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240 CHAPTER 5cutive office met with Elledi ag Alla and Issouf ag Cheick, the leaders of theTanekra movement in Algeria. Elledi and Issouf proposed to ask the AlgerianGovernment to start the war of liberation from Algerian territory. To this end,they wrote a formal request to the Algerian Government, which was transmittedby the Libyan authorities in the movement’s name. The Algerian Governmentrefused and threatened to break its relations with Libya if the Libyans would notstop their support for the movement. When Camp an-Nasr closed down therecruits were presented with a number of options: Return to Mali or Niger; stayin Libya as migrant workers; enroll in the regular Libyan army (as Libyannationals); or enlist for training and combat in Lebanon with the Palestinianforces. An estimated five hundred recruits chose the last option. They were firstsent to Syria for intensive training. Arriving in Damascus, about three hundredrecruits backed out. They had either become fearful of what lay ahead of themor, as one informant (who had left) stated, because they had not been informedabout where they were going and why they were going there in the first placewhen they joined the group. 95 They presented themselves at the Algerian embassyand asked for repatriation to Algeria, which was arranged. About twohundred fighters remained in the Middle East. They were first trained in the useof heavy arms, armoured vehicles and tanks, and then sent to Lebanon, wherethey joined various Palestinian units.We had accepted our enrolment in the Palestinian revolution. We acceptedit. Five hundred people had signed documents for this in Libya. We left withfive hundred people on a military aircraft to Syria, where the Palestinian baseswere. We were with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – GeneralCommand. Its Secretary General: Ahmed Jibril. We stayed there until we hadfinished our training in heavy arms: Tanks, howitzers, Katyushas 40 and 12calibres, Russian 130 mm howitzers, Russian tanks, machine guns, anti-aircraftmissiles, American cannons that shoot tanks, calibre 106. We did heavy armsand rockets, anti-vehicle mines and anti-personnel mines. Five hundred combatants.We were divided. Three hundred were discouraged and asked for theirreturn to Algeria. The Secretary General Ahmed Jibril accepted this. They returnedto Algeria, to Tamanrasset. After six months they were discharged. Westayed there, me and my friends Iyad, Latfi, and Abdurahman, we stayed in thewar. We were divided into groups of twenty, thirty, forty, ten, between themovement’s posts at the Israeli-Lebanese border. From the start of the war untilthe end of the war, we stayed. 96To those veterans of the Lebanese period, their enrollment in the Palestinianmovement had nothing to do with loyalty to Qadhafi, sympathy to the Palesti-9596Conversation with Maza’. Lyon, March 1994.Interview with Baye ag Alhassan. Ménaka, 13/11/1998.