Will Wagner mutiny elicit more caution over mercenary use in the Middle East?

A history of mercenary use

Hiring foreign mercenaries is a practice that goes back to antiquity. The ancient Persians employed mercenaries in their battles with the Greeks. Mercenary use was widespread in medieval and early modern Europe, but the practice declined in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As states became more powerful and bureaucratised, they wanted greater military professionalisation, leading to a decline in using temporary mercenary troops. The growth of mass nationalism, particularly after the French Revolution, then saw governments develop large professional standing armies drawn mainly from their own populace, rather than foreign guns for hire.

As a result, the large conflicts of the 20th century such as the First and Second World Wars, were primarily fought by national armies rather than mercenaries.

International empires like Britain and France made use of colonial troops, but these were seen as extensions of the homeland rather than 'foreigners' and, in contrast to mercenaries, were often paid considerably less than European soldiers.

While mercenaries never went away and continued to be utilised by some states throughout history, the early 21st century has seen a revival in their usage by major international powers.

Since then, private security companies have thrived.

Washington famously deployed Blackwater to supplement its troops during the 2003-11 occupation of Iraq, while Russia has utilised the Wagner Group in various international theatres since its formation in 2014.

Reducing domestic backlash for waging war

One of the main justifications is that mercenaries diminish the risk of a domestic backlash for waging war. The US faced significant domestic opposition to the Vietnam War because of the high death toll.

Moscow, when it was the capital of the USSR, faced similar disgruntlement following the high casualty rate during its occupation of Afghanistan.

Utilising mercenaries lessens these risks.

A further advantage can be the higher quality of mercenary forces. While this isn't always the case, often hired guns to offer a specialism that state militaries lack and can be used in crucial combat areas, as was seen with the deployment of the Wagner Group in key battles in Ukraine.

Middle Eastern states have mostly reflected global trends when it comes to mercenaries. Handfuls of foreign military experts were employed by governments to help train newly independent militaries, but the trend in much of the last century was to mimic other states in developing large standing armies.

Many of the conflicts at this time were large-scale state-on-state wars between Israel, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran, with each primarily deploying vast armies of home troops.

More recently though, these practices have shifted somewhat. State-on-state wars are less common and, instead, military competition has played out via civil wars in the region.

While national armies have been deployed in some instances, states have largely preferred to sponsor factions within the warring state. However, to supplement these forces governments have started turning to mercenaries.

Iran: The 'mercenary' specialist

Iran has arguably made the most extensive use of mercenaries in the region in the last few years.

Of course, Tehran would not use that term to describe the foreign forces it deploys. In the 1980s the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helped develop Hezbollah in Lebanon and then created various Shiite militias in Iraq in the 2000s, such as Kataib Hezbollah.

These forces were funded and trained by Iran, but to call them mercenaries at this point would be a stretch. After all, most would say they were fighting for their own interests in Lebanon and Iraq respectively, even if they closely aligned with Tehran's.

However, when the Syria war broke out in 2011, Tehran deployed these forces outside of their home countries to help prop up the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad. In total, it is believed that up to 8,000 Hezbollah troops were sent into Syria as well as over 10,000 Iraqis, who joined the newly formed Liwa Abu al-Fadhal al-Abbas.

There clearly was an ideological element at play, with some going to Syria to defend Shiite shrines near Damascus and to protect what they saw as a threat to Syria's Shiite community.

However, there was also a financial element. The men that joined these groups and fought abroad were often from poor backgrounds and collected valuable salaries. Moreover, they were promised generous pensions in the event of their deaths, all funded by Tehran.

This mixture of financial and ideological incentives was seen again later in the Syria war, when Iran created two new brigades, the Liwa Fatemiyoun and the Liwa Zainebiyoun, each consisting of roughly 10,000 troops each, although estimates vary.

These were mostly Afghan and Pakistani Shiites living in Iran, often in refugee communities, that were trained and paid by Tehran to fight in Syria. As with Hezbollah, there was a religious motivation at play as these fighters were initially sent to guard Shiite shrines in Syria before later being deployed to the front line.

