Resumo

NEETHLING, Theo. Private military companies as proxy forces in international politics with special reference to the Russian Wagner Group/Africa Corps and its operations in Africa. Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2025, vol.65, n.4, pp.1021-1039. ISSN 2224-7912.  https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2025/v65n4a4.

Since the end of the Cold War, the use of private military companies, commonly known as PMCs, as third parties in proxy conflicts or wars has been on the rise, with a growing number of countries and non-state actors relying on these companies to carry out a range of military operations or tasks. Increasingly, these proxy actors have also become a feature of external involvement in contemporary conflicts around the world. While this is not a new development in itself, most notable PMCs since the end of the Cold War include Blackwater in Iraq, Executive Outcomes in Angola and Sierra Leone, and of course, the Russian Wagner Group. According to Max Weber's much-quoted definition, the modern state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use ofphysical force within a given territory. In this regard, the rise and proliferation of PMCs or mercenaries of the modern type effectively question this monopoly and, in some instances, potentially threaten the foundations of the modern state when governments outsource the capacity to provide security to their citizens, or to wage war - all key elements of their statehood and sovereignty. Following on the above, and in light of a complex series offactors that brought changes to the highly state-centred world of previous centuries, international trends of recent decades indicate how PMCs have become increasingly important as actors in conflict dynamics worldwide. This means a deviation from the deep-rooted notion that the state shouldfirst and foremost take responsibility for the security of its citizenry. In view of this, scholars have begun to suggest that national sovereignty, as it crystallised in the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, is in decline. This is having a substantial influence on the state-centric system and the traditional management of the monopoly offorce. Essentially, the weaker a state is in its institutions, the less capacity it has to manage or control violence within its territory. In this regard, it can rightly be argued that the existence and roles of PMCs - instead of, or in parallel, or in addition to regular forces - represent not only the cause, but also the symptom of fragile or changed statehood in several countries across the globe. The Wagner Group is globally known as a PMC with close ties to the Russian state and its military. Since its inception in 2014, the group has been involved in the politics of numerous African countries, where it has played a significant role. Since 2017, the Wagner Group has also actively advanced the interests of President Vladimir Putin andRussia, offering the factor of so-called 'plausible deniability'. This means that the Russian government does not have to suffer any public fallout in relation to troop losses or other political and military embarrassments relating to, for instance, serious human rights violations on foreign soil. The death of the owner and commander of the Wagner Group, Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, on 23 August 2023, in a plane crash, following Prigozhin's rebellion against President Vladimir Putin, has raised some serious questions about the future of this infamous yet influential PMC. After all, as a Russian paramilitary institution, the Wagner Group has been one of Russia's most powerful foreign policy toolkits since its inception in 2014, as it played a significant role in the conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine in the past decade. Since 2017, the Group also managed to expand its footprint - and that of Russia - in several African countries. On the African continent, the Wagner Group's strategy mostly coincided with direct military support and/or related security services to leaders in weak or fragile African states. Against this background, after spending almost a decade building the Group as a paramilitary group, the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin ignited speculation about the future of PMCs. With Prigozhin as the Group's charismatic leader no longer in command, many observers immediately posed pressing questions over the future of the activities of the Wagner Group and its future leadership. Some even wondered whether the Group would continue to operate as a single, coherent paramilitary group. The core question on which this article is based was therefore: What does the future hold for Wagner as a Russian PMC and foreign policy instrument, which is currently - in its revised capacity and rebranded form as the Africa Corps - still involved in various paramilitary operations in Africa? In view of the above, this article reviews the development of Wagner as a unique para-military entity. It focuses on four African countries where Wagner holds substantial influence: Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, andMali. The nature of the Wagner/Africa Corps' involvement in these four states differs, and the death of Prigozhin has had significant consequences and changes. An important finding of this study, however, is that the Russian political leadership will not allow any of the strategic advantages that Wagner/Africa Corps - particularly since 2017 - has offered Moscow to be undermined or lost.

Palavras-chave : Russia; proxy forces; Wagner Group; Africa Corps; private military companies; foreign policy instruments.

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