Day: October 5, 2021

Add U.S. military officials to the crescendo of voices warning Mali’s interim government against brokering any deal to use mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group to help with security and counterterrorism.

For weeks, U.S. and French officials have publicly tried to dissuade Malian leaders from moving forward with a reported deal that would pay Wagner $10.8 million a month for 1,000 mercenaries to train Mali’s military and provide security for senior officials.

Now, the Pentagon says such a deal could cost Mali in multiple ways.

“Given the Wagner Group’s record, if these reports are true, any role for Russian mercenaries in Mali will likely exacerbate an already fragile and unstable situation,” U.S. Defense Department spokesperson Cindi King told VOA.

King also warned a deal between Mali and the Wagner Group “would complicate the international response in support of the transition government.”

The U.S. had been providing training and other support to Mali as it tries to confront the threat from various terrorist groups, including the Islamic State affiliate IS-Greater Sahara and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, also known as JNIM.

But that support was suspended following the August 2020 coup that saw elements of the Malian military depose the country’s elected leaders.

More recently, France announced this past June that it would bring home some 2,000 counterterrorism forces it had stationed in Mali and neighboring countries.

Mali’s interim government has so far denied a deal with Russia’s Wagner Group is in the offing, but the country’s prime minister told VOA last week that the actions of the U.S., France and others have left the interim government with few choices.

“The security situation keeps deteriorating by the day,” Choguel Maiga told VOA in an interview on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

“We have to find new partners who can help,” he said. “We can seek partnership either with Russia or with any other country.”

Some Western officials with knowledge of the potential deal between Mali and the Wagner Group have called the potential deployment of the Russian mercenaries “a real concern.”

The officials point to what they describe as a destabilizing impact of about 2,000 Wagner mercenaries in the Central African Republic, where allegations of human rights abuses and exploitation have been rampant.

Russia has denied any abuses by contractors there and has welcomed talk of the potential deal between Mali’s interim government and Wagner.

“They are combating terrorism,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a news conference at the U.N. last week. “And they have turned to a private military company from Russia in connection with the fact that, as I understand, France wants to significantly draw down its military component.”

“We don’t have anything to do with that,” Lavrov said, adding, “at the government level, we are also contributing to providing for military and defense capacities of Mali.”

Many Western governments, though, insist that there is little practical difference between the Kremlin and the exploits of the Wagner Group, run by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Prigozhin, sometimes called “Putin’s cook” because of his catering company’s work for Russian President Vladimir Putin, is thought to have extensive ties to Russia’s political and military establishments, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The U.S. State Department sanctioned Prigozhin and Wagner back in July 2020, as well as several front companies for the group’s operations in Sudan.

Source: Voice of America

South Sudan media rights groups condemned comments by a key parliament member who said that news organizations could have their licenses revoked if they report on parliamentary expenditures — including lawmaker salaries — without prior authorization from the speaker.

Paul Youane Bonju, who is the chairperson-designate of the information committee in South Sudan’s reconstituted National Legislative Assembly, said journalists risk being sued if they do not follow what he termed the proper procedure for reporting on lawmakers’ financial transactions.

“Some [reporters] are new in the field and I need to bring them on board by trying to tell them the right procedures if they visit the parliament, because the parliament is a body that enacts laws,” he said in a news conference last week.

“If you are coming to engage with such a body, you must also be conversant of how to go about it,” Bonju said. “In some instances, some of the media, instead of coming to me or going to the office of the clerk, sometimes they contact either the staffs, or they get the information from sources that are not authorized to release some of the information.”

Bonju cited media reports five years ago about $40,000 that was allotted to lawmakers by President Salva Kiir for allowances and car loans.

The reports about the allotment caused a widespread backlash in the world’s newest country, where the government owes many workers back salaries and the average teacher makes less than $400 per year.

Media groups say Bonju’s comments are an attempt to conceal information from the public as South Sudan attempts for forge a shaky democracy.

Micheal Duku, executive director of the Association for Media Development in South Sudan, said parliamentary members cannot stop the media from reporting on their work which is in the public interest.

“The media is regulated by law and when it comes to information that is categorized, there are classified information and unclassified information,” Duku told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus. “So long as this falls under unclassified information, the public has the right to know.”

Bonju’s comments come as South Sudan journalists are facing increasing pressures on their reporting.

Three journalists recently were detained, and a radio station was closed as the government clamped down on efforts by activists to stage what they called a peaceful public uprising.

Agents also detained a government broadcaster after he allegedly declined to report news about recent presidential decrees on the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation airwaves.

South Sudan ranks 139th out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, in which 1 is the freest.

The reconstituted legislature was inaugurated in August this year by Kiir under the leadership of Jemma Nunu Kumba as speaker of the house.

In an interview with South Sudan in Focus, Bonju said his comments were aimed at clarifying parliamentary procedures for press coverage.

“I was telling them, ‘Look, I am not warning you, but I am rather cautioning you to be sure that if you want anything to do with emolument of the MPs, please contact the relevant offices, the relevant departments,'” he said.

Source: Voice of America