Putin and his Russian military forces are currently being severely tested in Africa against a massive new and secretly born Islamist fighting group. This is at a time when the Russian leader is still bogged down and struggling after more than two years to gain some control over Ukraine.
In his long-time goal of wishing to take possession of Africa’s wealthy mining assets, Putin last year finally sent his own troops there to assert Russia’s national Hammer and Sickle flag over those parts of the continent where they believe they would succeed.
One of Putin’s African targets was the State of Mali which is one of Africa’s largest gold producers. Under Russian supervision and major ownership, Mali is to have its largest gold refinery constructed with the help of a flood of Russian roubles and Putin’s military protection.
Putin’s army in Africa today is partly comprised of his private mercenary group previously known as Wagner’s Army. It was sent to Africa to quietly establish land and mining interests there for the Russian homeland.
These well-funded soldiers were, in fact, the first Russian fighting group to ever set foot on African soil.
When I worked in Africa as a foreign correspondent and journalist in the Cold War years of the 1950/60s, although highly politically active in Africa at the time, Russia vowed to never allow its own troops to be there.
It only used pro-Communist White Europeans from the Northern Hemisphere and South Africa before eventually sending Cuban military advisers and their own soldiers into the Dark Continent to fight for final African Independence.
One of these Red political agitators was an East European, Joe Slovo, who had been trained by Russia’s infamous KGB secret spy organisation. I met this highly committed Communist on a number of professional interview occasions before he went underground to train the Umkonto We Sizwe terrorists for Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in its pan-African battle against Colonialism.
Interestingly enough, Slovo told me on one such occasion that Communist Russia would one day control Africa’s giant gold, diamond and metal mining resources which he considered were the foundation stones of the world economy.
Since Slovo’s prediction and the arrival of the Russian forces on African soil last year, the former Wagner fighters have not been successful in satisfying their orders from Moscow. Largely unknown as yet to the Western World, the Russians suffered a major defeat in July when they partnered the Mali Army in a major battle against the newly invigorated Islamist terrorist group there.
More than 120 Russian and Mali State soldiers were killed with hundreds more injured, while they lost a high percentage of their Russian- manufactured fighting equipment. The Islamists also captured a United Nations’ helicopter that happened to be active elsewhere at the time.
To make these circumstances for Putin and the Russians even worse, the Wagner’s victorious opponents were only a small collection of African and Middle Eastern Islamists who are part of a an active 50,000- strong group of armed Islamist and Taureg fighters recently set up under the umbrella of Osama bin Laden’s original world-wide Al-Queda terrorist organisation responsible for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
I personally find it interesting that almost nothing appears to be known in the West about the sudden and unexpected growth of the new Al-Queda terrorist fighting force on African soil. Or is that possibly why the Australian Government recently sanctioned 20 Somali Islamist members of the Al- Shabaab terrorist group and placed restrictions on certain Somali exports to this country.
Al-Queda was first formed over 50 years’ ago under the backdrop of Soviet Russia and Western involvement in the Middle East. The world’s most prominent and dangerous terrorist group gained global notoriety after staging its attacks on the United States followed by terrorist events in Bali (with many Australian casualties), in Islamabad and in London.
Since bin Laden was found hiding in Pakistan and killed by U.S. Marines in 2011, the organisation has gone further underground while rebuilding its deadly cult of fighters.
The new leader is Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden’s former lieutenant who created close liaison with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Zawahiri is also the man who had sought weapons of mass destruction for Al-Queda and planned the Twin Towers and Washington Pentagon attacks.