BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is sure to dominate an upcoming NATO summit in Madrid, Spain and other member states are quietly pushing the Western alliance to consider how mercenaries aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin spreading Moscow’s influence to Africa.
Hosting the summit, which will take place from Tuesday to Thursday, Spain wants to emphasize its proximity to Africa by lobbying for a greater focus on Europe’s southern flank in a new document outlining NATO’s vision of its security challenges and tasks.
The Strategic Concept is NATO’s main working document after the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, which contained the key provision that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. The security assessment is updated about every decade to reset the West’s security agenda.
The current version, approved in Lisbon in 2010, stated that the risk of conventional war on NATO territory was “low”. Concerns about instability in Africa were not explicitly mentioned. At the time, the alliance viewed apathy as the greatest military threat; US complaints that some European members failed to pay their owed amount were common in summit talks.
Fast forward ten years, and the view looks very different from NATO headquarters in Brussels. After Russia brought the war close to NATO’s eastern borders, the alliance has made efforts to provide Ukraine with an assortment of more powerful weapons and avoid the very real risk of it getting involved in the fighting.
But there seems to be a consensus among NATO members heading for the Madrid summit that while Russia remains the #1 concern, the alliance must continue to broaden its global outlook. Spain’s stance for a greater focus on ‘the south’ is shared by Britain, France and Italy.
According to them, the security challenges in Africa stem from a Putin who seems apparently determined to restore Russia’s imperial glory, as well as from an expansive China. Russia has gained traction thanks to the presence of its mercenaries in the Sahel region, a semi-arid expanse stretching from Senegal to Sudan and suffering from political strife, terrorism and drought.
“Every time I meet NATO ministers, the support of the Allies is total because of the instability we see on the southern border of the alliance and especially the situation in the Sahel region at the moment,” said Spain’s foreign minister. Business Jose Albares.
The Kremlin denies any ties to the Wagner Group, a mercenary with an increasing presence in Central and North Africa and the Middle East. The private military company, which also participated in the war in Ukraine, has gained a foothold in Libya, Mali, Sudan and the Central African Republic.
In Mali, Wagner soldiers fill a void left by the departure of former colonial power France. In Sudan, Russia’s offer of an economic alliance yielded the promise of a naval base on the Red Sea. In the Central African Republic, Wagner fighters protect the country’s gold and diamond mines. In return, Putin gets diplomatic allies and resources.
French President Emmanuel Macron has long called for NATO’s “increased engagement” in the Sahel region. Now that Wagner has moved to Mali, French authorities underlined that Wagner mercenaries were accused of human rights violations in the Central African Republic, Libya and Syria.
Former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said Russia’s brutal military campaign in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during his country’s long civil war has encouraged him.
“Syria made[the Russians]feel like they could be more active in that part of the world,” Solana told The Associated Press. “They have very good relations with Algeria and they have (…) the Wagner type of people in the Sahel, which is delicate.”
With the Sahel, Morocco and Algeria at risk of exacerbating instability, “the southern part of NATO, for Portugal, Spain, Greece, etc., they would like to turn a blind eye to that part of the world,” he said. .
Italy is another NATO member attuned to the political climate across the Mediterranean. The country is NATO’s Joint Force Command base in Naples, which opened a southern hub in 2017 specifically targeting terrorism, radicalization, migration and other security issues from North Africa and the Middle East.
Italy’s ambassador to NATO, Francesco Maria Talo, said in an interview with Italy’s ANSA news agency in May that humanitarian crises in Africa should concern all NATO allies.
“Near us there is Africa, with a billion inhabitants at risk of poverty, exacerbated by food insecurity, terrorism and climate change, all factors that combine to create insecurity,” Talo said. “And Russia is there too.”
The importance of the other side of the Mediterranean became painfully clear to Spain over the past year as a result of a series of diplomatic crises involving Morocco and Algeria and their rivalry over the fate of Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony.
Amid the disputes, reduced border security allowed migrants to enter Spanish territory, and there were threats to energy supplies. Analysts view both as “hybrid warfare” tactics when governments use them against other countries.
Speaking in Madrid last month, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace pointed to the problems caused last year when Belarus, an ally of Putin, reportedly encouraged migrants to cross its borders into Poland and other neighboring countries.
“If people like Wagner get the control they have or would like to have in places like Libya or what we see they’re already doing in Mali, don’t think Spain will be unaffected by it,” Wallace said.
NATO is also expected to include in the new Strategic Document a reference to China’s growing military reach, both in and outside the Pacific region. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in Madrid last month that “China has joined Russia by openly challenging each country’s right to choose its own path.”
In May, US Army General Stephen J. Townsend, commander of US Africa Command, warned that China was trying to build a military naval base on Africa’s Atlantic coast. He said China has “the most traction” in establishing its base in Equatorial Guinea, a small oil-rich dictatorship that was once Spain’s only sub-Saharan African colony.
China operates only one recognized foreign military base, located in Djibouti in East Africa, but many believe the People’s Liberation Army is in the process of establishing an overseas military network, even if it doesn’t use the term “base”.
NATO has invited the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand to the summit to show its interest in the Asia-Pacific.
The foreign minister of Mauritania, a former French colony in West Africa, has also been invited to a working dinner with fellow foreign ministers at the NATO summit. NATO said the country, which borders Western Sahara, Algeria, Mali and Senegal, was “closely involved in the preparatory work” for the new Strategic Concept.
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AP writers Ciarán Giles in Madrid, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
