Two thousand Syrian fighters have traveled from Turkey or are to arrive imminently to fight on the battlefields of Libya, Syrian sources in all three countries have said, in an unprecedented development that threatens to further complicate the north African state’s civil war.
The deployment came after Turkey last month agreed to come to the aid of Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, who is backed by the UN, in the face of a months-long campaign by his rival, Libyan National Army Commander Khalifa Haftar.
Ankara has supported the Syrian opposition since the early days of the battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, even as the original Free Syrian Army umbrella group grew weak and splintered because of infighting and the growth of Islamist elements within rebel ranks.
Turkey now uses some rebel fighters as proxies against Kurdish-led forces, despite allegations of human rights abuses from watchdogs.
“This is a very different situation to Syria,” said Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst with the International Crisis Group. “Anti-Turkish sentiment is already strong, because of Ankara’s intervention, and could grow as a result of this, playing in Haftar’s favour.”
An initial deployment of 300 men from the second division of the Syrian National Army, an umbrella of Syrian rebel groups funded by Turkey, left Syria through the Hawar Kilis military border crossing on Dec. 24, followed by 350 more on Dec. 29.
They were then flown to Tripoli, the Libyan capital, where they have been posted to frontline positions in the east of the city.
Another 1,350 men crossed into Turkey on Jan. 5. Some have since been deployed to Libya with others still undergoing training at camps in southern Turkey. More men from the Islamist Sham Legion are also considering traveling to Libya.
The figures are significantly higher than most previous estimates.
Once source said that the Syrian men are expected to coalesce into a division named after Libyan resistance leader Omar al-Mukhtar, who was executed by Italy in 1931 and became popular in Syria during the 2011 Arab spring.
The fighters have signed six-month contracts with the UN-backed Government of National Accord, rather than with the Turkish military, Syrian National Army sources said, for US$2,000 a month — a vast sum compared with the 450 to 550 Turkish lira (US$76 to US$93) a month they earn in Syria.
All have been promised Turkish nationality, a carrot Ankara has used to cajole fighters in brigades on its payroll for several years.
Turkey is also paying medical bills for injured soldiers and is responsible for repatriating the dead to Syria.
At least four Syrians have died in Libya already, the Guardian can confirm, although their units said they died while stationed on front lines against Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria.
Last month, cellphone footage of men with Syrian accents claiming to be in Tripoli surfaced on social media, in which one man said: “The Free Syrian Army is in Libya to defend Islam.”
“We liberated this entire military camp from Haftar’s forces,” said another, before turning to a colleague to ask: “What is his name? Haftar? Hantar?”
The footage was questioned by many who wondered how and why Syrian men — nominally still fighting in the nine-year-old war against al-Assad — were so far from home.
Ankara and Tripoli have repeatedly denied the presence of Syrian fighters in Libya, as has the Syrian National Army.
The Guardian understands that Syrian fighters in the country have since been banned from posting any evidence of their whereabouts to social media.
Turkey itself has so far sent just 35 soldiers to Tripoli in an advisory capacity, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan said last week.
Unlike October last year’s incursion into Kurdish-held parts of Syria, intervention in Libya has little support among the Turkish public.
However, on Tuesday, after Haftar walked away from talks in Moscow without agreeing to a ceasefire, Erdoan said that Turkey would not refrain from “teaching a lesson he deserves” to the Libyan warlord.
Haftar is supported by Egypt, France, Jordan, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, while al-Sarraj is backed by Italy, Qatar and Turkey.
Officials from al-Sarraj’s internationally recognized government have expressed anger that their allies, other than Turkey, have effectively abandoned them since Haftar declared his intention to capture Tripoli in April last year.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS