Proxy Neo-colonialism? The Case of Wagner Group in the Central African Republic

Proxy Neo-colonialism

In the past two centuries, the African continent has been heavily influenced by (neo-)imperial practices of various external actors. In the current international system, these are often connected to proxy interventions and, in the case of weak states, including the CAR, operate in an environment affected by attempts to capture the state institutions for the benefit of a limited elite. In order to properly analyse the role WG plays in the CAR, we must develop a comprehensive conceptual background of foreign intervention that would take all of these into consideration.

The concepts of neo-colonialism, a term first attributed to the writing of the first Ghanian post-colonial president and intellectual, Kwame Nkrumah, and neo-imperialism, present important conceptual underpinnings of many studies of African politics. Be it an analysis of the French and European (Charbonneau, 2008), Chinese (Lumumba-Kasongo, 2011) or Middle-Eastern (Segell, 2019) involvement on the continent, the framework maps tools utilised to promote the external interests in the African countries. For the purposes of this work, we can identify these two concepts along the work of Lumumba-Kasongo (2011) as examinations of relations between unequal through the mapping of policies that allow an external actor to promote its interest in a country over the interests of the local population. Neo-colonial policies thus include a set of tools developed to maintain a regime that works primarily in the interest of an external patron rather than the state and its population. It is mainly used to exploit resources from a state that are shipped to the neo-colonial patron rather than used for an economic benefit on the ground. Neo-imperialism more broadly operates with an idea of spheres of influence that are more or less exclusively dominated by certain powers. These two then often combine. Traditionally, these concepts were used to analyse policies, for example, in the so-called Françafrique. However, the neo-colonial and neo-imperialist frameworks allow us to more generally study the relations of external actors to the comparatively weaker and less developed countries, in this case, the tools that Russia uses to promote its interests in the CAR.

Weak states are also often plagued by the effects of state capture. State capture itself can be defined as a form of

corruption, where companies, institutions or powerful individuals use corruption such as the buying of laws, amendments, decrees or sentences, as well as illegal contributions to political parties and candidates, to influence and shape a country’s policy, legal environment and economy to their own interests. (Martini, 2014)

It thus means the utilisation of state resources to support a limited ruling elite rather than using these resources to promote the development of a state to the benefit of its population. Grzymala-Busse (2008), in her work, identified two key choices of the capturing elites that differentiate various types of state capture. The first is whether the elite shares the resources with the constituents in return for support. The second involves the issue of the permissiveness of the system for the opposition actors. More specifically, what role can the opposition play? Based on these two choices, four types of state capture can be developed, with clientelism as the softest type and predation as the most exclusive and ravaging approach to state capture, with exploitation and fusion of party and state standing in between these two. An exploitative approach to state institutions is generally observable in newly established state institutions with the short historical experience of political organisation of space around the institution of state inside the given borders. State capture thus weakens state institutions, strengthens the personalist power of controllers (Chipkin, Swilling et al., 2018, p. 19) over the redistribution of resources and develops a more fragile and permissible political environment that is susceptible to external pressures and interventions. With limited institutional oversight over the redistribution of wealth, it is comparatively easier to keep personalist control over the process, maintaining economic and political power in the unaccountable hands of a limited few.

The last piece of the puzzle consists of proxy relations in current politics. These are generally understood as policies that help an external benefactor to promote its interest through a third party. A relation between a proxy and a benefactor establishes a set of pros and cons for both sides of the equation that involves mutual dependence, plausible deniability or potential rapid changes in the nature and amount of support due to unrelated developments. Both sides of the relationship might be state or non-state actors, and the relationship might be held directly and openly or indirectly and clandestinely. Looking at the side of proxy, which is relevant for the analysis of the CAR in the context of Russian involvement in the country, we can identify clear benefits in the form of the provision of missing resources (weapons, military personnel) and general political support to an actor. The negatives, however, mainly include dependence on the provision of a given resource by the external actor that might lead to an abrupt collapse in the capacities of a proxy in case of a retreat of a benefactor (Doboš, 2020, pp. 73–77; Mumford, 2013).

