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The Altering Landscapes: Mediation of Holocaust Memories through Art

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An event as horrific in its impact and magnitude as the Holocaust, called for proper documentation in the years that followed it. The most valued documentation developed in the form of literary responses that majorly comprised of the first-hand accounts and narratives of the Holocaust survivors. These were published in the weekly newspapers that circulated in the displaced persons’ camps. These not only served as a means to vent out their emotions but also as a way of re-connecting to their kin if they had survived. During the initial years after the catastrophe, the Holocaust historians, as well as survivors, have remained divided in their opinion with regard to the literary response to the Holocaust and consequently the genre of Holocaust literature. Moreover, there also existed the ethical dilemma of whether or not an event such as the Holocaust should be represented in any form or genre.

In the Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature published in 2002, the editors David Patterson, Alan L. Berger, and Sarita Cargas explore the literature that developed in response to the Holocaust. The fact that the seemingly contradicted term ‘Holocaust literature’ exists is because the “soul is there” (xiii). They state that the Holocaust literature holds a unique and distinguished place as it transcends the event of the death into a return to life, and in the process, the readers become a witness. They conclude,

The literary response to the Holocaust is a human being’s endeavor to restore to life a relationship to humanity that harbors the affirmation of life. It entails a movement of memory—for memory is its defining feature— by which a soul undertakes a movement of return (xiv).

In a more recent work, Literature of The Holocaust (2004) edited by Harold Bloom, the Holocaust historian, Alvin Rosenfeld, in his chapter, ‘The Problematics of Holocaust Literature’, acknowledging the significance of Holocaust literature discusses the ethical problematics of the unresolved query about the tension between ‘claims of silence’ and ‘claims of word’ (41). He approaches this question through the writings of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi and expresses that although the writers mentioned the brutalities and horrors of the concentration camps, there existed a latent struggle to express the emotions clearly. He thus states that the Holocaust literature transcends beyond the scope of being classified as ‘topical literature’ (21), as it demands a certain amount of sensibility and responsibility on the reader’s part. Rosenfeld further opines that the Holocaust literature is a ‘chronicle of the human spirit’s most turbulent strivings with an immense historical and metaphysical weight’ (22). He also highlights the role of the reader, as it is only through the reader’s imagination and understanding of the text that inexplicable and unwritten horrors are rendered intelligible. The fact that Holocaust literature apart from the Jewish languages (Yiddish and Hebrew) is written in every European language, classifies it as an ‘international literature’ (25). In the words of David Patterson, Alan L. Berger, and Sarita Cargas,

Holocaust literature is a testimony to the absolute dearness of every human being. It teems with a sense of urgency which disturbs our comfort and complacency to put to us the question put to the first human being: Where are you? Thus it transforms death into life by transforming its reader into a witness (Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature, xiv).

Artistic Representations of the Holocaust

A creative domain through which Holocaust memories can be mediated is visual art. The artists depicting the Holocaust in their paintings explore the maxim of pictures speaking a thousand words. One of the earliest artworks is by Morris Kestelman entitled Lama Sabachthani (Oh God, why have you forsaken me?) which depicts a group of Jewish people mourning over a pile of unburied corpses. The artist Edgar Ainsworth visited the Bergen Belsen concentration camp after liberation and recorded the scene in his drawing, Belsen: April 1945 in which he sketched various aspects of the camp. The best-known Holocaust artwork is Charlotte Salomon’s play Life? Or Theater? composed of seven hundred sixty-nine paintings. The artworks form a major part of exhibitions in the Holocaust museums particularly the Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. The Holocaust is also depicted in the artworks produced by artists born after 1945. The most well known example is of post Holocaust artwork is by Anselm Kiefer. His painting Margarethe (1981) is inspired by Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” and Goethe’s Faust and depicts the golden hair of Margarete in the form yellow straws. Another painting Sternenfall (Falling Stars) created in 1998 depicts a sky with celestial bodies that are numbered, alluding to the tattooed numbers, both of which are alphanumeric. The Auschwitz Album published in 1981 and Auschwitz: A History in Photographs published in 1993 remain the best-known photographic record books of the largest death camp of Auschwitz.

