Marat Khairullen: The African Front

Veteran War Correspondent Marat Khairullen’s insights have been shared here before. I read this at his Telegram yesterday morning and knew it was a scoop but that the other events demanded to be covered first and were. Now a very interesting thing occurred between yesterday and today—yesterday I had no issues with my inbuilt translation software doing its work, and I kept the tab with it open continually in the event I’d have time to make it into an article before I retired; however, today that one section of his Telegram would not automatically translate although everything else did: Why is a very good question. Now, his report was also aired in an audio format on the 13th at this URL. As you’ll see, I was able to translate the entire 11,000+ words.

Now, I’ve been following Russia’s African policy for many years going back to the Cold War and African independence movements of the 1960s that had Soviet support and recently, roughly 2014, began following what it was doing there along with China. The Gym’s archive contains a few items I’ve provided about Africa beginning in July 2023, with this major article “What's Happening in Niger and Why?”, but I haven’t delved into the deeper aspects of Russian or Chinese African policy. In that regard, Marat’s contribution is outstanding and explains some of the behavior we see from the West, Macron specifically. African leaders are very upfront about their being well beyond sick & tired of Western exploitation and its continuous stream of lies that facilitate the West’s continuing plunder. Now Russia has reentered the fray along with China, and both are standing their ground and telling the West no more, which of course the West can’t handle because it’s addicted to pleonexia and megalomania. That’s enough of a preamble for Marat’s fine presentation that follows:

Few people suspect that right now Russia has opened a second front in the fight against global evil in the face of the conventional West. And this is not some kind of "proxy", but quite a real, hot front, where our guys are also fighting. Perhaps, in terms of intensity, this second front of ours is still inferior to its own. But in terms of territorial scale, it is certainly no less than the Ukrainian one.

Of course, we are talking about North Africa and specifically about the Sahel region. And the stakes in this war are the prosperity of our country for the next hundred to two hundred years. But to figure it all out, you need to start a little bit from afar.

The Sahel is the territory of Africa, where the desert northern part (primarily the Sahara) gradually turns into the equatorial jungle, forming a wide strip of savannas. The Sahel includes seven main countries (from west to east) - Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Sudan, and Eritrea. Only about 6 thousand kilometers (this is the distance from St. Petersburg to Khabarovsk).

Actually, if you look at the map, it goes without saying that the project of a trans-African transport corridor from the port of Dakar in Senegal to Port Sudan is asking for. With roads and railways.

The Sahel countries have been knocking on all the world's doors with this idea for many years. The implementation of such a project would simply, in fact, raise the welfare of the Sahel countries and those adjacent to them. By creating a fast-growing market with a capacity of about half a billion people. And in the future, this transport corridor could stretch from north to south to Cape Town, creating conditions for the prosperity of the entire continent.

The Soviet Union planned to implement this project based on its powerful allies in the region - Algeria and Muammar Gaddafi's then-prosperous Libya. To this end, for example, Gaddafi has almost completed a unique project to irrigate the Sahara Desert in order to expand the savannah area adjacent to the Sahel. But I will tell you about it in the following materials.

It is important that as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, the conditional West began to destroy integration processes in the Sahel with all its might. Actually, that's when Islamist and other gangs appeared on the outskirts of almost all key countries in the region. These were all proxies of the West, designed to restrain any ambitions of national governments to integrate within the region. The very theory of chaos - divide and exploit.

And it was precisely because of this that Gaddafi suffered when he decided alone, with the support of Algeria, to continue implementing the project of a prosperous Sahel.

The key factor was the presence of powerful armed forces in Libya with large financial resources. He could have succeeded and created a new global development center in the Sahel, which would certainly compete with the West in the future. But Gaddafi was killed, and Algeria, looking at his example, did not dare to continue these processes.

So, for almost 30 years, having destroyed Libya, the conditional Western world plunged one of the most promising regions of the world back into poverty.