From all these sources, we develop a conceptual framework of proxy, neo-colonial state capture we aim to use to explain the WG and wider Russian involvement in the CAR between late 2017 and, at minimum, the post-rebellion stabilisation of the Russian presence under WG’s successor organisations. First, such a type of state capture is only possible in weak states with limited power projection of the central government over its territory and personalist power relations. In more effective and/or institutionalised alternatives, external interventionists would face more significant obstacles to promoting their interests. Furthermore, in the contemporary international system, the utilisation of (semi-)private groups allows for plausible deniability that is crucial for the seeming maintenance of the normative high ground, including domestic support. These groups can then be used to develop a proxy relationship, allowing a friendly local political power to maintain its hold over the resources, capital city and possibly other key strategic infrastructural points in the country.

We thus argue that external actors disregarding the political processes in foreign countries aim to steer the internal political developments towards their own interests through the utilisation of various foreign policy tools. In the case of weak states, this might include the development of proxy relations, providing security to the regime in return for political and/or economic benefits. These relations can, furthermore, be held through the (semi-)private interlocutors, bringing plausible deniability for both sides of the relationship. The aim of such a relation will, nonetheless, contain a provision of some goods from the proxy regime to the benefactor in return for the regime protection that might include the physical presence of foreign armed forces or other security forces on its territory. The benefactor gains access to the resources and infrastructure to maintain its goals. The regime, capturing the state resources, survives. The benefactor thus develops neo-colonial ties to a regime dependent on its goodwill and disregarding the needs of its population.

CAR’s Politics

The CAR is a landlocked country located between South Sudan, Sudan, Chad, Cameroon and the two Congos. Its size is over 600,000 km², yet it holds a population of less than five million. The country is thus very sparsely populated, placing clear restrictions on the power-projection capabilities of the state. Furthermore, the capital of Bangui is located some 1,500 km away from the nearest commercial port, and the country holds only some 500 km of paved roads (Glock, 2018). These factors are further decreasing the viability of the governmental control over its territory and the state’s economic prosperity. Combined with lasting instability and a history of mutinies and coups, the country’s politics is welcoming to external interventionism, including various neo-colonial projects.

A former French colony, the CAR won independence on August 13, 1960, in extremely unfavourable conditions. Not only did the country face numerous internal developmental issues, but the era of colonialism enhanced divisions and distrust among the local populations. The colony was largely governed by private enterprises with generally lower standards of administration and humane behaviour towards the population compared to other colonies. Furthermore, in 1959, Barthelémy Boganda, a father of the CAR nation, died in a plane crash. The newly established regime swiftly turned towards authoritarianism and was changed in a coup in 1965. The following regime of Bokassa did not aid the situation, and the president even proclaimed himself an emperor of the Central African Empire, a title he maintained from 1976 until he was pushed out of power in 1979 with the help of the intervening French troops (Smith, 2015).

The CAR, consequently, turned into a de facto protectorate of France, which controlled the major decisions in the country and took care of the protection of the governing elites. The situation, nonetheless, changed by the end of the Cold War when African states ceased to be battlegrounds of global ideological competition. The CAR government was pushed towards democratisation, yet without any internal stabilisation and with extremely limited authority of the centre over the territory of the state. The country faced numerous mutinies of the parts of the army, and the French presence was between 1998 and 2000 exchanged for the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic (MINURCA) (UN, 2001). This, however, did not lead to any meaningful change towards larger stability, and the government faced yet another coup, led by François Bozizé, who in 2003 became, with external help, the new president of the CAR. He managed to survive the period of the so-called Bush War between 2004 and 2009, once again with the help of French troops. Maintaining power through a combination of personalist rule and sham elections, a new rebellion started to heat up in the northeast of the country. The dominantly Muslim region, geographically and infrastructurally cut off from the rest of the country, developed an anti-regime force supported by neighbouring Chad, and the group known as Séléka took over the power in the capital in 2013 (Smith, 2015).

The development was, nonetheless, countered by many. In December 2013, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution banning the delivery of weapons into the CAR (UNSC, 2013). In the same year, France sent in its troops as a part of Operation Sangaris, which remained in the country until 2016 (France24, 2016). Most importantly, the rebellion was followed by a counter-coup by the so-called Anti-Balaka movement, leading to further violence and destabilisation (Smith, 2015, pp. 44–45). France also did not see the CAR as a security, economic or political priority, rather identifying its presence as a humanitarian act, thus being less entangled in the local environment (Erforth, 2020, pp. 111–167). Nevertheless, international efforts led to the organisation of the presidential elections in 2016, which was won by Faustin-Archange Touadéra (Glock, 2018). It is with Touadéra that we can identify increased cooperation with Russia, previously almost absent in the country.

Russian Involvement in the CAR

The Russian presence in the CAR is mainly tied to the activities of the (semi-)private security corporation WG. While mercenaryism is illegal under Article 359 of the Russian Criminal Code, the unclear definition and murky status of WG and many other similar organisations turned them into a useful foreign policy tool of the Russian regime and the oligarchs that control them (Fasanotti, 2022; Marten, 2019b, pp. 184–185). In the African context, this means the promotion of Russian financial and other interests in return for the protection of the regimes against security threats. In the case of the CAR, these would include the mining of gold and diamonds and maybe also uranium (Arnold, 2019). This strategy is applicable mainly in weak states that are more susceptible to external meddling and personalist deals (Fasanotti, 2022). Such an approach fits well into the CAR’s long history of sub-contracting management of its resources—mainly diamonds—to foreigners in exchange for support for the regime (Dalby, 2015). Russian return to Africa following the disappearance of Soviet ties in the 1990s is connected to a systematic utilisation of the continent’s natural resources, attempts to receive political and diplomatic support in the international fora like the United Nations General Assembly, and the development of arms trade to friendly regimes (Besenyő, 2019; Fasanotti, 2022; Giedraitis, 2020). An example of the importance of natural resource extraction in the Russian African policy is a 2008 decision of Rosoboronexport—a Russian arms export company—to accept alternative payments for arms, including concessions for mineral extraction (Africa Research Bulletin, 2008).

WG, itself only one of many private military and security corporations in Russia (Bukkvoll & Østensen, 2020), is an organisation formed following splits and failures of several other attempts to set up (semi-)private security agencies. Likely originating in the Antiterror-Orel (or Antiterror-Tsentr) group founded in 2005, WG is partially tied to a splinter group, Moran Security Group. The organisation was reportedly already active in Africa by 2012, as some of its members were arrested in Nigeria that year. In 2013, Slavonic Corps, with some links to Moran, was founded and unsuccessfully operated in Syria in 2014. It got recalled, and some of its members transformed into the newly founded WG. WG is since utilised in conflicts around the world, including Syria or Ukraine and several African countries like Sudan, Libya, Mozambique, Mali or the CAR (Marten, 2019b, pp. 190–196). Whilst ties to the Russian State were always kept plausibly deniable, the aim of WG and other similar organisations has continued to facilitate the promotion of Russian political (support to friendly geopolitical actors) and economic (resource extraction) national interests abroad (Bukkvoll & Østensen, 2020). Such groups give a Russian state plausible deniability in cases of human rights violations that would happen throughout its activities and mask the presence of Moscow in conflicts worldwide. They also present a part of the internal Russian personalist and corrupt network. This network itself sets some limits to the efficiency of utilisation of several foreign policy tools, including the utilisation of WG, as it needs to bring patronage to its benefactors inside the Russian state (Giedraitis, 2020; Marten, 2019a; Marten, 2019b, pp. 187–188).