More recent works include artworks by Morris Kagan, a second-generation survivor who shares his father’s artwork on social media. His father, Henry Kagan was a woodcarver, a skill that helped him survive the concentration camps as he used to carve sculptors on the order of camp commanders. Caroline Slifkin, an artist as well as a Holocaust educator specialises in teaching about the Holocaust through Holocaust art. She has created a Holocaust Arts Project called “Fragments of Family” in 2016. The project is included in the curriculum of various schools in order to develop critical thinking and visual literacy. In her sessions, Caroline invites the students to discuss historical artwork and to create their own works in response. Students view the art as a form of documentation, witness, spiritual resistance, and as evidence from the victim’s perspective. Through the use of visual images, students are able to develop visual literacy to add to their skills of critical thinking in order to understand, recognize and evaluate arts as a means of expression. The students are thus able to investigate human behaviour, and come to appreciate that silence and indifference to suffering of others however unintentional can lead to events that allow for legalized discrimination, prejudice, hatred, and ultimately mass murder. Caroline believes that learning about the Holocaust can evoke powerful emotions and using the creative arts can help students to express their thoughts, ideas, and responses in an appropriate and creative way.

Image Courtesy: Caroline Slifkin

 

Image Courtesy: Caroline Slifkin

Daniela Mansur, the creative art director at Tributart and the author of Art Therapy Journal: Holocaust Without Words through a chronological artwork narrates a wordless story of the Holocaust.

Image Courtesy: Daniela Mansur
Image Courtesy: Daniela Mansur

Daniela offers a blended approach as she commemorates she not only pays tribute to the Holocaust victims and survivors through her art but also believes in telling the story of the Holocaust through her art in order to teach the future generations.

Conclusion

The artistic works of the Holocaust portray the intricate human reactions to exploitation, and to the annihilation of one’s life and culture. The artistic works created by survivors or victims as well as third-party witnesses depict a kaleidoscope of themes that are self-reflective and thus deepen our understanding of the Holocaust. The two forms that have dominated the literary corpus of the Holocaust literature are the memoirs and diaries written by survivors that are believed to be the most authentic accounts of the Holocaust experience. Apart from these, over the years other forms such as poetry, theatre, music, dance and storytelling have emerged. The memoirs and diaries together provided first hand accounts of the horrors of the catastrophe, thereby informing the readers what living during the Holocaust was. There is also a proliferation of Holocaust fiction, which propels the readers to imaginatively enter the realms of experiences of the narrator. The artistic works not only serve as a means of commemorating the Holocaust but are also a powerful medium for educators to teach about the Holocaust.

Drop a Billion-Dollar Bomb on Putin! (Figuratively Speaking)

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Vladimir Putin, Chairman of the Government, spoken at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos Municipality, Graubünden Canton on January 28, 2009. Licensed under Creative Commons. Photo Credit: World Economic Forum.

Sounds crazy, right? Until you consider that—unlike Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed solution of assassination—a framework for the Biden administration to put a one billion dollar bounty on Putin’s head presently exists in the United States Code. Indeed, although it would require a day’s work on the part of the US Congress, there may be a less costly and far more efficient way for President Biden to help bring about an end to the war in Ukraine than by just sending billions of dollars’ worth of additional military equipment to support a fight that appears guaranteed to kill tens of thousands of more people on both sides—unless Putin is promptly brought to justice for the war crimes committed by his regime’s military and mercenaries. Moreover, it might be possible for the Biden administration and Congress to pursue this solution without spending a dime of American taxpayers’ money. Here’s a brief look at how. (To clarify up front: Designating Putin a Specially Designated Global Terrorist is not part of the proposed approach.)

When it was established in 1984, the United States Department of State’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program became the premier tool used to bring America’s financial might to bear in efforts to help bring to justice terrorists who either have or have planned to target Americans with attacks. RFJ touts among its ‘Success Stories’ paying a two million dollar reward for information that led to the arrest of 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. When you read reports by terrorism experts like Peter Bergen about the FBI advertising multi-million dollar rewards for information that can be used to locate leadership figures in State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) like al-Qa’ida and affiliated groups, FBI is actually amplifying rewards advertised by RFJ (See the fine print about the reward offer in the posters advertising rewards for top al-Qa’ida figures at the Bureau’s website like this one). Indeed, when Toby Harnden similarly wrote in a piece published by The New York Times in 2021 that ‘Sirajuddin Haqqani, the [Taliban’s] acting minister of interior, has a $10 million F.B.I. bounty on his head’, technically, this too was erroneous (See the reward details furnished by FBI here).

