After two days of meeting in Cairo, the Libyan military committee agreed on Wednesday, February 8, on a mechanism for the exchange of information and coordination on the subject of mercenaries and foreign fighters present on Libyan soil. This is the first time that this military committee, made up of five senior officers from the various opposing camps in Libya, has met under the aegis of the Senegalese Abdoulaye Bathily, appointed United Nations envoy to the country last summer. Representatives from Niger, Chad and Sudan were associated with the meeting and expressed their willingness to collaborate in these efforts.
In Cairo, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (Manul) hailed a ” important step towards the establishment of a lasting peace in Libya “. However, no specific timetable for the withdrawal of mercenaries and foreign forces has been announced, only a modest coordination mechanism between the Libyans and certain neighboring countries.
However, the departure of these forces from Libya is a thorny issue, crucial even for the stability of a country in the grip of chaos and which is strongly divided between two camps and two governments.
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About 20,000 men
Although several resolutions have been taken for the withdrawal of these mercenaries, these decisions recorded in the peace agreements have never been implemented. Foreign interference and the strong links of certain international or regional forces with these mercenaries have worked in their favour. Their continued presence has therefore weighed heavily on efforts to resolve the Libyan political crisis.
They are soldiers from the Wagner group, Syrians, Chadians, Sudanese and Nigeriens based in eastern Libya. In the west of the country, they are mainly Turks, Syrians and Chadians. There are no precise figures for these numbers in Libya, but in 2021, the United Nations estimated it at around 20,000 men.
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