Horațiu Potra: Romanian Mercenary in Africa Competes with Wagner Remnants

Horațiu Potra: Romanian Mercenary in Africa Competes with Wagner Remnants

Executive Summary:

• Once thought a vestige of the past, Eastern European mercenaries have returned to Africa under the leadership of Romanian Horațiu Potra. Potra runs a private military company (PMC) composed of other Romanian former members of the French Foreign Legion.
• Both Potra and his company have been involved in a number of dubious activities in Africa over the past decades. Effectively competing with the Russian Africa Corps, which took over the Wagner Group’s operations on the continent, Potra is presenting himself and his men as an alternative to Moscow’s forces.
• Potra has recently entered Romanian politics on the side of a nationalist Eurosceptic party. Business competition aside, Potra has publically made pro-Russian statements, also denouncing Romania’s military support for Ukraine.

Congo Mercenary was Major “Mad Mike” Hoare’s account of his 1960s mercenary activities in the newly independent Republic of the Congo (today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC). His experience became the inspiration for movies like Dark of the Sun (1968) and The Wild Geese (1978) that forever linked White mercenaries and the Congo in the popular imagination. This era appeared to come to a close, however, with the 1971 show-trial of German mercenary Rolf Steiner in Khartoum and the subsequent 1977 Organization of African Unity “Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa” in which mercenaries were outlawed in Africa as preservers of “colonial and racist domination” (au.int, July 3, 1977).

Most of Hoare’s “Five Commando” mercenary unit were acclimated South Africans or former residents of European colonies. When President Mobutu Sese Seko (1965–1997) reached for the aid of White mercenaries during the First Congo War (1996–1997) he discovered he could hire Eastern Europeans without colonial baggage (but often veterans of the vicious Balkan Wars) for less money than the usual West European or White African mercenaries.

Mobutu thus hired several hundred Eastern Europeans, mainly Bosnian Serbs, augmented by Croatians, Bosniaks, Ukrainians, and Russians. Unsurprisingly, most members of this so-called “White Legion” fell ill before making any useful contribution. [1] Unpaid and unsuccessful, the White Legion was sent home before the war was over. It was not, however, the end of Eastern European mercenaries in Africa, who have returned under the leadership of a Romanian ex-Legionnaire named Horațiu Potra.

Early Years

Potra was born in 1970 in the Transylvanian town of Mediaș. He left school in 1992 to join the French Foreign Legion, completing his service in 1997. Potra was engaged in the late 1990s as a personal bodyguard to the Emir of Qatar, Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani (1995–2013) (Ziarero.antena3.ro, July 15, 2009; Observator [Bucharest], February 9). The work involved international travel and offered Potra the opportunity to make high-level contacts in the security community.

In the Central African Republic: 2002–2003

From 2002–2003, Potra, known at the time as “Lieutenant Henri,” was responsible for training the presidential guard of Ange-Félix Patassé in the Central African Republic (CAR). However, he fell out of favor after being suspected of collusion with rebel leaders like Mahamat Garfa and Mahamat Abbo Sileck (both members of the Tama ethnic group of north-eastern Chad) (Great Lakes Eye [Kigali], January 19, 2023).

Another Potra associate was the Chadian mercenary Abdoulaye Miskine (a.k.a. Martin Koumtamadji), a Hadjaraï from the Guéra mountain range of south-central Chad who provided presidential security in the CAR. Miskine was arrested by Chadian authorities in 2019 and charged with insurrection, rape, murder, torture and kidnapping (RFI, July 30, 2022). Never tried and excluded from a mass pardon in December 2023, “General” Miskine was last reported to be in ill health in Chad’s Klessoum Prison (al-Wihda [N’Djamena], February 20).

One of Potra’s more useful acquaintances from the CAR is Jean-Pierre Bemba, who was the Congolese defense minister from March 23, 2023 until June 12, 2024. Potra first came into contact with him when the Belgian-educated Bemba was invited to bring his Ugandan-backed Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC) rebel force to the CAR to protect President Ange-Félix Patassé from a coup attempt (Great Lakes Eye [Kigali], February 18).

Bemba’s MLC withdrew from the CAR in 2003 amid numerous allegations of rape, looting, and other disorder during their deployment (The New Humanitarian, February 17, 2003). Arrested in Europe in 2008, Bemba returned to the Congo in 2018 after spending 10 years in detention in the Hague. He was eventually acquitted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

When Patassé was overthrown by General François Bozizé in 2003, Potra was arrested by the rebels and sentenced to death before escaping. After being found by French troops he was evacuated to safety in Europe (Ziarero.antena3.ro, July 15, 2009). [2]

Legionnaires to Mercenaries

After his stint in the CAR, Potra became the director of the Romanian private military company (PMC) Asociatia RALF–ROLE (Românii care au Activat în Legiunea Franceză–Roumanie Legion Etrangere; Romanians Who Have Served in the French Legion–Romanian Foreign Legion), based in the Transylvanian city of Sibiu in Romania. Formed in 2007, RALF–ROLE describes itself on its website as “an association of former Romanian legionnaires who were active in the French Foreign Legion.” Using the ex-legionnaires’ experience “in security and investigation,” RALF-ROLE offers its services under the motto “Discretion, Safety, and Efficiency to serve and protect you and your business” (Asociatia RALF, accessed May 29). Potra’s new group provided security for the diamond trade in Sierra Leone, including for African Minerals Limited, owned by Vasile Frank Timiș, a wealthy but controversial Romanian businessman (Observator [Bucharest], February 9).