But there was a financial incentive. Many were promised Iranian citizenship in exchange for their service, as well as a salary that those living as refugees would not have accessed otherwise.

Importantly, the ideological motivations had not been sufficient to motivate these soldiers to travel to Syria independently, they needed the financial motivation too.

Though Tehran would not like to describe these forces as mercenaries, the logic for Iran using them does fit the pattern seen elsewhere.

In the case of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia provided valuable skills that the Iranian military lacked, helping to train al-Assad's forces in the kind of urban warfare skills it had gained in fighting Israel.

In the case of the Iraqi, Afghani, and Pakistani Shiite fighters, their deployment limited the number of Iranians killed in Syria. Again, numbers are hard to pin down, but it is believed approximately 2,300 Iranian soldiers died in the war, but a further 6,400 Iraqi, Afghani and Pakistani fighters were killed, plus up to 2,000 from Hezbollah.

Without these foreign fighters, Iran might have suffered up to 10,000 casualties, a figure far more likely to provoke a domestic backlash and evidently something Tehran wished to avoid.

Iran has a huge military, of over 600,000 active personnel, yet only deployed 15,000 or so of them at a time to Syria. It deployed far more non-Iranian troops who, in many ways, resembled mercenaries.

Turkey's use of Syrian mercenaries

But Tehran is far from the only regional state deploying foreigners to supplement its own troops. Like Iran, Turkey has a huge standing military of over 700,000 troops, which it has deployed several times in the Syrian war.

Deploying troops in that conflict has not been the norm, however, and Ankara has mostly supported various local forces. This included recruiting and training a wholly new group, the Syrian National Army, to help carve out and administer pro-Turkish pockets of territory in the north.

However, though these groups are salaried by Turkey, it might be better to call them 'proxies' rather than 'mercenaries' as they are still Syrians fighting in Syria, even if they are serving Ankara's interests.

However, Turkey has also taken a leaf out of Tehran's book in using Syrian forces to pursue Ankara's interests outside of Syria. In 2020, Turkey intervened in the Second Libyan Civil War on the side of the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. However, it only sent a handful of advisers from the Turkish military, and most of the thousands of combat troops it deployed were foreign mercenaries.

A US Department of Defense report estimated that 5,000 of these were Syrians who had been recruited from pro-Turkish rebel areas. Various reports from Syria suggested there was an ideological element at play once again, with fighters being told (falsely) they were going to Libya to fight Islamic State.

But most were also motivated by the salaries being promised as well as the potential pension for their families should they be killed. Later in 2020, Turkey sent up to 2,500 Syrian mercenaries to Azerbaijan, to help Baku recapture Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia. This time Turkey denied sending any of its own military personnel.

In both Libya and Azerbaijan, the mercenaries were allowing Ankara to project power without having to risk its own conscript army. The mercenaries were seemingly not utilised for any high skill levels, with the under-trained and under-equipped Syrians suffering considerable casualties – nearly 800 according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.    

Post-Wagner shift?

Various Middle Eastern states have used mercenaries, or mercenary-types, for different reasons and in different ways, but all will likely view the tactic as successful.

They have each been able to expand their regional influence without facing the domestic backlash that might have occurred had they deployed, and potentially lost, large numbers of their own troops.

As such, each will be reluctant to abandon the mercenary option in the future. While some may be rattled by Wagner's mutiny, Tehran and Ankara will probably conclude that the circumstances are sufficiently different to not raise fears that they too will face a mercenary insurrection.

These Middle Eastern powers have not granted their mercenary forces anywhere near the power accumulated by Wagner and most mercenary troops are pretty weak and could easily be defeated if any rebellion were launched.

Moreover, unlike Wagner, which is Russian-led, Iran and Turkey have used foreign mercenary forces, making it far harder for any to have the legitimacy to try to overthrow their patrons.

The Wagner mutiny might, therefore, offer some lessons about not empowering mercenaries too much, but it is unlikely to prompt a serious reassessment of the wisdom of using mercenaries in the Middle East.