An argument can be made—and has been by the author—that RFJ could do a better job of helping to bring to justice most-wanted senior al-Qa’ida figures like Saif al-Adl. Still, it showed its value with the operation that resulted in the death of ISIS’ original so-called ‘caliph’, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Certainly, it was a stroke of nincompoopery par excellence when failed Congressional candidate turned Trump administration-appointed Pentagon Spokesman Jonathan Hoffman remarked that the twenty-five million dollar reward for information that could help bring Baghdadi to justice was ‘going to go to the dog’ that was injured during this operation. Moments earlier, USCENTCOM Commander General Kenneth McKenzie, who clearly understood the seriousness of the matter, had dodged a question about a payout for the RFJ’s twenty-five million dollar reward, claiming, ‘I have no visibility on that’. Although RFJ did not promptly tout this matter among the ‘Success Stories’ on its website, counterterrorism professionals meanwhile understood that the prospects of a large financial reward being issued for information used to put Baghdadi out of business had almost certainly helped quicken the demise of this terrorist leadership figure who had Americans’ blood on his hands—even if a reward was never actually paid. (Based on the author’s first-hand experiences in dealing with RFJ, he contends that it would be unsurprising if a full reward was not paid in this case.)

In more recent years, RFJ has been more aggressively used as an ‘intelligence-driven law enforcement’ resource against a more diverse mix of actors than members and supporters of FTOs. The Biden administration has harnessed the legal framework that manifested in RFJ’s establishment to dangle large financial incentives for information that federal agencies like FBI can use to identify and locate hackers responsible for some of the costliest cybercrimes targeting Americans and critical infrastructure in the US, including elections (See below text found in the US Code). Indeed, on its website, RFJ now lists ‘Malicious Cyber Activity’—in addition to ‘Terrorism’ and ‘North Korea’—among the ‘three broad categories’ of threat sources that it is involved in helping the US Government counter.

RFJ’s growing involvement with the US Government’s responses to this wider array of threats than just international terrorism is not the fruits of creative interpretations of existing laws on the parts of the State Department’s attorneys. In US Code 22, Section 2708, one finds that RFJ’s official purpose has been updated since 1984. It now encompasses the following (both emphasis and underscored emphasis added): ‘to assist in the prevention of acts of international terrorism, international narcotics trafficking, serious violations of international humanitarian law, foreign election interference, transnational organized crime, and other related criminal acts’.

Certainly, it is encouraging to see Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, beating the drum on more creative and civilized ways to justify putting more pressure on Putin than posturing interest in seeing him assassinated—specifically, by nudging the Biden administration to insist that the State Department designate his regime as a state sponsor of terrorism in response to the ongoing terroristic acts perpetrated by the Russian military and Russian-backed mercenaries in Ukraine. Yet there is already a framework for treating Putin like others who have orchestrated international terrorism campaigns, and without resorting to measures that could prove too clever by half if challenged by a small cadre of seemingly Putin-friendly elements within the US Congress.

Given that President Biden has branded Putin a ‘war criminal’, RFJ could be used to provide a hefty reward for anyone in Russia—or who might be interested in traveling there—to hand Putin over to stand trial for committing ‘serious violations of international humanitarian law’. Indeed, although the US is not a party to the Rome Statute, it is important to consider that Biden has called for a ‘war-crimes trial’ to address the voluminous evidence that can be used to justify charges that Putin is responsible for war crimes perpetrated in Ukraine. Furthermore, as noted by Human Rights Watch in a brief explainer about the US relationship with the International Criminal Court (ICC), although the US has not officially acknowledged the ICC’s legitimacy by being a party to the Rome Statute, ‘In 2013, the US Congress expanded its existing war crimes rewards program to provide rewards to people providing information to facilitate the arrest of foreign individuals wanted by an international court or tribunal, including the ICC’. It also points to two prior cases (2012 and 2015) of the US playing a role in the transfer of two suspects to stand trial before the ICC.