The involvement of WG in the CAR is tied to the 2017 meeting of President Touadéra and the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov. Touadéra turned to Russia due to the seeming inability of the MINUSCA to secure the situation in the CAR and defeat the rebel forces (Bax, 2021). The meeting led to support of the regime from the Russian side through negotiating an exemption on the UN arms trade embargo as well as the provision of foreign assistance for the CAR’s army (Africa Research Bulletin, 2018; Marten, 2019b; Mehler, 2020, p. 96; Munday, 2021). By March 2018, some 170 ‘civil advisors’, widely understood to be members of WG, entered the country (Hauer, 2018). The number of WG members in the country later grew up to 1,200 to 2,000, even though there is no publicly available contract between the CAR government and the organisation regarding the provision of its services (Bax, 2021; Fabricius, 2022). The involvement of the Russian group led to the retreat of French troops, and the regime thus remained dependent upon the WG and the remaining approximately 300 Rwandan troops, themselves part of the MINUSCA mission (Fabricius, 2022; Siegle, 2022).

Touadéra’s administration, however, did not only pursue military security for its regime but also engaged in diplomatic negotiations with various rebel groups. The debates led to the signing of the Khartoum Agreement in 2019. Nonetheless, the ceasefire did not hold long as the coalition of rebel groups led by a former president of the CAR François Bozizé, named Coalition of Patriots for Change, closed on capital following rigged presidential elections in December 2020 in which Bozizé was prohibited from participating by the country’s Constitutional Court. The rebel attack on the capital was, however, repelled by remaining foreign troops in January 2021 (Bax, 2021; Fabricius, 2022; Lechner & Lamarche, 2021). It is thus evident that WG installed itself as an important force in the CAR, able to support the regime against numerous rebellions ravaging the country. Nonetheless, such an intervention in itself does not answer the question of the possible neo-colonial nature of the WG presence in the country. In order to evaluate the utility of such an approach, a more in-depth analysis of the relationship must be presented.

Proxy Neo-colonialism?

If our conceptual framework were to work, we would expect WG and its successor organisations to mirror the actions of (semi-)private organisations in historical colonial efforts. In this respect, we need to cover three important topics: the benefits that the patron receives from the relationship, the benefits for the population at large, and the ways in which the intervention aids the capacity of the state. We argue that if our conceptual assumptions are correct, the nature of the relations will be exploitative and personalistic and will not benefit the population or state institutions in general. On the contrary, if the relationship is formalised and brings larger levels of general stability, the proxy neo-colonial framework is not suitable for the case.

As a historical analogy, we shall examine the pre-modern case of the British East India Company, the evolution of which demonstrates the passing of de jure authority to the patron state and the gradual co-opting of Indian interests through such methods of semi-private enterprise. This period encompasses a two-and-a-half-century process that began with the arrival of the Hawkins trade expedition to Gujurat in 1608 and ended with the liquidation of the EIC and the transference of its functions to the British Crown in 1858 (Wolpert, 2009, pp. 239–240). Notably, for the purposes of this analysis, this period of history is marked by similar internal and external pressures on the subject state that are contemporaneously observable in the CAR. It is also marked by the same patterns of neo-colonial exploitation and the consolidation of official rule through semi-official or unofficial means.

The EIC’s entry into the Indian subcontinent can be understood as an exercise in external balancing by Indian states against the emerging threat (Gardner, 1990, p. 120). As in the case of WG’s involvement in the CAR, the entry of the EIC into the Indian subcontinent was initially negotiated at an official level but later devolved to a semi-official actor. For years, the Portuguese had targeted pilgrims and merchants in the Indian Ocean (Makhdum, 1583, p. 80). Contemporaneously, the emergence and collapse of the heavily sectarian Safavid dynasty in Iran only further increased the reliance on maritime trade routes (Choudhury, 2015, p. 100). In this context, the defeat of the Portuguese fleet by the EIC at the battle of Suvali in 1612 sealed the EIC’s role on the continent—a role that would only expand as India experienced the great tumult of the Mughal Decline (1707–1857) (Risso, 1995, p. 114).