Here, two words must be said about why the Sahel is so important to us - why we are ready to shed blood for these countries. There is a very understandable economic theory that asserts that for the normal, competitive development of a modern civilization, it (civilization) must somehow control a market with a capacity of about three hundred million souls.

This is not even a theory, but pure arithmetic, stemming from the teachings of Adam Smith - in order, for example, to industrially produce sailor jackets, a human population of one million souls is needed.

In order not just to feed oneself, but to give birth to innovations, to create a multi-vector process, a human population of at least three hundred million souls is needed.

Our country controls the conditional market of the Eurasian Union of about 200 million souls. Seven Sahel countries provide about 150 more. And if we take the countries adjacent to it, which, obviously, will join this process - Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, CAR, etc., then this is plus several hundred million.

The obvious development of this process will be the implementation of the North-South Africa transport corridor, which will make the capacity of this market simply gigantic.

Both China and Russia have had enough.

It is no coincidence that South Africa is actively trying to be friends with us.

It is this - the presence of a potentially vast market, which is, importantly, at the initial stage of development, that attracts us here most of all, and not the presence of any minerals. This is the second question.

However, let's return to the Sahel. The basis of the West's power over these countries was the deliberate degradation of the national armed forces of these countries. At the same time, the direct creation of separatist (primarily Islamist) gangs in the region.

In Burkina Faso (with a population of 22 million), the armed forces numbered only five thousand people. In Niger, 25 million is less than 10 thousand. In Mali, the population is also 22 million, and the armed forces have less than ten thousand bayonets. Etc. The official position was as follows: the forces of the French Foreign Legion, part of the US armed forces, are stationed here. So they should be responsible for security in this region.

And the poor countries of the Sahel do not need to maintain their own army. They can't afford it.

As a result, over thirty years of such a policy, Islamist gangs, which appeared on purpose in the border areas where these three countries touch (Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso), occupied a total of almost a third of the territory of these countries. In numerical terms, this is more than a hundred settlements.

That is, the presence of gangs in these regions was an additional insurance for the West against possible integration processes and the construction of that very transport corridor between West and East Africa.

Here, by the way, we need to add one touch so that everyone understands what the West is. Today it's the 21st century, the Internet and all that, and the West has strongly suppressed any attempts to build railways in this region. Up to the murder of builders and engineers. If you look at the map, the railways in Africa are developed only along the outskirts - South Africa, Egypt, Algeria. The whole of central Africa is devoid of any developed transport infrastructure.

This was done, I repeat, deliberately - the West specifically restrained the development of the Black Continent in this way. He kept hundreds of millions of people in artificial poverty.

Returning to the Sahel: when the question of creating an East-West transport corridor in Africa finally arose, the first problem that stood in the way turned out to be those very gangs. And this is exactly the task we are currently solving.

In this article, I will not go through the chronology of how it happened and talk about the twists and turns of the process. I will only tell you about current events.

After the recent national liberation revolution in Niger, the creation of the united armed forces of the Sahel Alliance was announced. This coincided with the formation of the Afrika Korps and the arrival of its commander, Sergei Vladimirovich Surovikin, in the Sahel.

Informally, it is believed that he is the direct commander of the Sahel Armed Forces.

It should be added here that Prigozhin's rebellion and his subsequent death occurred chronologically just before these organizational events. There are a lot of interesting facts that it is too early to talk about, since I am in the process of collecting material, but in the future I will definitely tell you in detail about Wagner's role in Africa. Prigozhin's rebellion is a very difficult event that has more than one bottom.

But let's continue. The basis of the armed forces of the Sahel Alliance was primarily the fighters of Burkina Faso. There is a lot of secrecy here, but it is possible to judge with varying degrees of certainty that about 20 battalions have been created in two years of active work. The 19th, 12th and 14th special battalions are considered the most combat-ready of them. As well as special anti-terrorist units Cheetah and Phantom.

