Syrian Mercenarism… “Cheap” Fuel to Connect the Fires!

Although it is difficult to fully verify the authenticity of the torrent of news about “Syrian mercenaries”, and despite the clear political exploitation of the issue, there are sufficient clues and evidence that the issue is real, and perhaps the most reliable of them are those of them who die on the various fronts.

Political Exploitation

It is not concealed from those who scrutinize the matter, that the media-political side of the issue may be its most important aspect in many cases. It is known that the Syrian fighters who are being thrown into the battlefronts beyond the borders, and most of the time with light equipment and gear, are falling almost without any benefit in the military sense. The daily leaks coming from the battlefields of death clearly indicate that. Not to mention that the Syrian mercenaries in all fields, in addition to their complete ignorance of the foreign geographies in which they are fighting, their numbers, even in the most exaggerated leaks, do not amount to a qualitative change in any of the ongoing battles.

Therefore, those who are sending these young men to death use them cheaply, the least important of the goals of which are military ones, while the primary purpose – in our assessment – is to work on linking the burning fields together. The more these fields are intertwined, the more difficult it becomes to separate the Syrian file from them, and to get it subsequently to its endings, which have ripened a while back.

In clearer terms, those who have no interest in the political solution, and from the various regional sides, as well as the Syrian, seek to interconnect and linking the regional fires, so that each of them feed off of each other’s fires, so none of them get extinguished. This includes clear pursuit by sides inside Turkey, as well as from Syrian sides, to mobilize as many complications as possible in the relationship among the Astana trio. Libya is one example, and Armenia / Azerbaijan is a clearer example. This is because every breach in the relationship among the trio would increase the weight of the West in Syria, and the strategy of the West (in particular, the US, Britain, and the Zionist entity) towards Syria coincides with that of the Syrian extremists: they all want endless quagmire, fire, and war.

To a lesser degree, these mercenaries are being used as cards for the regional bargaining, so at times they are used for intimidation, and at other times they get sold. However, we think that remains less important than the first goal, that is, interconnecting and linking the burning fields to each other, so that those benefiting from them, who are afraid of extinguishing them, keep the fire burning.

Who are “Our Mercenaries”?

If we set aside the issue of immediate political exploitation and the issue of recruiting these mercenaries to begin with, and we try to ponder a little more the issue from its Syrian national side, then perhaps many questions arise in the search for answers. The first of these questions is: Who are these “mercenaries” and why have they become such?

The easiest answers are those that attribute the issue to the disastrous living conditions experienced by Syrians, or those that attribute it to some “ideological thinking”. We say that these are easy answers, not only because they are far from explaining the truth of the issue, but also because they simplify the problem and thus do not allow it to be resolved.

We believe that the phenomenon is very complex, and it has many intertwined causes, yet the most important of them in our opinion are the following:

First, the prolongation of the crisis in Syria, with the poverty, marginalization, and total collapse of the social safety nets it has produced. A lot can be said about this, and perhaps what we put here under the first item is sufficient to explain the issue if we want to condense it, because the subsequent items result from it in one way or another.

Second, the Syrian mercenaries – according to what we see from statistics, testimonies, and evidence – are mostly young men in their twenties. This means that they were children at the time the war broke out in Syria, and therefore, a large portion of them did not pursue their education or did not receive any education at all. Among them are ones who took fighting as a profession as children or adolescents, and who have not learned anything else. Not to mention that entire parts of Syria, there is almost no possibility of any stable normal work.

Third, the economic situation of these people is not only catastrophic, but more than that, the description closest to their reality may be that they are doubly (or more) marginalized people. The marginalized in the economic sense is defined as being unemployed for a long time, and this has its social consequences, as the unemployed loses as the unemployment period gets longer the sense of belonging to his community and his country, because he sees himself as a dependent despite being able to work. However, the circumstances do not give him any opportunities, and subsequently he loses any sense of stability and becomes completely unbalanced. If the above is the definition of the marginalized, then the double marginalization is when one becomes marginalized in a country that is going through a long-term war and does not see any hope or any glimmer of light that the war, destruction, and suffering will end. Within these coordinates, any affiliation, however bad, becomes an “opportunity” for the marginalized to feel that he exists. This is a huge field for exploitation by the various types of human traffickers.

Between Justification, Explanation, and Treatment

Whoever sees in what is stated hereinabove a “justification”, is mistaken. It is merely an attempt to explain, as there is no way to treat any phenomenon without properly explaining it.

It may come to mind that the solution, then, lies in resolving the Syrian crisis itself, which will open the door not only to creating job opportunities, but also to stability, restoring glory and hope to belonging to Syria as a country that nurtures its people and provides them with social safety nets, preserves their dignity, and provides them with livelihood and development opportunities.

Starting treatment with resolving the crisis, is undoubtedly correct in principle, but it is not sufficient. If thousands or possibly tens of thousands of Syrians have indeed turned into mercenaries, then perhaps the number of those in conditions that allow such a transformation has multiplied exponentially, that is, the number of those who are potential mercenaries. Not to mention that the actual mercenaries (or those of them who will survive) have to be dealt with in one way or another.

In the same context, if the media-political exploitation of the issue of Syrian mercenaries focuses on mercenaries as Syrians fighting outside Syria, or receiving wages for their mercenarism from external parties, this should not ignore the fact that there are Syrians who are fighting as mercenaries within Syria itself. Furthermore, among those are ones who receive wages from Syrian sides. The characteristics of a mercenary fighter outside the country apply to those as well, with a slight difference being a few fig leaves used as cover in the chaos of war.

Going back to the question of treatment. Will it be through prisons and correctional facilities in a new Syria governed by a democratic system that takes into account human rights? Perhaps. However, this is only a very preliminary answer. The fact is that the number of new crises created by the current crisis will remain a heavy burden on Syrians for many years to come. Perhaps for this very reason, and because the burdens are accumulating exponentially with the prolongation of the crisis, it has become necessary and existential for Syria and Syrians to stop this negative accumulation, so that there remains room for hope for the future. Otherwise the continued accumulation of negatives can reach a certain threshold of a point of no return. Therefore, the immediate solution to the crisis through a political solution and the implementation of UNSCR 2254 has become an existential matter for Syria.