Qaddaffi paying a fortune for soldiers of fortune
J. Hammond | Libya Military A recent piece in The Guardian reports that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has ferreted away billions in oil revenues. Some of which the writer argues has ended up in the hands of the mercenaries now fighting for Qaddaffi's survival in Libya. While on Twitter, Martin Chulov a correspondent also with The Guardian is reporting that an Air Force officer in eastern Libya has reported that 4,000 mercenaries have arrived into the country since February 14th. Additionally Qaddafi’s tribal allies in the south maybe bringing in additional mercenaries from Chad, The Bangkok Post quoted an unnamed analyst who said Qaddafi’s tribal allies in the south have been bringing in mercenaries as well. Additionally, the Facebook group “Dear Mr. President,” organized by anti-government activists alleges that Bangladeshi and Koreans are serving as mercenaries.
Reported rates vary one Twitter post which could not be verified suggested "mercs" were being paid $500 dollars a day and $12,000 per person killed. While Al-Jazeera has reported advertisements have appeared in Guinea and Nigeria calling for mercenaries who are being paid $2,000 U.S dollars a day. Taking the figure of 2,000 dollars we can calculate that perhaps the regime paying these mercenaries perhaps 10 million dollars a day. How long can the regime pay for these war criminals for hire? Another question is if the regime suddenly collapses, how will the successors of the regime deal with several thousand heavily armed and unpaid mercenaries in Libya’s major cities?
Reader Comments (2)
As more and more reports circulate about the alleged 'mercenaries' the less credible and coherent they seem to get. They are supposed to be French-speakers from Niger and Chad, or from Anglophone West African countries, or East Europeans, or Darfuri rebels, and now they could even be from Korea and Bangladesh; they have just been flown in, or trained in the country for months, or recruited among African migrants already in Libya.
It seems particularly odd to give credence to highly specific details, such as the amounts mercenaries are getting paid, without having any idea where these 'facts' came from before they appeared on twitter. (I haven't been able to track down what the Al Jazeera report of adverts "appearing" in Nigeria and Guinea (or in another version, Ghana) are based on - but it seems like a completely implausible way to recruit a mercenary force.)
It's far from implausible that there are actually African mercenaries in Libya, but there a couple of reasons to be cautious of most of these reports: firstly, in a climate of fear and scarce information, rumours that violence is being carried out by shadowy outsiders often spread widely (e.g. the rumours of 'Arabs' beating protesters in Iran in 2009). Secondly, there are plenty of African migrants in Libya who may be seized as scapegoats by angry crowds, and there are also black Libyans, some of who may be members of the security forces.
These are the pieces of more substantive evidence that I have seen so far:
- A couple of first-hand eyewitness reports of several thousand Africans arriving in the East by plane, including one mentioned in Martin Chulov's first Guardian report from Benghazi.
- Chulov was shown an apparently African captive in Benghazi but wasn't allowed to speak to him.
- 2 photos on the flickr set of "a7fadhomar" linked on this blog, which appear to show a crowd of Africans in yellow construction helmets, they don't seem to have uniforms or to be heavily armed but it's difficult to tell clearly from the photos.
- Youtube video (I think from Benghazi) of a dead African in camouflage fatigues.
- another Youtube video purportedly of mercenaries shows armed, uniformed men riding in jeeps and manning checkpoints on the streets of Tripoli. It's a poor quality video shot at an angle through a car window and it's difficult to conclusively identify the men as "African" looking or as mercenaries rather than regular security forces.
Here's some more first-hand reporting from the NYT on a group of pro-govt forces detained by protesters in the town of Shahhat. Libyans as well as "some teenagers from Chad", and they sound more like hurriedly rounded-up cannon fodder than trained and armed mercenaries:
"Not far from the radio station, teenagers from Chad were among about 200 people detained in a school, people the government apparently sent to put down the uprising. Some said they belonged to the brigade supervised by Khamis Qaddafi, one of the colonel’s sons.
In one room, 76 men practically slept on top of one another, and one of them, Osman Ali, said they had come from the southern Libyan city of Sabha, which is loyal to Colonel Qaddafi. He said he and his fellow prisoners, along with hundreds of other people, were asked to attend a pro-Qaddafi rally in Tripoli last week, and then were put on a plane.
They were flown to Benghazi, he said, and were then sent to an army base that was surrounded by angry citizens. Mr. Ali said he and the other men never picked up weapons, but, he added, “We’re ashamed of what we did.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/world/africa/24rebels.html?_r=1