With its origins in the Central Asian steppe, the Mughal dynasty possessed, since its inception, a governing structure of delegated authority inherited directly from its Mongol progenitor (Conermann, 2015). Despite the expansion of the dynasty across the Indian Subcontinent, it nonetheless remained institutionally weak—the reforms during the reigns of Akbar the Great and Shah Jahan were mostly resisted by an overly inflated and stagnant bureaucracy (Hasan, 1936, p. 350). The real impact of this state of affairs was felt in matters of security, with the poorly funded, poorly organised and poorly equipped Artesh-e Mughul (Mughal Army) increasingly struggling to hold the line against the superior organisation of the Sikh Khalsa and the Maratha Rebellion. With the Vazirat (provincial administration) increasingly unable to protect themselves against internal rebellion and external conquest, the burden of defence increasingly passed to the EIC. Mughal power was thus increasingly limited to the capital, with the geopolitics of the subcontinent resembling that of the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages (Wibulsilp, 1986, p. 290).

For its part, the EIC’s close relations with local authorities increasingly drew it into internal conflicts on the subcontinent. Indeed, whilst the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) saw the broad intensification of European rivalries in the continent, it also saw those rivalries take part through a local proxy as the increasingly nationalised Compagnie Française pour le Commerce des Indes Orientales sought to aid Hyderabad against the EIC-backed Carnatic Sultanate (Sosin, 1957, p. 516). Yet, whilst the eventual gaining of the Diwan-ship of Bengal made the Company a lord of India in its own right, the rule of expansion was, and continued to be, the provision of services—namely security—to the personalist regimes of India. Even the Battle of Plassy, often viewed as a theatre of the Seven Years War, began ultimately with an arrangement between the Company and a group of Indian notables—the Jagat Seths—to replace the sitting Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Dauluh with Mir Jafar, a court official (Markovits, 2004, p. 232). Threats also emerged from within Indian states. As noted by Claude Markovits with regard to the revolt of General Gosain Rajah Anup Giri against the Nawab of Oudh: ‘(i)n exchange for military protection, the Nawab granted the Company, as early as 1775, the control of the region of Benares, and a substantial increase in the indemnity owed to the troops’ (Markovits, 2004, p. 254).

It was through these means that the Company slowly expanded across the subcontinent. Whilst the scions of the company became immensely wealthy as new frontiers brought in new opportunities, the lack of oversight made instances of plunder and abuse a norm of Company rule. Company prices, enforced upon the cultivators by a stringent monopoly, often amounted to crop seizures. The profit-focused, non-territorial nature of the Company also made it unwilling and unable to intervene in instances of famine or natural disasters (Peers, 2006, p. 47). The Company was thus exploitative and personalistic and did not benefit the population or state institutions in general.

Furthermore, whilst the Company had administrative freedom, it was never an entity unto itself. Exports of sugar, tea, cotton and indigo were unquestionably destined for the docks of London. Whilst its birth had been a crown charter as a necessity of the laws of the day regarding corporate enterprise, its intrinsic connection to the private interests of British shareholders (many of whom were members of parliament) made manifest a ‘will of all’ in the Rousseauan sense (Rousseau, 1762, p. 11). This interplay between Company interest, British private interest and the ‘public good’ caused the company to ‘increasingly become a direct emanation of the British government’ on the continent. (Markovits, 2004, p. 267). Company officers, having become immensely wealthy from the Indian trade, took up positions in Parliament. Thus, the passing of the Government of India Act 1858 (UK), whilst ostensibly vesting Company Rule in the Crown, was rather a recognition of the status quo—the recognition of the status quo of British Rule in India as a fait accompli. Far from its origins as a Commercial Enterprise, the eighteenth century had seen the EIC transform into a semi-private instrument of British colonial power (Murray, 2007, p. 57). Without costing the British taxpayer a penny, London had come to possess an immense Empire in Asia.

