Turkey is not only sending Syrian fighters to Libya but mercenaries of various nationalities, Libyan National Army (LNA) spokesman Khaled al-Mahjoub told Al Arabiya.

He added that the LNA was continuing its reinforcements to defend the country’s “oil crescent,” the central region that contains over 60 percent of Libya’s oil, stressing that Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood were mainly focused on the “oil crescent.”

A recent report by Somali media said that Turkey and Qatar recruited thousands of Somali mercenaries to fight in Libya alongside the Government of National Accord (GNA) which Ankara supports.

Turkey had sent thousands of Syrian fighters to support the GNA, according to the Syrian Observatory, a war monitor. Libya has plunged into chaos since the 2011 toppling of dictator Moammar Gaddafi.

Clashes between the two main warring parties in the country, the LNA, commanded by Khalifa Haftar and the GNA, led by Fayez al-Serraj, have intensified recently.

Many foreign powers have backed different sides of the conflict with varying degrees of support, with the most prominent countries being Turkey backing the GNA and Egypt backing the LNA.

The possibility of further escalating the conflict in the North African country increased after Egypt’s parliament authorized the deployment of troops outside the country, allowing Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to act on his threat of military action against Turkish-backed forces in Libya.

Turkish media outlets said Ankara put in place a plan to increase its forces and military equipment in Libya to confront Egyptian forces in case Cairo decides to intervene.

The signing of a military agreement with Niger, a neighbouring country of Libya, reflects Turkey’s interest to have a foothold in a country adjacent to Libya, The New Khalij reported.

The agreement was reached during last week’s tour by the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu of Africa, as Niger was among the African countries he visited.

Çavuşoğlu met with President of Niger Mahamadou Issoufou, and both sides discussed the effects of the unstable security situation in Libya on their countries.

The New Khalij disclosed that Turkey, which has military agreements with Libya, does not have ground borders with it. Therefore, it expected that it would be difficult for it to deal with the issue when it comes to military confrontation with Egypt, which supports the renegade Libyan Commander Khalifa Haftar.

Consequently, The New Khalij explained that there is a possibility of a ground confrontation in light of the continuous remarks by Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, who continues pledging to stop Turkish support for the UN-backed Libyan government in Tripoli.

During the visit to Niger, Çavuşoğlu expressed: “We would like to make a contribution to Niger’s development in the areas of transportation, construction, energy, mining and agriculture.”

As part of the Turkish cooperation with Africa, Anadolu Agency reported that the Turkish government has donated millions of dollars for infrastructure development on the continent and has sponsored hundreds of African students.

Turkey’s presence is felt across the continent, where there are a number of Turkish organisations, including the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), Maarif Foundation and Yunus Emre Institute, among others.

In “The Return,” Hisham Matar’s haunting 2016 memoir about seeking to uncover his missing father’s fate in the hands of the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the author pays tribute to a cousin who fought valorously in the North African nation’s 2011 revolution. Following Tripoli’s liberation in August 2011, Hamad traveled to Syria to help like-minded revolutionaries there overthrow their own ruthless strongman, Bashar al-Assad, like reported by al-monitor.com.

Nine years on, Syrian rebels are streaming into Libya. But their motives are decidedly different. They are going for the money. As their war-shattered country descends into deeper misery under US sanctions, and with no end in sight, many are enlisting to fight on opposite sides of Libya’s ongoing civil conflict pitting the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) against the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by the eastern warlord Khalifa Hifter. The emergence of Syrian mercenaries is the latest cruel twist in Syria’s nine-year-long conflict that has claimed at least 400,000 lives, internally displaced more than 6.2 million people and led roughly 5.2 million more to flee the country, according to the United Nations. Some of the Syrian fighters headed to Libya are children, in breach of international law.

“What we are now faced with is a scenario in which Syrians who fought together to overthrow Assad are now going to be shooting at each other in a foreign land,” said Bassem al-Ahmed, the co-founder of Syrians for Truth and Justice, a nonpartisan advocacy group that monitors human rights in Syria, including the plight of Syrians going to fight in Libya. Ahmed, who is Syrian, said, “I would have never imagined we would be in this situation. It’s an absolute travesty.”

Emadeddin Badi, a Libyan and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the arrival of Syrian mercenaries in his country “is illustrative of the fact that Syrians’ hope for change has been turned to ash by Assad and a passive international community. So it isn’t that the favor [to Libyans who came to fight in Syria] is returned, more so that both Libya and Syria’s revolutions have turned to tragedy.”

