Semtex teddy bear: The mercenary build-up in Libya

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Host Alia Brahimi is joined by the Libyan security expert and Atlantic Council Nonresident Senior Fellow Emadeddin Badi. They discuss the surge of African, Syrian and Russian mercenaries in Libya since 2019, the major value-add of Wagner Group contractors in terms of utilising Libya's Soviet-era weapons and mortar and sniping capabilities, and how mercenary recruitment networks are used to smuggle migrants to Europe. The working assumption of the international community is that a future elected government will expel mercenaries from Libya, but Emadeddin argues that the mercenaries themselves pose a threat to the freeness and fairness of those very elections.
“You have smugglers that are actually putting Syrians on [mercenary] rotations to Libya in order for those Syrians to then depart for Europe. So there’s a whole new political economy around migrant smuggling.”

The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.