The "Syrians Go to Ukraine" Story- The Case of the ISIS Hunters

The need for real evidence...

Ever since the beginning of the latest war between Ukraine and Russia in which the latter has declared annexation of parts of southern and eastern Ukraine, a repeated line of speculation for those covering the Syrian civil war has been the possibility of deployment Syrian fighters to Ukraine in support of Russia’s forces. One policy piece used the idea as a leading hook, and I remember being approached in March by someone working for BBC Arabic who wanted to do work on this matter. A number of reports have since emerged that have claimed the deployment of Syrian fighters and/or advisors to Ukraine in support of the Russian war effort there.

Now, I understand why there would be interest and speculation along these lines. Syrian fighters have emerged on both sides in the war in Libya, and Syrian fighters were also deployed by Turkey in support of Azerbaijan during the latter’s war with Armenia. Given Russia’s support for the Syrian government during the war in Syria, it might be reasonable to expect that Russia would want the government to ‘return the favour’ by allowing deployment of Syrian fighters to Ukraine. Some Russian rhetoric early on in the war may also be interpreted as mobilising large numbers of Syrian fighters.

However, it has to be said that in general, no convincing evidence has been produced to show any such deployments. Instead, media stories along these lines have resorted to mere quotations from sources, and either the reliability of those sources cannot be checked, or the information they provide cannot be verified. This contrasts markedly with both the Libyan and Armenia-Azerbaijan conflicts. In those cases, Syrian fighters who went to those areas have offered their testimonies (cf. here), and solid open-source research has confirmed their presence in those places (most notably in the form of geolocation of videos). This is not to say that deployments of Syrian fighters to Ukraine could not happen, but it has to be asked: if these deployments have taken place, why has similar evidence of them not been produced so far?

In this post I will focus on one particular claim that has been made in relation to deployment of Syrian fighters to Ukraine. Specifically, it has been claimed the formation called the “ISIS Hunters” has been involved in such deployments. To recall, the ISIS Hunters is a formation affiliated with the “al-Sayad Company” that established itself in the Hama town of al-Suqaylabiya. Russian-backed but outside the framework of the V Corps, the ISIS Hunters formation, as its name suggests, was created with the intention of fighting the Islamic State. This has most notably meant combating the Islamic State in the Homs desert area and Deir az-Zor. One of the formation’s specialities is protecting oil and gas facilities, and there have been reports of deployments to Libya in a similar capacity.

On 9 November 2022, Levent Kemal and Ragip Soylu wrote a report for Middle East Eye claiming deployment of Syrians to Ukraine. In this report, they remark:

"The official Telegram channel of IS[IS] Hunters, a Russian-backed group that was created in 2017 to fight IS [Islamic State], also issued a widespread call for recruits to report to their base in Homs for registration, to fight alongside the Russians in Ukraine."

This remark piqued my curiosity because I follow the Telegram channel of the ISIS Hunters. A search of this channel shows no reference to Ukraine at all in any of its announcements. Instead, the report of Kemal and Soylu links to another Middle East Eye report by Danny Makki. This report says the following:

"A post on the app called for willing fighters to appear at their office on 17 and 18 March, confirming that a recruitment phase will be open for those who want to join. The areas in which groups like IS Hunters have long operated in the desert around the government-held eastern city of Palmyra have not seen actual fighting for years. While Ukraine was not mentioned in their post, the timing of calls for recruitment - with the war in Syria almost frozen - indicates that the final destination for the recruits would be the Ukrainian battlefield."

This report then goes on to cite sources such as the outlet Suwayda’ 24 claiming that members of the ISIS Hunters would be deployed to Ukraine and rebranded as the “Nazi Hunters.”

None of these assertions have been borne out by any convincing evidence, and it is worth looking at them in closer detail.

The ISIS Hunters announcement referred to is produced in full below, with full translation (NB: this announcement was produced twice, once on 13 March and another on 17 March, for selection tests conducted on 17 and 18 March):

"Recruitment will be carried out on Thursday/Friday on 17/18 March 2022. Those willing must come to the al-Sayed centre (training field) where an entry test will be carried out for those coming, and those accepted will be decided.

The required documents:

*Personal ID
*Statement of conscription situation.

