In Libya there is apparently calm, everyone is waiting for the first move with the "probable" year-end elections on the horizon. The format of the presidential or parliamentary elections has not yet been decided? Then there is the problem of the mercenaries present on the ground who do not intend to leave, on the contrary they continue in their activities as tutors of the various militias that control the country. There are about twenty thousand paramilitaries raging in the streets showing muscles and armaments from special forces. Let's talk about Russians, Chadians, Syrians, Turkmen and Sudanese who do not intend to raise their tents because in fact, if on the one hand they are getting rich on the other, no one, for now, beyond words, has forced them to return home. Their minimum wage of two thousand dollars is a treasure compared to the "miserable" life in their home countries. La Stampa drew up the identity of these armed groups.
The largest group is that of Syrians. In 2019 there were four thousand, now according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights there are 13 thousand, perhaps more. The majority fight under the flags of Tripoli but there are also among the ranks of Haftar, two thousand, recruited by the Russians. Turkey has enlisted them among the desperate barricaded in the last rebel bastion of Iblid in western Syria. Quick three-month training in Afrin and then immediately in Libya. For two thousand dollars in salary and a hypothetical concession of Turkish nationality, they stopped Haftar and drove him back to Cyrenaica. There were men from the jihadist formations, survivors of the Free Army, but also Turkmen from the Sultán Murad division. The prospect of leaving infuriated them. They refused to dissolve the command that brings their leaders together. The Grand Mufti of Tripoli supported them, calling the ungrateful foreign minister a bad and despicable woman. For the Islamists and their Muslim brothers, the Syrians are an indispensable infantry to be weighed on the political level.
The Sudanese. The other largest contingent is made up of the Sudanese, mainly enlisted among the Darfur militias and paid for by Qatar. They fought against the regime of the deposed al Bashir, the announcement of the amnesty should in theory induce them to return. Among them also some enlisted by deception. A private Qatari company offered security jobs in the affluent and quiet Emirates. Instead they were locked up in prison-like training camps, and faced with the choice of fighting, in Yemen or Libya. Today they guard the desert near Sirte. They do not respond to political leaders and enrich themselves with drugs and migrants.
Ultimately we are talking about desperate people who, thanks to Libyan instability, manage to survive and in some cases even get rich thanks to the trafficking of human beings, weapons and drugs.