“Not everyone is happy with the Syrians in Libya, even amongst the camp that they have been brought to support,” Badi added in emailed comments to Al-Monitor.

The warring parties in Libya have accused the other of importing radical jihadis and assorted criminals to bolster their ranks, part of a propaganda war that is being waged by the Turkish and Qatari media on one hand and the United Arab Emirates and the Egyptian media on the other, with sympathizers of the rival sides weighing in as well.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which has been monitoring the Syrian conflict through a network of local sources, recently alleged that Turkish intelligence had transferred “jihadist groups and Islamic State (IS) members of different foreign nationalities from Syria to Libya in the past few months.” The SOHR maintains they included over 2,500 Tunisian IS fighters. Aaron Y. Zelin, a Richard Borow fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of “Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad,” debunked the claims, telling Al-Monitor in emailed comments that they were “straight up not credible.”

The Pentagon’s inspector general concluded in a July 17 report that Turkey had sent between 3,500 and 3,800 paid Syrian fighters to Libya over the first three months of this year.

Despite allegations by Hifter and his UAE and Egyptian backers, the US military found no evidence to suggest the men were linked to either IS or al-Qaeda.

“The Libyans who went to Syria in 2011 went out of solidarity to do in Syria what they had done in Libya: overthrow a dictator. It was only in 2012 that you saw Libyans go for overt jihadi reasons. So, what they did was foreign fighting,” Zelin said. “What we are seeing now with the Syrians going to Libya is different because it’s mercenary activity. Foreign fighting and being a mercenary are two different phenomena. The former is more about solidarity and ideological conviction with a cause; the latter is about receiving money, a gun for hire.”

Turkey’s intervention earlier this year with officers, heavy weapons, warships and drones, together with the injection of Syrian mercenaries, has tipped the war in favor of the GNA. Hifter was forced to call off his yearlong campaign to capture Tripoli in May and beat a humiliating retreat. Turkey and Russia have slapped a band-aid on the conflict for now, with mutual pledges to seek a political resolution, the risk of renewed escalation remains. The ongoing recruitment of Syrian mercenaries is an ominous sign. Turkey and the GNA have vowed to press on till they capture Sirte. The coastal city where Gadhafi met his bloody end is the strategic gateway to the bulk of Libya’s oil, currently controlled by the LNA.

While there are numerous accounts documenting how thousands of Syrians are being recruited by the Turkish-backed opposition Syrian National Army to fight on the side of GNA forces, there is less information available about Syrians fighting on behalf of Hifter.

Mercenaries from neighboring countries like Chad and Sudan have taken part in the Libyan conflict since 2011. But Hifter’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces “is the first post-revolutionary Libyan entity to systematically import them and is now more reliant on them than any other Libyan entity,” said Tarek Megerisi, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The embargo on oil produced in areas under his control has depleted Hifter’s war chest, leaving his top backer and Turkey’s top regional foe, the UAE, to foot the bill. “The [LNA] is effectively desperate for foreign fighters that are competent on the battlefield and who will listen to orders. Syrians are great from the [LNA’s] perspective because they’re cheap bodies to put on the line, as crude as that is,” said Megerisi.

Syrian Arab tribes have put out public statements condemning the exploitation of their youths by the Wagner Group. The Russians reportedly began taking Syrians to fight in Libya last year. Wagner typically refuses to comment.

The UN said Wagner had at least 1,200 men fighting in Libya, according to a report that was leaked in May. The Kremlin denies involvement in such activities, including sending at least 14 warplanes to a central Libyan air base. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week insisted “the Russian military is not involved in any processes in Libya in any way.”

Megerisi reckons there is also a “geopolitical angle” to putting Syrian boots on the ground. It serves the Kremlin’s agenda of “strengthening the Russia, [Syrian President] Bashar [al-Assad], UAE triangle that’s forming,” he told Al-Monitor. In March, members of Hifter’s “government” established a diplomatic mission in Damascus. The move was welcomed by Moscow.

Syrians for Truth and Justice and its team of digital fact-checkers have pieced together further details of how Syrians are being recruited and taken to Libya to fight for Hifter with the help of Russia. The information will be made available in a report that is due to be published in the coming days and was seen exclusively by Al-Monitor. It’s the bookend to a May report that focused on Syrians recruited by Turkey for the GNA. They include members of militias who have committed war crimes against Syria’s Kurdish population.

