E’ di grande interesse la riflessione Russia’s Wagner Group in Africa: Influence, commercial concessions, rights violations, and counterinsurgency failure di Federica Saini Fasanotti pubblicata su Brookings.
Al centro vi è l’articolo 359 del Codice Criminale russo. Esso riguarda i mercenari: 1. Recruitment, training, financing, or any other material provision of a mercenary, and also the use of him in an armed conflict or hostilities, shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of four to eight years.; 2. The same acts, committed by a person through his official position, or with relation to a minor, shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of seven to fifteen years, with confiscation of property or without such confiscation; 3. Participation by a mercenary in an armed conflict or hostilities shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of three to seven years. Note: A mercenary shall be deemed to mean a person who acts for the purpose of getting a material reward, and who is not a citizen of the state in whose armed conflict or hostilities he participates, who does not reside on a permanent basis on its territory, and also who is not a person fulfilling official duties.
Chiunque, in questa norma, legge una presa di distanza del Paese, in questo caso la Russia, dai mercenari (si legga Wagner Group e altri). Ebbene, nota Saini Fasanotti, sostanzialmente non è così: Beyond avoiding official Russian military casualties and thus public outcry against and supervision of deployments abroad, the private security contractors provide plausible deniability for the Kremlin. Moscow disavows any command and control over them to absolve itself of their problematic behavior, such as egregious human rights violations and abuse of civilians. They also provide a proxy tool for military confrontations with the U.S. without directly implicating Russian troops. In 2018, some 300 Wagner Group contractors, for example, clashed with U.S. special operations forces in Deir el-Zour, Syria. Beyond propping up governments aligned with Moscow, the Russian contractors are also a source of intelligence for the Kremlin.
Il Wagner Group ha una storia interessante, non solo in Africa. L’Autrice, nell’analisi per Brookings, ne percorre alcuni passaggi fondamentali: pensiamo al ruolo del Wagner Group in Crimea nel 2014.
Mi interessa sottolineare, in particolare, il ruolo che questi gruppi hanno in termini di disinformazione: quella che Saini Fasanotti descrive come la “guerra ibrida” della Russia in Africa. Qui dovremmo domandarci se la politica delle sanzioni, portata avanti da Stati Uniti ed Europa, abbia avuto e abbia ancora un senso.
In più, dovremmo domandarci: quanto i conflitti tra potenze in Africa, attraverso reti visibili e invisibili ma incidenti e determinanti, peseranno sul futuro di un continente (anzitutto sulla sicurezza e sulla coesione dei singoli Paesi e complessiva) al centro dei dibattiti sulla sostenibilità planetaria e sui destini di popoli già ampiamente martoriati ?
