United Nations MUNISMA peacekeepers patrol the streets in the city of Gao, eastern Mali on 3 August, 2018. Photo: AFP / SEYLLOU
On a Friday in June, the government of Mali, a landlocked country in West Africa about the size of the Northern Territory, made a surprising request.
They wanted the roughly 13,000 UN peacekeepers stationed there to pack up and leave as soon as possible.
For a decade, peacekeepers from 55 nations have been deployed in Mali to help stabilise the country and act as a bulwark against extremist insurgency in the lawless north.
But since 2021, Mali's leaders have increasingly turned their backs on Western help and instead enlisted mercenaries from the Wagner Group, the shadowy Russian paramilitary outfit led by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
In Timbuktu, a town bordering Mali's vast, dry heartland, Wagner men patrol busy streets and marketplaces shoulder to shoulder with Malian soldiers.
"They are always scary. Whether you like it or not, you have to submit to their laws," said an interpreter working for the UN in Timbuktu who asked not to be named because he feared becoming a target.
"They dress just like the Malians. With a scarf, they hide all their faces. You cannot see them unless you get close to them."
Prigozhin's attempted mutiny last month might have failed in Russia, but in Mali and a handful of other African nations, the Wagner Group's influence is expanding.
A video posted to Telegram on 19 July appeared to show Prigozhin telling his fighters they would no longer have a role in the war in Ukraine, and instead ordering them to refocus on Africa.
'They say they are Russian instructors'
For years, the mercenary outfit has quietly set up a presence on the continent, building partnerships with coup leaders and autocrats, offering military training and private security in exchange for mining rights.
In the Central African Republic, where statues depict Wagner forces as heroes and the president often appears in public flanked by Kalashnikov-wielding Wagner men, hundreds more mercenaries recently arrived ahead of a 30 July referendum.
In Mali, there are estimated to be more than 1000 Wagner personnel, with dozens in Timbuktu alone.
"They say they are Russian instructors. That's the terminology we have to use," said Mahamane Alidji Touré, a presenter at Radio Bouctou, a community radio station in Timbuktu.
Once a nation on a path to democracy, a military coup in 2012 followed by a rebel uprising a month later laid foundations for the next decade of instability.
On Mali's request, French troops were deployed to the country a year later to try and contain the spiralling rebellion.
Around the same time, the UN established MINUSMA, a peacekeeping mission in Mali, tasked with supporting the country's political transition and protecting civilians.
But a coup in 2021 installed former Malian special forces commander Assimi Goïta as interim president.
Soon afterwards, Goïta's invitation of Wagner mercenaries into the country helped sour relations with France, whose more than 2000 troops pulled out last year.
Five days of horror unleashed by 'armed white men'
Very quickly, Wagner forces have made a name for themselves in Mali as imposing and dangerous foreigners operating beyond the reaches of the law.
Many Malians know some version of what happened in the town of Moura last March, where over the course of five days, soldiers led by Wagner forces slaughtered more than 500 people - nearly all of them unarmed civilians.
The details of what happened were spelled out in a UN report published in May after a months-long investigation.
The UN said a military helicopter flew over the village, opening fire on people, before four other choppers landed and troops disembarked.
They corralled all the residents into the village centre, and then subjected them to unimaginable horrors.
Malian troops and "armed white men" who appeared to be in charge summarily executed hundreds of people and sexually assaulted many women.
Shortly after the UN report was published, the government asked MINUSMA peacekeepers to leave.
The sudden request was partly engineered by Prigozhin, observers said, to help "further Wagner's interests" and allow it to entrench influence in the country.
"We know that senior Malian officials worked directly with Prigozhin's employees," White House national security advisor John Kirby said last month.
This week, the US Treasury imposed sanctions against Mali's defence minister and two senior military officials accused of "facilitating the deployment and expansion" of the Wagner Group in Mali.
"These officials have made their people vulnerable to the Wagner Group's destabilising activities and human rights abuses while paving the way for the exploitation of their country's sovereign resources to the benefit of the Wagner Group's operations in Ukraine," the Treasury statement said.
US officials said there was no reason to believe Wagner was stepping back its activities to exploit countries across Africa despite June's failed mutiny in Russia.
'The situation is starting to deteriorate every day'
On the streets and in the homes of Timbuktu, Wagner's build-up paired with the UN's withdrawal of peacekeepers has terrified locals, according to several who spoke to the ABC.
Many fear the climate is already shifting, as peacekeeping patrols wind up and attacks by Islamist militants - who reject the authority of Mali's government and the UN - become more frequent.
"It will impact on the security situation and it will amplify the human rights violations already perpetrated by radical armed groups," said Mohamed Ag Ousmane, who tracks such incidents for a local NGO in Timbuktu.
Earlier this month, a group of attackers burst into the busy market in the town of Ber, about a 2.5-hour drive east of Timbuktu, and threatened traders who they accused of supplying goods to the UN with execution.
A few days later, armed assailants on motorcycles opened fire on the police station in Diré, a town roughly 1000 kilometres west from Timbuktu along the Niger river.
"You see the situation is starting to deteriorate every day," Ag Ousmane said.
With French troops gone and now UN peacekeepers leaving, rebels in control of Mali's northern regions face almost no organised resistance.
"They know that there would not be any foreign forces to stop them," said the UN interpreter, who worked closely for 10 years with UN peacekeepers on outreach missions around Timbuktu.
"If the UN leaves now and they leave us in the hands of the military, there is going to be only killing and slaughtering," he said.
'The future of the country is at stake'
Prigozhin's failed mutiny last month sent shock waves not just through Russia, but throughout countries around the world where Wagner has a presence.
As his mercenaries marched on Moscow, Syrian authorities and Russian military commanders acted quickly to stifle the uprising spreading to Syria, Reuters reported.
Worried Russian forces in Syria would be distracted by what was unfolding outside Moscow, they brought the mercenaries to heel by blocking phone lines and summoning senior Wagner staff to a Russian base.
There has been no outward indication of a similar Wagner revolt in Africa.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview broadcast on state-controlled TV, said he had not witnessed "any sign of panic or any sign of change" in Russian forces on the continent.
In Timbuktu, the UN interpreter has weighed up fleeing the country with his family against finding a new job, maybe teaching in a school or university.
But either option was fraught with risk.
"We are worried. The future of the country is at stake," he said.
This story was originally published by ABC.