Based on eyewitness testimony and fighters’ accounts of the Syrian government’s collusion with the Russian military and Wagner, the latest report describes how an estimated 3,000 men (at least 22 of whom are children) from Suwayda, Daraa, Quneitra, Hama, Homs, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and rural Damascus were recruited. They notably include former opposition rebels who fought in the US-backed Southern Front who have signed so-called settlement or amnesty agreements with the Syrian government. Salaries range from $800 to $1,500, a veritable fortune in Syria where the collapse of the pound has pauperized a broad swath of the population.

One recruit from Suwayda who went by the pseudonym Rami M. told Syrians for Truth and Justice he had applied to go to Libya via the regime-sanctioned Syrian National Youth Party. A party official had told some 80 fellow recruits at an initiation gathering that criminal charges against those who fought in rebel factions would be dropped and they would be exempted from reserve military service. “He told us that in Libya, we will be fighting under the supervision of the Russian Wagner company,” Rami M. said.

Another recruit, identified as Yousef A. from Quneitra, said, “I operated within the ranks of the Free [Syrian] Army against the regime, and like the majority of the fighters of southern Syria’s factions, I signed a settlement agreement. The regime, however, did not write off the security reports filed against me, not to mention the poor financial conditions I am enduring, [rising prices and the lack of] job opportunities that turned life into hell. For this reason, I joined the ranks of the fighters in Libya, helped by the Russia-affiliated 5th Legion [of the Syrian Arab Army], because they promised to give a $1,000 salary and cancel all the reports on me under Russian guarantees.”

A third recruit, identified as Asem, who also applied to go to Libya through the Syrian National Youth Party, said he and 150 fellow recruits were supposed to undergo 15 days of training before being deployed. He said “there were Russian officers with us and a captain in the [Syrian] army” present at a meeting in early January at the headquarters of the Syrian army’s 18th division in rural Homs. Asem dropped out upon learning that he would not be guarding Libyan oil fields as originally advertised.

Syrians for Truth and Justice’s Ahmed said he was “shocked” that former opposition rebels would be going to Libya at all, as they would potentially find themselves killing fellow ex-Syrian rebels in the enemy ranks. “Maybe it’s a strategic plan by the Syrian regime. Maybe it’s forcing them to go in order to get rid of them,” he speculated.

The fighters are transferred to Libya either via commercial flights from Damascus and Latakia on Cham Wings or from Russia’s Hmeimim air base in Latakia onboard Russian Tupolev jets. What happens to them once they get there is unclear.

“I am working to get access to fighters who are in Libya fighting for the LNA. It’s extremely difficult [because] they don’t have phones on them or internet. They call their families very rarely when they manage to get hold of a phone, and no one has come back yet. It’s pretty new,” said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Tsurkov, who is renowned in the policy community for her vast network of contacts inside Syria, was the first foreign researcher to flag the recruitment of Syrians to fight in Libya by the Wagner group on her Twitter feed.

“I would say speaking with members of communities from which these fighters went is that all of them did so due to financial incentives. This applies to fighters who are fighting on the GNA side as well as on the Hifter side. No one has any particular interest in the war that is happening in Libya. Very few knew much about it before going there,” Tsurkov said in a telephone interview with Al-Monitor.

“They are in desperate need of money. The salaries that are offered to them in Libya are 20 times more than what they are earning in Syria as fighters. As far as I understand now from both sides, at this stage, there are more people who are interested in going than the number of people who are needed both by Turkey and Wagner. This just shows us the sad state of the situation in Syria,” Tsurkov observed.

Egypt’s parliament has approved a motion to deploy troops to Libya in a move that could escalate its civil war.

The house of representatives voted on Monday to “defend Egyptian national security in the strategic western direction against … armed criminal militias and foreign terrorists.”

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has called the coastal city of Sirte a “red line” and warned that should troops aligned with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) attack the city, Egyptian forces will march across the border.

Egypt backs the Libyan National Army (LNA) of General Khalifa Haftar, which is fighting to overthrow Tripoli’s UN-recognised administration. Gen Haftar’s siege of Tripoli was broken following Turkey’s intervention on the GNA side, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan deploying troops and Islamist militia fighters relocated from Syria to fight the LNA.

Libya has been at war since Nato powers helped jihadist rebels overthrow the Muammar Gadaffi government in 2011.

Thousands of UNIFIL peacekeepers, like Lt. Jorge Tejada from Spain, have been contributing to consolidate peace and stability in south Lebanon since 2006.

His patrol unit operates daily around the Marjayoun district and in the rest of their 78 square kilometer area of responsibility, and along the Blue Line ensuring stability in the area.