Clearly, the Biden administration could point to those precedents to justify a plan to use RFJ to create incentives for Russian officials or oligarchs, perhaps even a group of both—maybe even some enterprising billionaire from a third country who can get close to Putin—to hand Putin over to await such a trial. The only catch in offering a one billion dollar reward for rendering him to another country, from which he could be transferred to the ICC, is twofold: Firstly, according to US Code 22, Section 2708 (e)(1), which addresses the maximum amount that a Secretary of State may authorize RFJ to reward, there is a cap of ‘up to twice the amount specified in this paragraph’, a reference to the previously stated amount of $25,000,000. Secondly, circumstances contemplated for a Secretary of State to offer up to a $50,000,000 reward entail efforts to obtain information ‘leading to the capture of a leader of a foreign terrorist organization’.

Of course, this is hardly an insurmountable barrier to the proposed measures presented herein. Given the current mood of the country, Congress could quickly amend this to address the previously uncontemplated situation at hand. Indeed, it will surely require a far greater reward to resolve this situation in the manner envisaged herein than seven-figure rewards that may have been offered to help bring to justice warlords who were accused of committing grievous human rights abuses in conflicts on the African continent. In the interim, President Biden could issue an executive order to expedite the advertisement of a potentially game-changing reward for Putin’s capture.

So, if Congress were to do that, how could the Biden administration use the RFJ to advertise a billion-dollar reward to anyone who is willing to hand Putin over to the ICC without spending a dime of American taxpayers’ money?

That is somewhat more complicated than space allows for the author to explain. Meanwhile, it is useful to consider recent commentary by legal studies scholar Jennifer Taub about using the one hundred billion dollars worth of Russian assets frozen by the US Government to equip the Ukrainian military and volunteers who are waging the fight against Putin’s forces in Ukraine. Clearly, there are well-reasoned theories about ways to utilize frozen Putin regime assets to counter Putin’s grand vision—in violation of international laws—to bring valuable, natural resource-rich territories that were once part of the Soviet Union under his control. And even if those proposed solutions are too abstract to easily pursue today, there seems to be a will in Congress to work on devising new laws President Biden can enact that would make those ideas viable tools in the fight to counter Putin’s criminal aims. Again, in the interim, Biden could issue an executive order to accommodate the conversion of Putin regime assets frozen in the US into tools used to counter the Russian dictator’s grand plans.

Certainly, it is important to acknowledge that cases where it can be reasonably assumed the RFJ helped bring to justice some of the world’s most-wanted criminals tend to yield limited impacts. Much as the author assessed would be the case in testimony before a Senate hearing that was chaired by Senator Graham in 2017, as well as in a piece published at Lawfare, Baghdadi’s death has had, at most, a negligible impact on ISIS’ resiliency. However, it is important to consider that it seems like a rather safe bet that Putin’s vision of obliterating Russia’s economy and standing in the world by miring Russia in a war that he cannot hope to win—without resorting to measures that will undoubtedly trigger responses which will yield more catastrophic impacts on Putin’s regime and Russia more broadly—is unlikely to prove a durable cause if Putin is stripped of power.

Already, CIA Director Bill Burns is psychologically conditioning Americans—and the world—to feel unsurprised by a more nightmarish scenario, in which Putin resorts to deploying nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Putin has since animated those very fears by posturing a threat to deploy nuclear weapons against nations that are backing Zelensky. The Biden administration can do more to resolve this situation, and it should not hesitate to more directly utilize either America’s financial might, or even the Putin regime’s assets that are frozen by the US Government, to try to bring about a less deadly conclusion to Putin’s terrorism campaign in Ukraine. One which, it seems CIA now assesses, may easily spiral into a much wider and more impactful war. Advertising a one-billion-dollar reward for anyone who is willing to help hold Putin accountable for the war crimes that are being committed in Ukraine could be the most efficient way to hasten an end to this fast-growing nightmare.

Agnes Wanjiru, the British armed forces and the language of silence

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British soldiers on exercise in Kenya. Photographed by Cpl Jamie Hart, used under Open Government License

During 2021, two prominent British public institutions, the Metropolitan Police and the armed forces, faced significant criticism regarding their ability to protect women both in the community and within their own organisations. This scrutiny concentrated around the deaths of two women: the 2021 murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens, and the 2012 death of Agnes Wanjiru in Kenya, likely caused by a member of the British armed forces. While the former has received far more attention within British society, the two cases are remarkably similar, both in the failings which facilitated them and the toxic cultures surrounding the treatment of women which they betray. Wanjiru’s death should trigger just as much of a reckoning within the armed forces that Everard’s has in the Metropolitan police.

