France takes a dim view of the talks between the Malian junta and the private security group Wagner. These developments once again raise the question of the role of such companies in external operations.
International humanitarian law and the law of war are now being called into question by a proliferation of actors with blurred boundaries.
For this debate, Emmanuel Laurentin welcomes General Benoît Durieux, Director of the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense Nationale et de l'Enseignement Militaire Supérieur (IHEDN), Jelena Aparac, Chairwoman-Rapporteur of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries at the United Nations Human Rights Council, and Niagalé Bagayoko, political scientist and President of the African Security Sector Network.
"Private companies like Wagner, when they get involved in the fighting, are not making war, they are pursuing their own objectives, probably to the detriment of stabilising the situation, so we are going in exactly the opposite direction to what we want to do.
You have to realise that the private military companies we're talking about today mainly operate in destabilised areas: when you're a military commander on the ground and you know that there's a private military company operating nearby, it's a nightmare. Of course, you know full well that they're not going to measure the use of force, but the use of force is political, and political right down to the lowest level.
The fighters working for these companies use their weapons on a massive scale, often against the population; in other words, they sabotage the work that the military are trying to do".
Lieutenant General Benoît Durieux
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