement for State-run armies has repeatedly come upfront as a poor strategy. While Blackwater was eventually made defunct in 2009, Prince has continued to envision a role of private armies backing American interests. In 2021, reports suggested Prince came up with a blueprint to create a private army in Ukraine as well.
Wagner, however, was different. The group was intricately woven into the complex power structures of the Kremlin, starting from President Vladimir Putin (who himself claimed Wagner received $1 billion in a year) but also extending to the elite and oligarch ecosystems. However, today, questions around Wagner’s survival are not just about the internal fissures in Russia, but also the future of the formidable footprint of the group across the world.
13 countries in Africa are known to have Wagner’s mercenaries deployed, especially in very fragile states where Islamist groups aligned with the likes of Islamic State (ISIS) and al Qaeda have been gaining ground. In the Middle East, Wagner deployments were hand-in-hand with Russian interests in and around the war in Syria. In 2018, US Special Forces even battled Wagner mercenaries in eastern Syria. While reports say the Kremlin will assume control of Wagner’s forces after it is fully dissolved, questions remain over the loyalties of mercenary fighters. The fear is always of local commanders assuming leadership of newer mercenary groups in their region of deployment, and starting their own business, using access and knowledge of localised conflicts.
While full-scale traditional conflicts attract the ire of the international community, hybrid conflicts tend to pass under the radar.
Unfortunately, these fears are dwarfed by the growing interest of States to raise and use private-armed groups to further their strategic options as hybrid warfare increasingly looks cheaper and a more viable option than full-scale conflicts. While full-scale traditional conflicts attract the ire of the international community, hybrid conflicts tend to pass under the radar. This, for example, is why many dictatorships in Africa found the likes of Wagner as good tools for coercive regional strategies. This is precisely why the very idea of foreign fighters, translated to private foreign citizens taking up arms, should have been more forcefully pushed back against.
These tactics, today popularised by jihadist groups such as IS, come with significant baggage as was shown repeatedly during counter-terror operations and strategies in places such as Iraq and Syria. Non-state militias cannot stabilise a State by taking on another non-state militia. Kinetic strategies cannot replace political capacities, even in the short term as a stability seeking policy. Strategies popularised by jihadist groups should be shunned as practices, not absorbed as learnings.
State and non-state entities work in completely different ecosystems, the former is answerable to the people, the latter is designed to suppress them. The brightest silver lining of the Wagner coup saga is that governments may also finally absorb the risks of the model backfiring. Most such groups are created in and around ideological or financial anchoring, and while creating them is easy, successfully managing them long-term is a whole different ball game. Putin would know.
This commentary originally appeared in Hindustan Times.
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Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with Strategic Studies programme. His research focuses on Indias relations with West Asia specifically looking at the domestic political dynamics ...
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