First, the circumstances surrounding Agnes Wanjiru’s murder should be explored. In March 2012, 21-year-old Wanjiru left her five-month-old daughter with her sister in the room they shared in the Manjengo ghetto in Nanyuki, Kenya. A friend had told her there was easy money to be made in town, entertaining the British soldiers staying at the nearby Nyati Barracks whilst preparing for their deployment to Afghanistan. The pair eventually found themselves at the bar of the Lions Court Inn Hotel, where Wanjiru was seen drinking with one of the sixty officers from the Duke of Lancaster Regiment there that evening. Later, four witnesses watched the pair leave the bar, with a guard escorting them to a lodge on the hotel’s grounds. This was the last time Wanjiru was seen alive. When she failed to return home the next day, her sister reported her missing. Her near-naked body was found two months later in a septic tank, only yards away from the room she had earlier been escorted to. A post-mortem found evidence of a severe beating, as well as stab wounds in her chest and abdomen.

Six days after Wanjiru’s disappearance, and seven weeks before her body would be found, the Duke of Lancaster Regiment was back in England and a rumour began to circulate that one among them had killed a local woman while they were in Kenya. This rumour was attached to a name. The crime, and the identity of its perpetrator, were apparently an ‘open secret’ within the unit—so much so that when the group were on deployment in Afghanistan, one senior officer was overheard referring to the alleged murderer as ‘the one that killed the prostitute in Kenya’. In 2021, five soldiers have identified the same serviceman, Soldier X, to journalists. Another soldier in his unit, Soldier Y, alleges that on the night of Wanjiru’s disappearance, Soldier X burst into the hotel bar asking for help. He purportedly exclaimed ‘I’ve killed her’, and, when prompted, led Soldier Y and his friends from the bar to the sewerage tank behind the hotel, where they saw Wanjiru’s body floating inside.

When Soldier Y returned to the base, he claims to have immediately reported the incident to senior officers, but was called a liar and told to leave. The first people to question him about that night were not from the Royal Military Police, but from the Sunday Times. ‘I’ve told enough people for someone to have done something. How can everybody know and he’s still a free man?’ he told them. The Kenyan police were investigating the incident, but their request to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to question and retrieve DNA samples from nine of the British soldiers at the hotel that night was met with silence. Questioned about it this year, the MoD said they never received the request. Despite a 2019 Kenyan inquest finding that Wanjiru was murdered by one or more British soldiers, no one has been held accountable. Soldier X, meanwhile, has settled in a small English town. He claims the allegation was fabricated by an angry colleague. He also had not been questioned about the murder until being approached by the Sunday Times.

This incident must not be viewed in isolation. Late in 2021, a colour sergeant serving in Kenya was dismissed after lifting a local woman’s skirt. Back home, seven staff members at the Royal Military Academy faced potential prosecution following the 2019 suicide of cadet Olivia Perks. Another cadet was dismissed after admitting to disgraceful conduct, having repeatedly hidden in a female colleague’s room waiting for her to return from the showers. A report published earlier this year by the House of Commons Select Committee on the Armed Forces shows these incidents are not anomalies. The committee found that almost 62 percent of the over 4,000 servicewomen who responded to their survey had experienced bullying, harassment and discrimination (BHD). Servicewomen were over ten times more likely to have experienced sexual harassment in the previous twelve months than their male counterparts. Compounding the issue, the complaints system was found by service personnel to be inefficient and ineffective. Subsequently, six in ten of those surveyed who had experienced BHD had deliberately not reported it, while 75 percent of those who did make a complaint about sexual harassment and assault described suffering negative consequences as a result.

Everard’s murder drew attention to an apparently similar reticence within the Metropolitan Police. In the weeks and months following Everard’s death, the public learned that there were multiple opportunities to catch Couzens’ behaviour before it escalated. In 2015, police received reports of a man, believed to be Couzens, driving around naked from the waist down. No action was taken. Earlier this year, Couzens was reported for two incidents of indecent exposure in a McDonald’s. Indeed, before he’d even been hired by the Metropolitan Police, his colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary had given him the harrowing nickname ‘the rapist’ due to his behaviour around female officers. How Couzens was able to continue serving despite numerous allegations of sexual harassment is now the focus of an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Retired female police officers have since confirmed that Couzens’ is not an isolated case, but rather that the culture within the Metropolitan Police encourages the silencing of allegations against male officers, even when they are made by their own colleagues.

