Mercenaries from Syria fight on the side of Azerbaijan in the war against Artsakh: a study by KIT
21 October, 2020
The Conflict Intelligence Team, investigating military conflicts, confirmed the use of mercenaries from Syria by Azerbaijan in the war against Artsakh. As Armenpress reports, the Conflict Intelligence Team published an article in which it refutes the statements of official Baku and Ankara that mercenaries are not used in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
“Almost from the very beginning of the aggravation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, there have been reports of the participation of“ Syrian mercenaries ”in battles on the side of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani side officially denies the presence of mercenaries in the conflict zone: for example, this information was rejected by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in an interview with France 24, as well as Turkish President Recep Erdogan in his speech in parliament.
However, not only pro-Armenian accounts wrote about this, but also independent experts on the Syrian conflict, and journalists from many major Western media interviewing sources in Syria, and even the authorities of many countries, including the President of France personally, have officially announced this, ”the Conflict Intelligence Team notes.
The Conflict Intelligence Team presented how several videos appeared on the network during the conflict, often posted by the alleged mercenaries themselves. Arabic speech is heard in the video, although the fighters themselves are dressed in the uniform of the State Border Service of Azerbaijan without insignia and body armor in a different camouflage used by the country’s ground forces.
It is noted that users of social networks managed to geolocate these videos, confirming that they were actually filmed both on the territory controlled by the Azerbaijani authorities and on the territory of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, which were occupied by Azerbaijani forces. In particular, the Syrians are present in the southern part of the front line, where heavy fighting for the settlement of Hadrut has taken place in recent days.
“Thus, data from open sources refute the statements of the Azerbaijani and Turkish authorities that the Syrian mercenaries are not involved in the conflict. At the same time, during the conflict, information appeared in the media that makes it possible to understand more about the composition and training of mercenaries, as well as about the chronology and purposes of their entry into the zone of the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict.
The Syrians who are fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh are fully or almost entirely recruited in northwestern Syria. In addition to local residents, there are many refugees (more precisely, internally displaced persons) from the areas of the country controlled by Damascus. These territories are fully or partially controlled by Turkish troops, which have been expanding their presence in Syria since 2016, including with the help of groups recruited from the Syrians, ”the article says.
Conflict Intelligence Team writes that Turkish troops managed to protect part of Syria from the dictatorial regime of Assad, but this part of the country did not escape the general Syrian economic collapse and general unemployment caused by the war and the recent double devaluation of the national currency.
“Researcher of the conflict Elizaveta Tsurkova says that over the nine years of the conflict, a generation of young Syrians has grown up who have practically no skills other than combat skills, and even have difficulty reading and writing.
At the same time, according to The Guardian, ordinary fighters of the pro-Turkish groups receive 450-550 Turkish liras (around $ 70) a month, which is barely enough to live on. All this creates the basis for recruiting mercenaries who are ready to protect Turkish interests in Libya, and now in Azerbaijan for money, ”the article says.
The Conflict Intelligence Team reports that as early as this July, when the previous aggravation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict began (we also recall that joint Turkish-Azerbaijani military exercises were held in late July – early August), The Independent newspaper became aware of plans to attract the Syrians to the Transcaucasian conflict.
“According to Tsurkova, already at the beginning of August, intermediaries began to appear in Afrin, who later began to recruit fighters.
The Guardian’s interlocutors named September 13 and 18 as the dates when they signed contracts, and the WSJ writes that the transfer of fighters has already begun in the middle of the same month. Finally, on September 23 – four days before the start of the war – a little-known anonymous resource SyriacPress reported about the sending of members of one of the pro-Turkish groups to Azerbaijan, citing details that coincided with articles published in the Western press after the start of the war.
Based on the combination of these and other signs, we can confidently conclude that the current military actions were prepared by the Azerbaijani-Turkish side in advance, and are not the result of another accidental aggravation, ”the Conflict Intelligence Team concludes.
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