African Front

by Military journalist Marat Khairullin

Sahel region. Picture from free sources

Few people suspect that right now Russia has opened a second front in the fight against global evil in the form of the so-called West. And this is not some kind of “proxy”, but a very real, hot front, where our guys are also fighting. Perhaps this second front of ours is still inferior in intensity to the Special Military Operation. But in terms of territorial scale, it is certainly no smaller than the Ukrainian one.

We are, of course, talking about North Africa and specifically 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 understand all this, we need to start a little further away.

The Sahel is a territory of Africa, where the desert northern part (primarily the Sahara) gradually turns into 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, Eritrea. Only about 6 thousand kilometers (this is the distance from St. Petersburg to Khabarovsk).

Actually, if you look at the map, then the project of a trans-African transport corridor from the port of Dakar of Senegal to Port Sudan naturally asks for it. With roads and railways.

Proposed Dakar - Port Sudan railroad. Picture from free sources

The countries of the Sahel have been knocking on the world's doors for many years with this idea. The implementation of such a project would simply, in fact, improve the welfare of the Sahel countries and those adjacent to them. Creating a fast-growing market 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 with the support of its powerful allies in this region - Algeria and the then prosperous Libya of Muammar Gaddafi. To this end, for example, Gaddafi has almost completed a unique project to irrigate the Sahara Desert in order to expand the savannah zone adjacent to the Sahel. But I’ll tell you about this in the following materials.

Irrigation of Libya. Picture from free sources

The important thing is that as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed, the conditional West began to destroy integration processes in the Sahel with all its might. Actually, it was then that Islamist and other gangs appeared on the outskirts of almost all the 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 same theory of chaos - divide and exploit.

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

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

Sing marking manmade river by Muammar Gaddafi. Picture from free sources

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

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

This is not even a theory, but pure arithmetic arising 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 generate innovations and 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. The seven countries of the Sahel give about 150 more. And if we take the countries adjacent to it, which, obviously, will join this process - Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, etc., then this is another plus of several hundred million.

An 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.

Quite enough for both China and Russia.

It is no coincidence that South Africa is so 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. With the simultaneous direct creation of separatist (primarily Islamist) gangs in the region.

Burkina Faso (population 22 million) had a military force of only five thousand. In Niger, 25 million - less than 10 thousand. Mali also has a population of 22 million and an armed force of less than ten thousand bayonets. And so on. The official position was as follows: the forces of the French Foreign Legion and 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, gangs of Islamists, who appeared deliberately 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 for the West an additional insurance against possible integration processes and the construction of that same transport corridor between the West and East of 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 in every possible way suppressed any attempts to build railways in this region. Up to the murder of builders and engineers. If you look at the map, railways in Africa are developed only in the outskirts - South Africa, Egypt, Algeria. All of central Africa is devoid of any developed transport infrastructure.

This was done, I repeat, deliberately - the West specifically restrained the development of the Dark Continent in this way. They 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 was those same gangs. And this is exactly the problem we are solving now.

In this material I will not go chronologically, how that happened, and talk about the vicissitudes of the process. I will only tell you about current events.

After a national liberation revolution recently took place in Niger, the creation of a joint armed force of the Sahel Alliance was announced. This coincided with the formation of the African Corps and the arrival of its commander Sergei Vladimirovich Surovikin in the Sahel.

It is informally believed that he is the direct commander of the Armed Forces of the Sahel.

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

But let's continue. The basis of the armed forces of the Sahel Alliance were primarily the fighters of Burkina Faso. There are a lot of secrets here, but one can judge with some degree of certainty that in two years of active work, about 20 battalions were created. The 19th, 12th and 14th special battalions are considered the most combat-ready of them. As well as special anti-terrorist units Gepard [Cheetah] and Phantom.

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

The Gepard and Phantom battalions completed a full training course at the Special Forces Academy of the Russian National Guard in the North Caucasus. Individual battalion fighters also participated in urban battles in the Northern Military District.

In Mali, the third and fifth battalions are considered the most combat-ready (the names will be confirmed soon). They returned from the Northern Military District zone just a few months ago and are already fully participating in the battles against the Islamists.

It is interesting that in the near future, Nigerian fighters will also begin the process of combat training in real conditions in the SMO or have even arrived to the front already. Where exactly, of course, is a military secret.

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

According to some data, it can be assumed that the task has been set to train 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 detachments of the Alliance Armed Forces in Burkina Faso and Mali operate with powerful support from MLRS and cannon artillery. The use of Uragan systems was also recorded. Apparently, in the near future, Niger will have its own missile and artillery units.

Another surprise is that the armed forces of the Sahel Alliance began to actively use front-line aviation starting from last month. And just the other day, during an assault in the Sourou province of Burkina Faso, gliding KAB 250s were used.

Remember Putin's words about the transfer of precision-guided munitions to the enemies of the West. In this case, it is clear why Macron is so furious - since it is French intelligence 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, direct participation of soldiers of the French Foreign Legion in military clashes with the Alliance army was recorded.

At the same time, one of the key commanders of the Islamic State of North Africa, Abu Zeidan, was eliminated in neighboring Mali.

One more important point must be mentioned here. Apparently, the supporting airfields for front-line aviation of the Sahel Armed Forces are airfields located in Libya under the control of Marshal Haftar. That is, in general, it turns out that a very broad coalition is operating on this front.

Already, the number of the Armed Forces of the Alliance is approaching 120 thousand, and in the next six months, apparently, it will cross the 200 thousand benchmark (including our Afrika Korps).

With its own full-fledged aviation, artillery and armored groups. It is expected that Marshal Haftar’s Libyan National Army will soon fully join the coalition.

Now this coalition of Sahel countries is actively fighting and every day liberating more and more territories occupied by Western proxies.

But let's talk about specific military operations on the ground next time. Now we can state that Russia has already opened a full-fledged second front against the West in Africa.