#Algeria : According to Le Canard Enchaîné, quoting a source close to the Nigerien president, Algeria facilitated the transport of troops from the Wagner group to Mali. Information which comes to corroborate other sources as for the implication of Algiers in the deployment of the Wagner militias in this country.
“Today, they (the Algerian leaders, editor’s note) distance themselves from them (the Malian government), but they played a role in the arrival of the Wagner group in Mali. They opened their airspace to Russian planes carrying mercenaries and equipment from Libya. We have the registration numbers of the devices used, ”says in private a close friend of Mohamed Bazoum, the president of Niger.
This official thus confirms the assertions of other sources, some of which have been relayed by the Algerian media. Thus, the information site Algeria Share had announced at the beginning of last January that “several dozen Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group, the famous Russian private military company, passed through Algeria to reach Mali”, citing Algerian security sources and explaining that “it is Russian paramilitaries who were deployed on Libyan territory”.
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And concerning the transport of troops from the Wagner company, Algérie Part explains that “several Russian military planes recently flew over Algerian territory to then reach Bamako”, stressing that “a Tupolev TU-154M belonging to the army’s military fleet Russian air crossed the Algerian sky to reach Bamako. However, this device had taken off from Syria before observing a stopover in Libya and then reaching Mali”.
Algeria would also participate in the financing of part of the operation to establish Russian paramilitary forces. It must be said that the first deployment operations took place at a time when relations between Algiers and Paris were terrible. Algiers had even prohibited the overflight of its territory to French military planes, in particular those supplying the French contingent of the Barkhane force.
Algiers denied its involvement in the deployment of the Wagner group in Mali, without convincing, explaining that “it has always maintained that the solution in Mali was not military”.
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It must be said that Algeria does not take a dim view of the deployment of troops from the Wagner company, knowing that Russia is its main arms supplier. For Algerian strategists and security forces, the presence of Wagner might contribute to accelerating the end of Operation Barkhane and therefore of the French military presence on the southern border of the country, or at least reduce its capacities as is currently the case in Central African Republic.
The French forces antagonize the Algerian regime all the more because they neutralize the jihadist emirs who maintain underworld relations with the Algerian junta. In recent months, the French forces have indeed liquidated several leaders of Sahelian terrorist groups, including Abou Walid Al-Sahraoui, historic leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara who is close to the Polisario, Abdelmalek Droukdal, leader of Al- Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqmi) and founder of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Djamal Okacha,…
