This is CBS. I am the world. I'm John Bachelor. To the Sahel, the shores of the Sahara Desert, late April 2024, a pursuit, including troops from Mali, a troubled land,

and Russian mercenaries, sometimes called the Africa Corps, crossing an international border into Mauritania.

The significance here is that Mauritania immediately responded with reinforcements after 13

moritanian civilians were dead we presume connected to the pursuit across the

border however there is much more to this story involving Moscow and the Sahel and

ECOWAS and the stability of West Africa. And I welcome Ronan Wordsworth my guide on these matters

Because he first introduced me to the idea that the

Africa Corps before that it was known as the Wagner Group, was spreading its gifts throughout

this region available to governments that were no longer democratically elected or

even tried to be democracies. They were quite clearly either Huntis or military governments that were sympathetic

to and welcoming of the Africa Corps, aka the Wagner Group, and involved in this to get even more excited and imagine what

Graham Green would make of it there's gold somewhere in all these hills.

Ronan a very good evening to you let us begin with that incident at Moratania

Molly is said to be an open collapse a a failed state and also overrun or dominated in one part my memory of jihadists who are

well-armed perhaps from the Libyan arsenal but they've had time enough to build their

arm up the The French quit Mali some time ago,

although it's a francophone country, as there is most of this land. The pursuit

across the border, why were Malian troops pursuing across the Mauritania border?

Why were Russians with them? Good evening, John.

Yes, so if we look at how the security situation has developed through Mali specifically to start with

the military regime came to power promising to take back control and really destroy these Islamic extremist groups which include a few different groups one called Janim which is aligned with Al-Qaeda, was aligned with Islamic State as well as another one called

Aikim, the Islamic, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

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