Semtex teddy bear: The mercenary build-up in Libya
08/24/23 • 48 min
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.
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.
Previous Episode
Mercenary bloodline: The war in Sudan
In this bumper episode on the war in Sudan, host Alia Brahimi speaks with the former US government expert on Sudan, Cameron Hudson, about the mercenary pedigree of the Rapid Support Forces and its transformation from a ragtag Arab militia into an institutional juggernaut.
Cameron argues that this mercenary history has had a determinative impact on the conflict: it has generated a cash windfall which allows the RSF to recruit in numbers to rival the size of the national army; it has forged regional relationships that are now central to the RSF’s resupply; and it feeds a detached mercenary mentality amongst RSF fighters that facilitates war crimes and abuses. As mercenaries from multiple Sahelian states flood into Sudan, Cameron also contends that the conflict in Sudan is becoming a pan-African conflict in ways that are not yet understood.
They discuss, too, the role of the Wagner Group in the war in Sudan and the status of Libya as a major source of resupply for the RSF.
Alia also chats with Professor Munzoul Assal of the University of Khartoum about the danger of two parallel governments emerging in Sudan along the lines of the bifurcation in Libya. Munzoul also discusses, the presence of RSF fighters at the Sudanese border with the Central African Republic where the Wagner Group is deeply entrenched, as well as the clear and alarming possibilities for a regional conflagration.
The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.
Next Episode
Tracking mercenaries
As humans share more of their experiences online for the world to see, the blank zones are shrinking. In episode seven of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by Eliot Higgins, an award-winning journalist and founder of the independent investigative collective, Bellingcat. Eliot, who was personally sued by the late mercenary leader Yevgeny Prighozin for outing him as the oligarch behind the Wagner Group, discusses the types of online open-source tools used to track mercenary activity, and how anyone with a bit of time and an internet connection can get involved.
“A mercenary might have a friend who uses social media a lot and they’re featuring a lot in these photographs, for example, and then you can start building out the networks from that.”
The Guns for Hire podcast is written, produced and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.
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