Having already established WG’s role in the CAR, it will now be compared with that of the East India Company. As for the economic benefits for WG and Russia, the services are reportedly mainly paid in concessions of natural resource extraction, mainly including gold and diamonds (Siegle, 2022). By the time of the entrance of WG troops to the CAR, a Russian-owned Lobaye Invest SARLU was granted gold and diamond extraction concessions. The company was arguably tied to WG through its now-deceased head, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Additionally, in 2019, the government in Bangui cancelled the gold mine licence for the Canadian Ndassima company and awarded it to a Malagasy company with Russian links (Bax, 2021; Fasanotti, 2022). The CAR also indirectly supported Russia on a diplomatic field as it was part of a group of 35 states that abstained from calling Russia to unilaterally withdraw from Ukraine in the United Nations General Assembly vote on March 2, 2022 (United Nations, 2022) and in later votes on the matter.

The security operations are largely targeting the areas where extractive activities tied to the Russian presence take place and to the capital city. WG is reportedly supporting the president’s hold on power and its own interests with very limited interest in further stabilisation of the country (Bax, 2021; Fasanotti, 2022). The government is effectively present only in the capital, and the WG is not promoting the development of the armed forces, which remain weak, but rather of the presidential guard, which is crucial for the survival of the regime. The presidential guard itself is further strengthened by the WG members themselves, thus ensuring the regime’s survival (Bax, 2021; Lechner & Lamarche, 2021; Mehler, 2020, p. 108). The presence of the Russian forces is, furthermore, limiting the effectiveness of peacebuilding operations led by the UN in the country by making some countries retreat from the mission and restricting its area of operation (Marten, 2019a). The overall security situation for the population is thus deteriorating. CAR reportedly lost 5.6% of its total population in 2022 alone (Columbia University, 2023; Gang et al., 2023), while the position of the president remains stable (Siegle, 2022). WG activities were, on numerous occasions, tied to the accusations of human rights violations, including indiscriminate targeting of the local population—especially Muslims and Fulanis. It also reportedly killed journalists mapping the activities of the group in the CAR, attempting to keep its involvement as secret as possible (Bax, 2021; Fasanotti, 2022; France24, 2016; Marten, 2019a; ReliefWeb, 2021).

Russian personnel are, additionally, directly involved in the country’s decision-making process. Valery Zakharov, a former member of FSB, the Russian internal security service, acted as a National Security Advisor of the CAR. He was reportedly not only personally participating in the making of the Khartoum Agreements but is also tied to the activities of both WG and Lobaye. Also, other Russian citizens play crucial roles inside the CAR (Olivier, 2021; Siegle, 2022). The instructors serving in the CAR were, according to Alexander Ivanov, a head of the Officer’s Union for International Security, selected through the organisation by the Russian Ministry of Defence (Bax, 2021). Russia and WG are, furthermore, utilising their personnel to penetrate the media market through their own media, Facebook and other social media campaigns and additional means like the development of movies, including ‘Tourist’ ¹ glorifying the Russian presence in the CAR (Akinola & Ogunnubi, 2021).

Thus, Russia can overstep its historical shadow and develop ties beyond its historical ties to the African continent (Marten, 2019a). The presence of WG clearly fits the theorised relationship. Its security operations allow the elites around President Touadéra to capture the government—due to very limited power projection capabilities, it is hard to talk about state capture—and control important resource extraction localities. The presence of WG is keeping decision-making in the CAR dependent on the needs of the intervening actor, something the CAR witnessed in the past through the French intervention, and the Russian citizens are involved in the key political choices. The impact for the majority of the population of the CAR is either null or negative as WG continues to be disinterested in wider population protection, is directly involved in cases of human rights violations and strengthens the personalist nature of the politics that favour the promotion of Russian interests in the country. The WG intervention is, furthermore, under the radar, allowing for plausible deniability to the Russian regime. The intervention thus ticks all the boxes of the proxy neo-colonial intervention serving an external actor through maintaining a limited exploitative elite in power with no benefits for state institutions or its population.