KAMPALA, Uganda – Remnants of the Russian mercenary group Wagner have gained a new foothold along the upper reaches of the Obangu River, where they run a drug empire in the Central African Republic, beyond the reach of law enforcement or even Moscow.
This manor is based on tramadol. Pain relievers are usually prescribed for relatively minor conditions, such as joint pain or people recovering from surgery. But when taken in sufficient quantities, this opioid becomes a highly addictive stimulant known as the poor man’s cocaine.
Miners in Wagner’s gold mines depend on it to work long hours. Protesters rallying in support of Russia’s involvement in the region take pills to stave off hunger and fatigue. Fighters involved in the years-long insurgency in the country take it in high doses to make themselves brave in battle.
The recommended dose of tramadol is usually between 50 mg and 100 mg, but tablets containing 200 mg or more are commonly sold nationwide.
“On the battlefield, tramadol is being taken in huge quantities,” said Nathalia Dukhan, a researcher at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Geneva-based think tank. “As the fighters enter the medicinal trance, fear disappears and agitation increases.”
After years of setbacks, the business has given Wagner new momentum after its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash and most of its operations were absorbed into the Russian state. More than 500 of its members live up the Oubangui River in the Central African Republic, where their control of the tramadol trade enables them to exploit the country’s rich timber and gold resources. The Global Initiative estimates that Wagner earns $180 million a year from his illegal gold exports there. Smuggling of painkillers into neighboring countries is providing additional revenue sources.
A former associate of Wagner’s who now lives in Europe says the influence of the mercenaries is now so strong that they supply tramadol to members of the elite presidential guard and to an important youth militia known as the Sharks, which regularly conducts armed patrols around the capital and beats up opposition supporters.
Researchers and businessmen in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, say Wagner’s stalwarts and their allies have tightened their grip on business in recent months. Their main target is the river trade bringing pills from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This is a surprising turn of events. For a few years before Prigozhin’s death, Wagner was a powerhouse in Africa. It deployed mercenaries to Mali, Mozambique, Sudan, the Central African Republic and elsewhere to shore up unstable regimes in exchange for access to gold mines and other wealth.
Russia took over much of Wagner’s business, but Moscow’s efforts to do the same thing in the Central African Republic have proven more problematic, partly because of its relative remoteness and the extent to which the group’s survivors have established themselves in the country.
Today the veterans there are led by Prigozhin’s son, Pavel Prigozhin, who has taken advantage of the group’s deep knowledge of the country’s security and intelligence apparatus.
Wagner first arrived in the country in 2018 as part of a security deal with President Faustin-Archange Touadera to end the insurgency. Within a few months, these fighters—often traveling in Toyota Land Cruisers and supported by helicopter gunships—managed to prevent rebels from capturing the capital of the mineral-rich nation.
Fast forward to today, according to the Pentagon-sponsored Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the old Wagner group has effectively taken over the state.
“The Central African Republic is the country where Wagner was most powerful. His economic assets remain intact in the country, including gold mining interests,” said Charles Bausel, a senior analyst for Central Africa at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. “Russia is managing the situation by avoiding open confrontation, as it did with Prigozhin before that plane crash.”
Mercenaries are now closely integrated into the country’s national army and local militias, exploiting smuggling routes and diverting trade flows to maintain control over key resources, including the Obangui River.
At the height of the civil war, the river running along the border with Congo was one of the few routes in and out of the capital for residents fleeing the fierce conflict. Today, researchers say, it is the main gateway for smugglers bringing in illegal products ranging from gasoline and weapons to narcotics.
Of these, Tramadol is proving to be the most important.
The World Health Organization says that tramadol was developed for routine medical use, but it is increasingly abused and its dependence is like that of morphine.
Matthew Parker, an expert in the field of addiction medicine, said, “Once you become physically or psychologically dependent on tramadol, you may find that you cannot live comfortably without it.”
About a decade ago, chemists at a university in Dortmund, Germany, discovered that cheap tramadol was so abused in parts of northern Cameroon that it was seeping from human and animal waste into groundwater and soil, where it was absorbed by the roots, mistakenly believed to have natural pain-relieving properties. It was discovered that farmers were also feeding their cattle so that they could escape the heat of the afternoon sun.
According to the Global Initiative, the Central African Republic is now both a destination and redistribution point for high-dose tramadol products in West and Central Africa.
Most of the drug is produced in India, where pharmaceutical companies export it to Congolese companies. These shipments are usually registered as tramadol, standard dosage of 50 mg. But researchers and traders say high-dose pills are also hidden in the cargo.
From Congo, smugglers then repack the high-dose tramadol pills, which are shipped to the Zongo River town near the border before reaching Central African Republic across the Oubangui River from the capital Kinshasa. A regional study by the Global Initiative found that these high-dose pills are widely available in shops, stores, and other retail outlets throughout Bangui.
From there, medicine boxes are loaded onto motorcycles and small trucks for distribution through retail outlets, market stalls, and small drugstores. Demand for the drug is so strong that its price locally has tripled over the past year.
Profits from trade increase again when shipments are smuggled to neighboring markets. Traders say a shipment worth about $7,000 in the Central African Republic could generate up to $21,000 if sold in Cameroon, although smugglers must pay about $4,000 in bribes to Wagner and his allied armed groups along the way.
The cash is enabling Wagner to import more weapons for his armies and network of militias. The group is becoming increasingly adventurous.
In February last year, the Wagner-aligned militia, known as Anti-Balaka, killed about 130 people during an attack on Fulani herders near the border with Cameroon. It was the deadliest attack on civilians since March 2022, at the height of the insurgency, according to the conflict-monitoring group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
Other Wagner-backed groups such as the Sharks and the Black Russians run armed patrols around Bangui, regularly intimidating opposition supporters ahead of last year’s presidential election, in which Touadera won a third term in office.
Researchers say that before going into battle, Wagner commanders distribute high doses of tramadol to fighters to increase aggression and suppress fear. The death toll is rising along with increased use of the drug, with the death toll in battles for control of mineral-rich areas rising by about 20% to nearly 500 in the past year, according to data from Uppsala University in Sweden.
According to former State Department official Cameron Hudson, the Central African Republic’s relative isolation and lack of strategic importance has kept Wagner and the worsening violence largely off the international radar, giving him free rein to operate.
“The mission there is more straightforward than in other places where Wagner has fought, like Mali or Mozambique, where there are real security threats from ISIS affiliates,” he said, using the common acronym for Islamic State.
There are now fears that as Wagner digs deeper into Bangui, it could worsen the already widespread chaos in the wider region, said researcher Dukhan. Sudan is of particular concern, where rebel Rapid Support Forces hold a strong hold in the southern and western parts of the country near the Central African Republic.
“The Central African Republic is Wagner’s last remaining base in Africa. But they are entering Darfur in coordination with the Rapid Support Forces,” he said.
Write to Nicolas Bario nicholas.bariyo@wsj.com
