According to reports in the corporate media, Ukraine is using its special forces to attack the Russian support mission in Syria and is supplying critical intelligence to reactionary movements that are trying to dismantle Mali in Africa’s Sahel region. (thehillcom, July 2)
French imperialism has been pushed out of the Sahel. The Kiev regime in Ukraine is trying to help Paris get back in.
Russia’s involvement in Syria goes back to September 2015 when the government of Bashar al-Assad asked for military support against U.S. and other NATO intervention using reactionaries (like the so-called Islamic State or Al-Qaeda) in an attempt to overthrow the Damascus government. Russia has a training mission in northwest Syria and a naval base in the Syrian port of Tartus, which it began expanding in 2022.
U.S. imperialism still has about 1,000 soldiers stationed in Syria, mainly based in areas in the northeast close to the Iraq border where most of Syria’s oil reserves are and where the population is mostly Kurdish. Using Ukrainian special forces to harass the Russian support mission lets Washington reduce the risks that a direct confrontation of U.S. and Russian forces would involve.
Mali and the Sahel
French imperialism, the former colonial ruler of much of West Africa, began its direct military intervention in Mali in 2013 when the separatists in the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) seized Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu, major cities in the north. (Azawad is what the MNLA calls the northern part of Mali, which is in the Sahara Desert.)
The MNLA, which began as a movement representing the Tuareg people living in northern Mali, made an alliance with Ansar Dine, an affiliate of Al Qaeda. There was a lot of political maneuvering between MNLA, the Malian government, France and similar local groups.
France is the former colonial overlord of Mali and its neighbors — Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea (Conakry), Senegal and Mauritania. The French troops that made up their intervention forces failed to contain those groups attacking Mali’s government. France’s military acted so arrogantly – as if Mali was still a colony == that the Malians asked France to leave immediately in February 2022.
The French government delayed leaving, tried to wait for a change in government, since the Malian government that asked them to leave was the result of a military coup. The French delayed and left completely in August.
In 2021, the Malian government had hired the Wagner group, a privately owned Russian military company, to provide training to its armed forces and security to government officials, tasks that the French forces neglected.
After the French left, the Malian Armed Forces and the Wagner Group generally conducted joint operations.
Soldiers from the Wagner Group and the Malian Armed Forces were operating on the Algerian border near the commune of Tinzaouaten in late July when an insurgent group ambushed them, leaving dozens of Malian and Wagner forces killed, injured or captured and the insurgents in control of the commune.
Andriy Yusov, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence, was speaking on Ukrainian television when he indicated Kyiv’s possible involvement: “That the rebels received the necessary data to successfully carry out an operation against Russian war criminals has been observed by the entire world. Of course, we will not disclose details.” (Al Jazeera, Aug. 8)
Some security analysts with inside knowledge of the attacks said Ukrainian forces could have provided limited training to Tuareg fighters, teaching them how to operate drones, drop IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and launch mortar attacks.
Ukraine is proving to be a very useful proxy for both European and U.S. imperialists.