“There are many factors that we need to take into account when we patrol, and many activities and events that must be reported,” he says. “In addition to this, we also report on ongoing roadblocks and dangerous risk points that are identified on the ground, where incidents might happen.”

Jorge Tejada joined the mission about nine months ago. His work and that of his colleagues has been extremely vital in further strengthening the collaboration with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) while conducting about 300 weekly coordinated patrols along the Blue Line to ensure that no hostile activities take place.

“When we are patrolling on our own, or with the LAF, we usually pass by some points that are considered as hotspots so to speak that are very close to the Blue Line and for this reason we have to keep monitoring those points daily to prevent any type of incidents or tensions between Lebanon and Israel,” he said.

For Tejada, outreaching and raising awareness about the Blue Line to the host communities is also an essential part of their operational activities.

“To give some examples,” he adds, “sometimes we meet shepherds who walk near the Blue Line and we have to keep our eyes wide open, talk to them and advise them on their movements so they don’t cross the Blue Line.”

While patrolling, a shepherd from the area was passing by with his flock. Lt. Tejada took this opportunity to chat with him and discuss about the situation in the village.

“We are very happy that you’re patrolling within this area. I am grateful to you and your units for constantly reaching out and talking to us when we are walking near the Blue Line.” He said.

Implementation of UNSC Resolution 1701

UNIFIL daily vehicle and foot patrols, conducted by UNIFIL’s military personnel, in coordination with the Lebanese Army (LAF), are the most visible and vital component of UNIFIL’s mandate in south Lebanon.

These activities are an essential part in the implementation of UNSC Resolution 1701.

“Our daily operational activities that includes daily patrols are a must to ensure peace and security within our area of operations,” he added.

As one of UNIFIL’s 45 troop-contributing countries, the Spanish Contingent has over 600 peacekeepers. Serbian and Salvadorian peacekeepers are also integrated into their contingent deployed in three UN positions in Marjayoun district, south-eastern Lebanon.

COVID-19 pandemic

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, UNIFIL Spanish peacekeepers continue their vital work on the ground every day, while carrying out the Mission’s mandate.

As Lt. Tejada prepares for his departure by the end of July to join his family in Spain, a country that has also been affected severely by the pandemic, he is taking away with him “one of the best rewarding and inspiring experiences of my life while serving for peace.”

“Within this challenging period, being away from my family has been very hard, especially because Spain was strongly hit by COVID-19, but nevertheless, we have been able to stay in touch with the family on a regular basis,” he said.

“Most rewarding thing has been to be able to serve the mission during such a crucial and critical time for the country and the world, while providing peace and stability to an area where clashes can happen at any time,” he concluded.

SOURCE: https://unifil.unmissions.org/unifil-spanish-peacekeepers-ensure-peace-and-stability-south-east-lebanon

Egyptian armed forces have thwarted a terrorist attack in northern Sinai and killed 18 terrorists during a security operation, military spokesman Tamer Rifai said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Our military has successfully thwarted a terrorist attack on a security post in the Bir al-Abed area in northern Sinai using four vehicles … As a result of the operation, 18 militants were neutralized, including a suicide bomber, and four cars were destroyed, three of which were rigged with explosives”, Rifai said in a statement.
According to the spokesman, two Egyptian servicemen were killed and four others were injured during the operation.

In May, the national armed forces killed 19 militants during several raids, with five servicemen killed and injured.

The north of the Sinai Peninsula has long been Egypt’s most tense region due to the presence of violent extremists, who frequently conduct attacks against police and army on the peninsula. The Egyptian military has been leading a large-scale counterterrorist operation in the area for over two years now.

Egypt’s parliament is to vote Monday to authorize the president to deploy troops to neighboring Libya if Turkey-backed forces there, allied with the government in Tripoli, move to retake the strategic coastal city of Sirte, like reported by alarabiya.net.

An Egyptian intervention would further destabilize oil-rich Libya and put two US allies — Turkey and Egypt — in possible direct confrontation.

The vote was initially scheduled for Sunday but was moved to Monday in a closed session, according to lawmaker Mustafa Bakry. The House of Representative, packed with supporters of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi, is highly likely to vote in favor of sending troops to Libya.

Libya was plunged into chaos when a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 toppled longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi who was later killed. The country is now split between a government in the east, allied with Libyan General Khalifa Haftar, and one in Tripoli, in the west.

The conflict has escalated into a regional proxy war fueled by foreign powers pouring weapons and mercenaries into the country.