Note: age range from more than 23 and less than 49 years old.

The test will be carried out, those accepted will be decided, and they will be summoned for work at a subsequent time when needed."

As Makki noted, there is no explicit reference to Ukraine in this post. He suggests though that these posts might be a recruitment drive for deployment to Ukraine because the war in Syria is “almost frozen” and because this call was issued in March.

This reasoning is speculative, however. The war in Syria may indeed be largely “frozen” in terms of frontlines between the main forces controlling territory, but all parties in the war face issues of maintenance of security in their own territories, which, when combined with issues such as turnover of previous recruits, may require having to enlist new recruits or setting up a reserve list. In particular, the Homs desert area, which should be the ISIS Hunters’ main operational focus, still faces the problem of an Islamic State insurgency, which rarely issues reports of its own operations and is likely underreporting its activities for security reasons (though it is also true that pro-opposition/insurgent media exaggerate the extent of the problem of this insurgency). The Islamic State considers ‘economic warfare’ to be part of its strategy. In the context of the Homs desert, this means that oil and gas infrastructure and facilities are at risk of being attacked by the group.

Thus, the apparent ISIS Hunters recruitment drive would not at all be incompatible with performance of assignments inside Syria. In addition to the preceding, I would highlight two other points.

First, the very end of the announcement says that those who pass the acceptance tests “will be summoned for work at a subsequent time when needed.” Thus, those who passed were not necessarily going to be recruited into the ISIS Hunters’ ranks immediately, but rather the recruitment would only take place when the group felt it needed to bolster its ranks, and there was no definite indication of when the need for summoning might arise. There has still been no such indication to my knowledge. This approach appears to be similar to a past ‘recruitment drive’ for the ISIS Hunters in which those accepted were registered for over a year (as of March 2022) and did not receive any summons for work.

In effect then, this ‘recruitment drive’ is only an expression by the ISIS Hunters of potential recruitment for those who pass its assessment tests. In short, an expression of interest. This approach does not strike me as consistent with a recruitment drive for Ukraine- a full-scale war in which the need for any relevant manpower has been urgent from the outset. In contrast, the announcement could be consistent with a deployment to Libya, but there is no confirmation of that here.

Second, all the surrounding context of the apparent recruitment drive points to the fact that the ISIS Hunters’ operations are currently Syria-based. The official channel regularly posts announcements for how the monthly salary payments (which currently range between $200 and $300, to my knowledge) can be received in various regions of Syria, such as Latakia, Tartous, Hama and Homs.

As for the idea of rebranding the ISIS Hunters as the Nazi Hunters and any specific information being relayed by Suwayda’ 24 about deployment to Ukraine, there is no evidence to support these claims at all. Indeed, I would point out that I know someone still in the ISIS Hunters. He had this to say about claims of the ISIS Hunters’ deployment to Ukraine:

"The news is denied and there has not been any mission to Ukraine. This news is false."

Looking at the wider picture, there should be some application of logical thought when it comes to claims of Syrian fighters being deployed to Ukraine. Specifically, one should ask: what role could they actually play in the conflict? Could they be deployed in sufficiently large numbers so as to have an impact on the course of the war? The fact is that the conflicts in Libya and Armenia-Azerbaijan pale in comparison with the Ukraine war, in which it is likely that tens of thousands of soldiers on each side have perished or have been wounded. Syrian fighters will not somehow serve as effective ‘cannon-fodder’ on the frontlines or as a long-term deployment force to function as a bargaining chip for future negotiations.

On the basis of the above, I believe it would be helpful to offer a few points of advice for media:

(i) It is not a story simply to quote sources (anonymous or not) who make claims about deployments that cannot be verified in any way.

(ii) Beware also of readily seizing on apparent recruitment drives on social media advertising for supposed deployments of Syrians to Ukraine or elsewhere. From my own knowledge and experience there is much deceit that goes on with these recruitment drives in which the aim is to swindle people of money.

(iii) More solid evidence is needed to establish the existence of deployments to Ukraine. For instance, if Syrians are fighting in Ukraine, have any fighters posted any videos or photos establishing their presence there? Can these videos or photos be geolocated? Can any contact be established with such people if they exist?