Haftar’s media mouthpieces cover up for Russian mercenaries with a Syrian counter narrative

The Russian mercenaries fighting for Khalifa Haftar have left no chance of justification for Haftar’s media mouthpieces as videos of their presence on the frontlines in southern Tripoli keep surfacing so that words have spread that Russia is ready to occupy Libya under the command of Haftar.

A move that is so similar to what happened in Syria with Bashar Al-Assad, and; according to analysts, Haftar’s media mouthpieces felt the urge for a parallel story to be all over the media to distract attention from their Russian mercenaries.  

Motives of Counter-Narrative

The Chief of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) accused on December 07 Russian contractors fighting for Haftar of downing an American warplane, according to Reuters, while the Associated Press said US, UK and Italian diplomats vowed to destroy Haftar’s defense systems if his forces repeated that act.

Moreover, the UN Panel of Experts started analyzing videos for the Russian mercenaries fighting for Haftar in order to know how they were recruited and what they are doing on the frontlines, diplomatic sources said.

Such a fierce propaganda seems a lot to take in for Haftar’s media outlets, knowing that the political ramifications of the campaign were bigger than Haftar thought they would be.

Hence, TV channels like Saudi’s Al-Arabiya and local Libyan media outlet Al-Marsad started to fabricate stories saying Syrian fighters are on the ground in Libya fighting for forces under the command of the Government of National Accord (GNA) and were sent by Turkey – a distracting factor by Haftar’s forces to cover up for the Russian scandal that is all over media.

Footage from Idlib

The media office of the Head of the Libyan Presidential Council said Sunday that the videos claiming that Syrian fighters were present in Tripoli were untrue as they were shot in Syria’s Idlib, which has been for the last two weeks under a heavy military campaign by Russia and the Syrian regime forces.

The fabrication of the video was masterminded by the Chairman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) Rami Abdulrahman, who is well-known for his enmity toward Turkey as he is under the umbrella of the UAE-Saudi Arabia alliance against Ankara, which was clear when Jamal Khashoggi’s murder happened.     

Inconsistent Narratives

The SOHR’s Chief gave contradictory statements about the number of Syrian fighters in Tripoli; sometimes they are there by the hundreds, then they reached a thousand but later, they shrank into 70.

Rami Abdulrahman was not friends with what was happening during 2011 from the very start as he told Al-Hadath TV – Haftar’s son-owned channel – that February Revolution was using terrorists in its fight against tyranny.

The SOHR deleted all the videos for blindingly obvious reasons, since all Libyans couldn’t believe the fabrications as Syrian fighters appeared on claims to be in Tripoli and were accompanied by no Libyans at all.

Worse yet, the SOHR said the Syrians arrived two days before the videos, which begs the question: “How did they recognize the streets, names of camps and the area?” However, if we agreed that the Syrian fighters were indeed in Salah Al-Deen in Tripoli, so to which party they belong: their ally in Syria or the other party?

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