The Wagner Group mercenaries still in the Central African Republic have built a drug empire on the smuggling and sale of tramadol, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Tramadol is a synthetic opioid prescribed for pain relief. In high doses, it acts as a stimulant — which is why, the newspaper notes, it is known as the “poor man’s cocaine.”
The standard medical dose runs 50 to 100 milligrams, but tablets of 200 milligrams or more are sold openly in shops and market stalls across the CAR.
The drug is manufactured in India, shipped to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then moved up the Ubangi River into the CAR, where Wagner mercenaries control its distribution, the Journal reports.
Miners buy tramadol to work long hours at the gold mines, which Wagner also controls. Fighters take it as well, to blunt fear and heighten aggression.
The rise in tramadol use in the CAR has coincided with a nearly 20-percent rise in battlefield deaths — to about 500 over the past year — in fighting for control of the country’s mineral-rich regions, the Journal reports, citing data from Uppsala University.
The trade has given Wagner fresh impetus after years of setbacks, the Journal reports. Beyond generating revenue, it helps the group maintain its gold mining operations in the CAR — a business that the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Geneva-based think tank, estimates earns Wagner $180 million a year from illicit gold exports.
Up to 500 Wagner mercenaries remain in the CAR, according to the Journal, which reports that the veterans there are now led by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s son, Pavel.
After the mercenary mutiny and Prigozhin’s death in 2023, the private military company was formally disbanded, and its operations in Africa and the Middle East were reported to be headed for Russia’s Defense Ministry. But the BBC’s Russian Service reported in the summer of 2024 that Wagner was still operating in the Central African Republic exactly as before.
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