Trouble at Home

In Romania, Potra was investigated in 2010 on suspicion of drug trafficking and possession of weapons by the anti-organized crime prosecutor’s office, DIICOT (Direcția de Investigare a Infracțiunilor de Criminalitate Organizată și Terorism, or Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism) (Libertatea [Bucharest], April 4, 2016). His arrest made headlines when DIICOT agents raided his home and found him sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow (Observator [Bucharest], February 9). Potra ultimately received only a suspended sentence on a charge of keeping a firearm without a license (Fanatik [Bucharest], April 14, 2023). There were also allegations he had threatened to kill Adrian Volintiru, the director of Romgaz, the state-owned natural gas company. The case was resolved when Volintiru withdrew the complaint (Fanatik [Bucharest], April 14, 2023).

In West Africa and the Sahel

Potra later operated in Burkina Faso, where one of his men was abducted by Mokhtar Belmokhtar while guarding a manganese mine in 2015 (Libertatea [Bucharest]). Iulian Gherguț was not released until 2023, spending his eight years as a prisoner being shuttled back and forth between Mali and Burkina Faso (Libertatia [Bucharest], August 10, 2023). At the time, Potra’s company was supplying security to mineral interests owned by Frank Timiș. Potra was also reported to have trained Chadian rebels (Taz [Berlin], January 9, 2023). By 2016, Potra was back in the CAR working as a bodyguard to President Faustin Touadéra (Taz [Berlin], January 9, 2023).

Deployment in Nord-Kivu

Currently, Potras and his Romanians are engaged in active combat alongside the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) and UN peacekeepers against the eastern Congo’s M23 (Mouvement du 23 mars). M23 is a predominantly Congolese Tutsi anti-government militia operating in the province of Nord-Kivu with the support of Rwanda (see Terrorism Monitor, July 26, 2012). Both the Nord-Kivu Tutsi and the Sud-Kivu Banyamulenge Tutsi suffer from ethnic discrimination and the threat of expulsion from the DRC due to widespread accusations of being “Rwandan foreigners” rather than natives of the Kivu region.

One Moldovan and two of Potra’s Romanian mercenaries, Victor Railean and Vasile Badea, were killed in an M23 ambush in February (DRC News, February 19). Four others were wounded when the Romanian unit remained under fire for ten hours while defending the city of Saké from an M23 offensive (Libertatea [Bucharest, February 9].

Potra’s fighters collaborate with Bulgarian PMC Agemira, led by French businessman Olivier Bazin (a.k.a. “Colonel Mario”) (Great Lakes Eye [Kigali], January 19, 2023). Agemira maintains what is left of the DRC’s aging, mostly Soviet-era air force (Jeune Afrique, July 28, 2023). Georgian and Belarussian pilots are engaged to fly the DRC’s helicopters and fighter jets (Deutsche Welle, January 17, 2023; Bellingcat, June 26, 2017). A Georgian helicopter pilot was captured by M23 in 2017. His fate remains unknown (OC Media [Tbilisi], May 26, 2017).

Conclusion

Potra has recently taken an interest in Romanian politics. In February 2022, he became president of the Mediaș chapter of the Alianței Pentru Patrie (APP, Alliance for the Fatherland), a nationalist Eurosceptic party. Some days later, Potra issued a video addressed to the Romanian political class. Holding a machete, Potra declared: “You are all traitors to the country who serve foreign interests…” The mercenary chief also denounced Romania’s military support for Ukraine: “What have the Russians done to us, how have they wronged us to be against them?” (Fanatik [Bucharest], April 14, 2023).

Nonetheless, Potra has tried to exploit the difference between Russian mercenaries with ties to the Kremlin and his own Romanians. According to Potra, Western governments “should be very happy that a European company is [in the DRC] that is not Wagner” (Le Monde, March 20). The governments of the West have so far avoided displays of “happiness” over the deployment of Potra’s Romanian soldiers of fortune in the long-suffering Congo. While Africa may have come to terms with the OAU’s 1977 ban on the use of European mercenaries, their deployment is still seen by many Western nations as a contribution to insecurity rather than a desirable alternative to the Wagner Group or its successor, the Russian Africa Corps (see Militant Leadership Monitor, April 18).

Notes:

[1] Jason K Stearns: Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of Congo and the Great War of Africa. New York, 2011, p. 124.

[2] For more on European and African mercenaries in the CAR, see AIS Special Report, February 5, 2022.