While these allegations have rocked confidence in the Metropolitan Police, Wanjiru’s murder has not had a comparable impact on the armed forces. This is despite the similarities between the two cases. Both feature young women who were violently murdered at the prime of their lives. Both involve men who were representatives of institutions who are intended to serve and protect. Both involve perpetrators who benefited from a culture of silence within their institutions surrounding the mistreatment of women. Indeed, the perpetrator-status of both men was an ‘inside joke’. And, thankfully, the attention which they attracted has resulted in many acknowledging the need to do better. However, as noted by Gaby Hinsliff, while Everard’s death has garnered more public attention, Wanjiru’s arguably has more significant implications. ‘Imagine,’ she says, ‘being a female soldier, knowing that in combat your life depends on your unit having your back, [and] agonising over whether to report sexual harassment by one of them.’ Moreover, if servicemen are harassing and sometimes assaulting their own colleagues, ‘how might they treat civilian women—often desperate and vulnerable—who they encounter on operations far from home?’. There has, of course, been outrage. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace summoned senior generals to his office in early November to convey his exasperation with the recent allegations. Chief of Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter pledged the army’s cooperation with the Kenyan police in their ongoing inquiries. However, this does not go far enough. As MPs Diane Abbott and John Healey have asserted, there must be a full inquiry into not only the death itself, but also how it was able to go unnoticed by those responsible for ensuring that soldiers’ conduct aligns with the values their organisation claims to espouse. This inquiry will need to investigate not only those on the ground in Kenya, but also the culture of an institution whose leader, despite these allegations, has recently advocated for the utility of ‘laddishism’ in warfighting. Following Everard’s murder, the Senior Inspector at HM Inspectorate of Constabulary said that Couzens’ violence cannot be seen as an aberration; neither should that of Soldier X.

At the Kenyan inquest, the presiding judge made the unconventional decision to release the names of the nine British soldiers who were under investigation by Kenyan Police for Wanjiru’s murder. In her justification, Thuku quoted a passage from the poem Silence by Anasuya Sengupta. ‘Too many women in too many countries speak the same language of silence,’ she said. ‘The court refuses to speak the language of silence.’ As Sengupta so beautifully writes, it is only when women gain not only the freedom to speak, but also the power to be heard, that they are able to escape the bounds of silence. It would seem that this lesson has not yet been fully internalised by the British armed forces.

Strife BLUF 2022 Competition: Is World War III Inevitable?

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Military Parade on Red Square in 2016. Photo Credit: Kremlin.

The Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine has fueled speculation that military conflict between Russia and NATO-member states is in the cards and that it could lead to World War III. What do you think? Publish your best guess with Strife for a chance to win £150.

Strife Blog Managing Editor Michael S. Smith II is inviting graduate and postgraduate students and faculty in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London to participate in an anticipatory analysis competition that will consider the implications of the situation in Ukraine for global security.* This competition is intended to help familiarize participants with the challenging work of developing intelligence estimates. Participants will play the role of intelligence analysts from governments of their choice. In this role, participants have been tasked with developing intelligence estimates for presentation to policymakers who are interested in understanding the broader implications of the conflict in Ukraine for global security.

Participants are encouraged to utilize a bottom line up front (BLUF) style (present your conclusion first, including probability assessment(s), followed by a discussion of relevant indicators, etc. in subsequent paragraphs). For example, an opening might read:

The implications of conflict in Ukraine for security in Bosnia and Herzegovina during 2022

Both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric suggest that the Putin regime is willing to risk triggering a broader conflict. While it is assessed with moderate confidence that military conflict will occur between Russia and NATO-member states, it is assessed the likelihood of this resulting in a more expanded conflict that would resemble a third World War and involve a Russian military invasion of BiH and proximate aspirant NATO-member states is remote. However, it is assessed with moderate confidence that Putin will encourage his allies in the Western Balkans to attempt to trigger a conflict here in BiH, viewing a period where NATO-member states are focused on countering his offensive in Ukraine as an opportune time to foment instability in Western Balkans that can further fuel immigration into Western Europe. Thereby, creating yet more economic costs for NATO-member states and conditions that are very likely to exacerbate domestic tensions linked to polarized political environments in several Western European nations whose governments are major donors to stability projects in BiH.

