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The Azerbaijani army and Armenian forces have been involved in bloody clashes since Sunday in Nagorno-Karabakh, in an escalation that is the fiercest in decades, while Baku and Yerevan exchange accusations of bringing in foreign mercenaries, most of them Syrian.
The following is the information available so far on the foreign fighters who are participating in the battle lines of both sides:
Are there Syrians fighting in Azerbaijan?
Since the outbreak of the fighting, Yerevan, which is part of a Moscow-led military alliance of former Soviet republics, has accused Turkey of sending mercenaries from northern Syria in support of Azeri forces.
Armenian Prime Minister Nicole Pashinyan said on Friday in an interview with the French daily “Le Figaro” that Turkey is militarily intervening in the battles on the Azerbaijani side transporting “thousands of mercenaries and terrorists from Turkish-occupied areas in northern Syria. “.
Moscow said on Wednesday that fighters from Syria and Libya, where Turkey has deployed thousands of Syrian militants in recent months, have been deployed to the conflict zone.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed “grave concern over the background of information received about the participation of fighters from illegal armed groups from the Middle East in hostilities.”
There were no official comments from Turkey, while the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry absolutely denied the presence of Syrian fighters on its territory. Azerbaijani aide to the president, Hikmat Hajiyev, told a press conference on Friday that his country “does not need foreign fighters, because we have professional armed forces and we also have enough reserve forces.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirms that more than 1,200 fighters from pro-Ankara Syrian factions have arrived in Karabakh since last week, after they moved from northern Syria to Turkey and from there by air to the disputed area. The first group of 300 fighters arrived before the outbreak of the fighting, then the second group this week.
The observatory counted at least 36 of them dead since the fighting began.
On Friday, Agence France-Presse contacted a Syrian fighter, who confirmed his presence in Azerbaijan. It verified that the families of at least three combatants had reported their deaths during the fighting.
What are their affiliations?
“According to our intelligence, 300 fighters left Syria to go to Baku via Gaziantep (Turkey),” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters on the sidelines of the European Union summit in Brussels. “They are known and are being traced,” he added, and belong to “armed groups operating in the Aleppo region,” noting that he will seek “explanations” from his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “in the coming days.”
According to the Observatory, the fighters belong to pro-Ankara factions that are active in the Afrin region, which were seized by Turkish forces in 2018 after a large-scale attack targeting Kurdish fighters.
The director of the observatory, Rami Abdel-Rahman, denies to France Press that no fighters have traveled to Karabakh. He explained that most of the fighters who left belonged to the Turkmen component and joined the ranks of the factions that participated alongside Turkey in various attacks launched in the north and northeast of Syria.
Ayman Al-Tamimi, a researcher specializing in armed organizations, told France Press that the fighters are “a mix of old opposition fighters or new young recruits” who work as the “emir” of Turkey. Some of them had previously received Western support during the years of the Syrian conflict.
According to the Observatory and various local sources in northern Syria, most of the fighters belong to three main factions: “Sultan Murad”, “Suleiman Shah” and “Liwa al-Muntasir Billah”, in addition to fighters from other factions who are They volunteered individually.
These factions are part of the Turkish-backed National Army, which is the military wing of the Syrian political opposition. And it is spreading in various areas of northern Syria, specifically in areas of Turkish influence. And it is found to a lesser extent in Idlib Governorate (Northwest).
However, the “National Army” spokesman, Major Yusef Hammoud, denied to France Press that “any combatant of the National Army or on behalf of the National Army had gone to Azerbaijan”, explaining that the whole issue was “a media campaign initiated by the Armenian government “, and Baku denied it. “It is a media campaign to discredit the National Army,” he added.
Did Armenia bring foreign fighters?
Azerbaijan responded to his accusation of receiving Turkish military support and aid from Syrian fighters, accusing Yerevan of using Armenian “mercenaries” in the fighting. On Friday, Hajiyev said: “We see that the Armenian side is trying to bring foreign mercenaries, especially of Armenian origin, from third countries to Armenia to fight against Azerbaijan.” He added that “Armenians from Syria and Lebanon are currently deployed in Armenia, and are in the ranks of the Armenian armed forces fighting Azerbaijan.”
According to the Syrian Observatory, several hundred Syrian Armenians went to Armenia to participate in the fighting, which an Armenian official in northern Syria denied to France Press.
In Beirut, Representative Hagop Pakradounian, general secretary of the Tashnak Party, the largest Armenian party in Lebanon, told France Press that Armenia “does not need young people from countries where there are Armenians to go and volunteer in the army.” “The Armenian parties do not intend to send the youth, and there is no organizational action in this context,” he added. However, at the same time, he pointed to the approach of young people to an individual initiative.
He stressed that “all Armenians living anywhere in the world feel a duty to sacrifice, be it through political work, donating money or working with the media,” describing what is happening as a “new genocidal war against the Armenian people “.
