“Abu Amsha ate our salaries:” Turkish-backed Syrian militants angry over unpaid salaries
On Friday, a video circulated on social media showing a dozen or so men, some in military uniforms, complaining about not receiving promised salaries in return for fighting in alongside Turkey in the Armenian-majority, disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. The men, who claimed to be members of the Sultan Suleiman Shah faction of the SNA, accused Sultan Suleiman Shah commander Abu Amsha, the moniker of Muhammad Jassim, of seizing their salaries.
According to SNA sources, the video was recorded on Thursday, April 8, in Jenderes district, south of Afrin.
“We went with the Turkish state to fight in the Karabakh region, we were wounded. Sultan Suleiman Shah Abu Amsha’s division stole our rights and the rights of the injured…people are starving,” says the speaker in the video.
The Sultan Suleiman Shah faction quickly denied the authenticity of the video clip, releasing an official statement. “The video is pure fabrication,” it said, before accusing the speaker in the video of being affiliated with the Assad regime. Sultan Suleiman Shah accused the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel-Rahman, of paying $800 to have the video shot.
Turkish-backed Syrian opposition factions participated in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which ended on November 10 last year with a trilateral ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia.
According to SNA sources, on September 23rd, 2020, the first plane full of SNA militants landed in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The total number of mercenaries sent is believed to be around 2,000, and the militants were promised monthly salaries of around $2,000.
The same salary has been promised to militants who have fought alongside the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord against General Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army in Libya’s ongoing civil war. But according to SNA sources, SNA militants in Libya have rarely received more than $400 a month, and have gone months-long stretches without any payment whatsoever.
SNA commanders have promised that the families of SNA militants killed fighting abroad would receive a lump sum payment, but the sister of a Sultan Murad militant killed in Karabakh said that she had not received anything. Mahmoud Aziz (a pseudonym), SNA militant who fought in Karabakh, said that the SNA men deployed to Azerbaijan were told they would just be border guards. Aziz said that while the ethnic Turkmen commanders and militants were paid, most of the Arab fighters still have not been.