Estimates will be published at Strife Blog as received. They will be judged—with the benefit of hindsight—by the management team at Strife in January 2023. The assessment that delivers the most prescient and incisive analysis of potential future developments linked to the situation in Ukraine during 2022 wins.

Submission window: March 15-June 15, 2022

Award issue date: January 31, 2023

Winner takes all!

Submit your estimate via email to [email protected].

The competition award has been donated by Mr. Smith.

Russian PMCs in Africa: How the Kremlin converts hard power into economic opportunity

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Soldier Holding Gun /Photo Credit: Jakson Martins, licensed under Creative Commons

The primary driver of Russian expansion in Africa are Private Military Contractors (PMC). Exerting hard power, while maintaining plausible deniability for the Russian state, PMCs are active across Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and more. Providing a cheaper alternative to Russian army deployments, PMCs, like the infamous Wagner Group, enable Russia to generate economic outcomes. The mechanisms by which they do so, however, remain murky. I will therefore interrogate these processes, arguing that Russia’s strategy revolves around exchanging PMC-derived hard power for economic concessions and partnerships.

Russian influence in Africa

Russia relies on Soviet legacies to maintain and build its influence in Africa. With enduring historical ties rooted in Cold War geopolitics, Russia is less affected by accusations of neo-colonialism. It never held colonies on the continent and thus carries less baggage in its dealing with regional governments. Putin has promoted Russian partnerships as “no strings attached”, differentiating their agreements from those with former colonial powers which often demand political or structural economic reforms.

Russia has acted opportunistically to offer military assistance to states affected by civil war, social unrest, and terrorism. Wagner Group was sent to CAR in 2018 following the end of French peacekeeping mission Opération Sangaris and the failure of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force to disarm rebel groups. In Sudan and Madagascar, Russia answered calls for security assistance amidst social and political unrest. In Libya, up to 1200 Wagner troops directly supported Haftar’s LNA (Libyan National Army) 2019 Tripoli Offensive. Finally, Mali’s recent contracting of Wagner Group follows the gradual end of France’s counterterrorism mission Opération Barkhane, which has not solved lingering issues of terrorism in the Sahel, while significantly heightening anti-French sentiment in the country.

A clear strategic trend is therefore apparent, Russia is identifying African security vacuums and offering PMC-led military aid. However, such Russian military aid is not free, PMC forces are often deployed in exchange for economic concessions.

Russia’s geopolitical strategy

Putin believes Russia is a great power and should retain this position, no matter the cost. While Russia’s military power is widely recognized, the same cannot be said for its economy.

The Russian president employs a foreign policy that exploits Russia’s hard power to expand its economic ties. In what are known as “packages”, Moscow offers foreign governments PMC support in exchange for natural resource concessions and the opening of national markets to Russian companies. That African governments request assistance is crucial, as it gives Russian interventions a degree of legitimacy within the international community.

In the short term, Russia focuses on exploiting natural resource concessions. Such concessions are granted as direct payments for the deployment of Wagner Group forces. On top of natural resources, the Kremlin’s economic interests in Africa revolve around arms exports to the continent. These bilateral security ties provide billions to the Kremlin, essential for keeping foreign interventions going and financing the defence industry.

In the long term, Putin is looking to position Russian export companies at the centre of CAR’s, Libya’s, and DRC’s economies. Although these countries’ populations possess little purchasing power, this will not always be the case. Their large young populations represent key emerging consumer groups, thus far untapped by the global market. By stoking new, massive export markets for Russian companies, Putin is looking to plan ahead, positioning Russia to benefit from long term shifts in the global economy.

Finally, the Russian president seeks to establish a strong base of geopolitical influence in Africa. This would give Russia a foothold on Europe’s southern border, notably in Libya, boosting Russia’s geopolitical position vis-à-vis the EU. The Kremlin will continue to offer package deals to African countries with geographically strategic locations and maturing markets.