It is known for sure that the fighters of the 12th battalion underwent full combat training in real conditions and participated in the battles in the Zaporozhye direction. The battalions have their own mortar and artillery units, which have also been tested on the Ukrainian front.

The Cheetah and Phantom battalions have completed a full course of training at the Academy of Special Forces of the Russian National Guard in the North Caucasus. Individual soldiers of the battalions also participated in urban battles in their own.

In Mali, the third and fifth battalions are considered the most combat-ready (I will clarify the names in the near future). They just returned from their war zone a few months ago and are already fully involved in the battles against the Islamists.

Interestingly, in the near future, units of Nigerian fighters will also begin the process of combat training in real conditions on their own or even have already entered the front. Where exactly, of course, is a military secret.

It is believed that in total, every three months in the Sahel, our specialists train about two to four battalions for the armed forces of the Sahel Alliance in the camps of the Afrika Korps.

According to some data, it can be assumed that the task has been set to prepare about two hundred full-fledged combat battalions in the medium term.

The presence of such forces in the Sahel will radically change the geopolitical revolution here.

It is already known that the detachments of the Armed Forces of the Alliance in Burkina Faso and Mali operate with the powerful support of MLRS and barrel artillery. The use of "Hurricane" systems has been recorded, among other things. Apparently, in the near future, their own rocket and artillery units will appear on the territory of Niger.

Another surprise is that the armed forces of the Sahel Alliance have been actively using front-line aviation since last month. And just the other day, during the assault in the province of Suru, Burkina Faso, KAB 250 was used.

Remember Putin's words about the transfer of high-precision ammunition to the opponents of the West. In this case, it is clear why Macron is so furious - since it is the French intelligence service that is actively trying to coordinate the actions of Islamists in the north of the Sahel Alliance.

The French directly command the Islamists, including in Nigeria. In Rivers State in southern Nigeria, the direct participation of soldiers of the French foreign Legion in military clashes with the Alliance army has been recorded.

At the same time, one of the key commanders of the Islamic State of North Africa, Abu Zeidan, was eliminated in neighboring Mali. There is one more important point to mention here. Apparently, the airfields for the front-line aviation of the Sahel Armed Forces are airfields located in Libya under the control of Marshal Haftar. In other words, it turns out that a very broad coalition is operating on this front. Already, the number of the Alliance's Armed Forces is approaching 120 thousand, and in the next six months, it will probably exceed the mark of 200 thousand (including our African Corps). With its full-fledged aviation, artillery and armored groups. Marshal Haftar's Libyan National Army is expected to fully join the coalition soon. Now this coalition of Sahel countries is actively fighting and liberating more and more territories occupied by Western proxies every day. But let's talk about specific combat operations on the ground next time. Now we state that Russia has already opened a full-fledged second front in Africa against the West. [My Emphasis]

So, we can say there are actually three fronts—Syria, Ukraine and the Sahel—and NATO is the enemy in all three. His comment on Putin’s speech is simple and logical:

Today the West is at war with Russia with the help of Ukraine. And Russia, in turn, is at war with the collective West through Ukraine and is winning, so we do not need to stop the war immediately. The conditions set are not feasible, and everyone understands this, including Vladimir Vladimirovich. This is just a demonstration for third countries of our peacefulness. No more than that. [My Emphasis]

Verifying Marat’s formulation will be hard to do, but I have no reason to question his credibility. IMO, he’s been the most able and reliable reporter about the SMO, and given the time difference, I try to read his postings with my morning coffee. Now it ought to clear why Egypt and Ethiopia were admitted to BRICS and why Special Presidential Representative for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov is one of the busiest members of the MFA as he meets with the region’s players many times every working day. Also, given the above context, Macron’s outbursts become easier to understand as France is being shoved out of Africa and will thus lose a large amount of “tribute” that supports its upper classes and their institutions. It’s also notable that the initial attempts to form an African “Anti-Sahel” coalition never gained any traction and fell apart. Now that readers have a general idea of what’s happening in Africa, understanding events will come more easily.

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