Egypt has been backing the east-based Libyan forces in the conflict while Turkey backs the forces in the capital, Tripoli, in the west. Egypt’s president warned in June that any attack on Sirte or the inland Jufra air would prompt Cairo to intervene militarily, allegedly to protect its western border with Libya.

Egypt’s state-run al-Ahram daily reported on Sunday that the vote in Parliament was intended to mandate al-Sissi to “intervene militarily in Libya to help defend the western neighbor against Turkish aggression.”

Last week, al-Sissi hosted dozens of tribal leaders loyal to Haftar in Cairo, where he repeated that Egypt will “not stand idly by in the face of moves that pose a direct threat to security.”

Libya’s east-based parliament also urged al-Sissi to send troops.

Hafter’s forces launched an offensive to take Tripoli from the Government of National Accord (GNA) in April last year but their campaign — which had stalemated after reaching the outskirts of the Libyan capital — suffered a blow last month when the Tripoli-allied forces, with Turkish support, pushed them back and gained the upper hand in the fighting.

The Tripoli forces retook the capital’s airport, all main entrance and exit points to the city and a string of key towns in the region. They pushed on eastward, vowing to also retake Sirte, which Haftar took earlier this year.

Capturing the city, Gadhafi’s birthplace, would open the door for the Turkish-backed forces to advance even farther eastward and potentially take vital oil installations, terminals and fields now under Haftar’s control.

Libya’s eastern-based parliament has passed a resolution approving Egypt’s direct military intervention to counter Turkey’s backing of the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, like reported by voanews.com.

The action passed late Monday authorized “Egyptian armed forces to intervene to protect the national security of Libya and Egypt if they see an imminent danger to both our countries.”

It accuses Turkey of invading and occupying Libya through its support of the Tripoli administration.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said last month he could send troops into Libya, and Egypt’s military has said it had carried out exercises involving special forces and the navy because of the “severe and rapid changes” in the region.

Egypt said it is concerned over a renewed assault by Turkish-backed Libyan forces on the key coastal city of Sirte, which is the gateway to Libyan oil terminals.

General Khalifa Haftar’s eastern-based Libyan National Army took control of Sirte in January and has imposed a blockade on Libyan oil exports.

Along with Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates back the LNA, while Turkey has been supporting Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj’s Government of National Accord in the civil war with the LNA.

Libya has been split between rival governments since longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled and killed in 2011.

U.N. efforts to bring peace and new elections to Libya have failed, as well as EU demands that all foreign countries stop intervening in the civil war.

Over a thousand extremists from Tunisia were transferred into Libya by Turkey during the past few days, Saudi media reports according to syriahr.com.

Citing an anonymous security officer from Misurata,Saudi newspaper Al-Sada reported that Tunisian extremists were flown on Libyan and Turkish planes from the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Idlib to Istanbul and then finally to Misurata.

The extremists were divided into groups and given minimum amount of weapons, the newspaper said.

Ankara established a military foothold in Libya after signing a security agreement with the Tripoli-based Government National Accord (GNA) last year. As part of the agreement, Turkish troops as well as Ankara-backed Syrian mercenaries were deployed to back GNA in an effort fight the Libyan National Army (LNA) in western Libya.

Previous media reports revealed that many Turkey-backed Syrian mercenaries want to leave Libya because of intense battles with LNA and Ankara’s failure to deliver on its promises to them. More than 400 Syrian mercenaries were killed in Libya so far, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A senior Hamas commander has reportedly defected from the Gaza Strip to Israel, like reported by thenational.ae.

The official was caught allegedly spying for Israel inside the coastal enclave before he escaped by sea, according to Saudi-owned broadcaster Al Arabiya.

He was identified in Palestinian media reports as Mohammed Omar Abu Ajwa, a man in charge of a unit in Hamas’ informal naval force who had control of sensitive documents relating to Hamas’ operations.

He had allegedly been cooperating with Israel since 2009.

Hamas denied the claims. “The Al Arabiya channel is promoting rumours that serve the aims of the occupation in destabilising the home front in Gaza,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said.

The strip is run by Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2007. At times, Iran has backed the group financially, sending it money and military aid to help it fight Israel.

Its fighters, as well as those from other militant groups, have since lobbed thousands of rockets and other projectiles towards Israel sparking retaliation.

The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the strip since 2007 has left the enclave with the highest unemployment rate in the world and a crippled economy that has left it on the verge of becoming “unliveable,” according to the United Nations.

Israel says the strict blockade is necessary to contain Hamas but which critics argue amounts to collective punishment and deepens Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.