Russia is unofficially in a state of war with Mali’s terrorist-designated Tuareg rebels due to the Africa Corps’ role in helping the Malian Armed Forces (FAMA) repel the onslaught led by the “Azawad Liberation Front” (FLA) and their “Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin” (JNIM) radical Islamist allies. Wagner arrived in Mali in late 2021 with the expectation of helping it fight groups like JNIM, not FLA separatists, yet the Russian-Tuareg War was inevitable in hindsight from that moment onwards.
There was no way that France, and later the US and Ukraine in the years following the start of the special operation several months later in February 2022, would pass up the opportunity to co-opt the Tuareg against Russia amidst this minority’s fragile peace deal with the state (the 2015 Algiers Accord). From their perspective, embroiling Russia in a foreign-backed civil war half a hemisphere away would force it into the zero-sum dilemma of mission creep with escalating costs or an undignified retreat under fire.
As for the Tuareg, like the Kurds, they’ve always accepted support from anyone for furthering their autonomous-separatist cause (their objective differed across the several Tuareg Wars in Mali and Niger after independence) even though this also furthers their patrons’ cause (including radical Islamists’). Such was the case with the support they earlier received from the late Gaddafi, which now takes the form of speculative support from France and the US as well as confirmed support from Ukraine.
The Malian state is of course naturally opposed to separatism and always felt uncomfortable granting the Tuareg any degree of autonomy per the terms of earlier peace deals, ergo why it always delayed implementation thereof, thus inevitably sparking another round of war after some time. Accordingly, it framed the Tuareg cause as a terrorist one by pointing to select instances of its adherents employing such means, after which it requested that Wagner assist FAMA with destroying it once and for all.
Russia acceded because it had by then lost most of its Soviet-era regional expertise that could have otherwise informed decisionmakers that they were being manipulated into involvement in a civil war on anti-terrorist grounds due to the insurgents’ occasional employment of such means. Unlike the USSR, the Russian Federation has struggled to replenish its expert pool due to much less funding, and some of those who passed specialist training also later left for the private sector or went abroad for higher pay.
Russia thus became a direct participant in the Malian Civil War, in which the Tuareg have received various degrees of foreign support, instead of more effectively advancing its host’s objective “Democratic Security” interests by proposing creative diplomatic solutions before resorting to the use of force. Even worse, FAMA apparently took Wagner and then the Africa Corps’ support for granted, which accounts for why it failed to master intelligence collection, drone use, and raiding despite over four years of training.
To channel Putin when referring to Syria’s accidental shooting down of a Russian spy plane in late 2018 while trying to hit an Israeli jet, “it is more a chain of tragic circumstances” that led to the Russian-Tuareg War than anything else, and it was also avoidable in retrospect. The sooner that Russia realizes this, the sooner that it might propose creative diplomatic solutions, with a credible political deal that’s actually implemented being the only way to resolve the Malian Civil War and join forces against radical Islamists.