Plausible deniability and controlling PMCs

PMCs give Putin plausible deniability. They are neither part of, nor officially affiliated with, the Russian state, therefore the Kremlin cannot be held accountable for their actions. Furthermore, PMCs technically do not exist in Russia, as they are banned by the law. Employing these companies allows Russia is to mitigate scrutiny into its overseas operations, reflected by continued uncertainty about the exact number of Wagner personnel in Libya, CAR and DRC. The PMC’s covertness acts as force multipliers to contracting armies and to hide casualties from the general public.

Putin exploits the lack of legal status to control the PMCs, who suffer consequences when they step out of line, such as the shakeup of Wagner’s command after the battle of Kasham. Wagner Group is heavily connected to Russia’s military intelligence (GRU), its founder, Utkin, was the commander of the GRU’s 700th Special Forces Unit of the 2nd Separate Special Forces Brigade. Wagner Group’s headquarters are a shared military base with the GRU’s 10th Separate Special Purpose Brigade, based in Molkino, Krasnodar. The contractors receive passports from the Central Migration Office Unit 770-001, which are only issued for GRU operatives. In 2016, Putin honoured Utkin at a reception for the “Hero of the Fatherland Day”. When 33 Wagner Group operatives were arrested in Belarus during the 2020 presidential elections, Putin intervened personally to have them freed.

The lack of official connection between the contractors and the Russian state also makes their deployment far cheaper. A Wagner soldier’s monthly salary of $4,600 is almost four times that of a Russian soldier at $1,200. However, the mercenary’s salary, accommodation and equipment are paid by Wagner Group owner Prigozhin’s network, using income from the exploitation of natural resource concessions. Therefore, Russia deploys Wagner troops abroad with low financial drawbacks, only paying for transport and occasional medical treatment. By controlling Wagner’s operational capacity to deploy to conflict zones, the Kremlin’s exerts direct authority over the contractors.

Putin’s intercessions in favour of Wagner Group and the outfit’s very close ties to the GRU demonstrate a direct link between the mercenaries and the highest levels of the Russian state. These ties are further compounded by Putin’s inner circle often owning PMCs, natural resource companies and financial firms active in Africa.

PMC’s financial structure and economic interests

One man is at the centre of Putin’s private interests in Africa: Yuri Prigozhin. Kremlin insider and Wagner Group’s financier, Prigozhin was tasked to exploit African natural resources in exchange for Russian mercenary assistance. With Putin’s backing, the businessman set up contacts all over the continent, negotiating “package” agreements.

Prigozhin owns M Invest, an umbrella company that manages a mix of security and energy firms. Through this umbrella company, he secures natural resource concessions by negotiating “package” agreements in the Kremlin’s name. He then guards the natural resources with PMCs, exploits the resources with specialized energy companies, and distributes the profits amongst African partners, himself and likely the Kremlin. M Invest’s subsidiaries include Lobaye Invest, which extracts gold and diamonds in CAR, Meroe Gold, a gold mining operation in Sudan, and Sewa Security Services, which provides personal security for government officials.

Closely interlinked and with direct ties to the Kremlin, these companies further the interests of bigger Russian multinationals. For example, after a 9 month halt in operations that coincided with the Wagner-backed Tripoli offensive, Gazprom resumed operations in Libya in May 2021. The firm concurrently jumpstarted its pre-planned infrastructure expansion projects to boost gas production. This pattern of interlinked companies is repeated across the African countries where Russia has a significant presence.

Prigozhin is one of many oligarchs that control the system of highly interconnected security, energy and financial firms. Closely connected to these oligarchs, Putin, through his inner circle, stands to personally profit from Russia’s expansion into Africa. This operation is in line with the Russian President’s rule, defined by informal personal network connections and high military corruption.

Summary

In conclusion, Russian PMCs are a tool employed by the Kremlin to expand Russia’s economic, political and geopolitical influence in Africa. The contractors are at the heart of Russian strategy, which trades hard power assistance with natural resource concessions and long-term economic partnerships. Putin’s long-term strategy of gaining preferential market access to emerging African states furthers his Grand Strategy of maintaining Russia’s great power status. However, Putin’s private economic interests in the exploitation of natural resources points to an inability to separate personal gains from state governance. This blurring of the lines may hamper Russia’s long-term strategy on the continent. Nevertheless, in the short term, Russian PMCs are set to continue playing a defining role in Africa’s security sphere due to their efficiency and low operational costs.