ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A worsening humanitarian crisis, rights violations, and security chaos continue to grip Afrin and surrounding areas under militia control in northwest Syria, according to a war monitor and Kurdish politicians.
“Since the Turkish forces and their loyal factions took control of the so-called ‘Olive Branch’ areas, namely Afrin and its affiliated areas northwest of Aleppo, the series of humanitarian crises, violations, and security chaos has been gradually worsening,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Friday.
At least 76 people were killed and 57 others were injured this year within areas under the control of Turkish forces and their affiliated militia groups, according to SOHR.
Turkey and its allied Syrian militia groups launched the code-named Operation Olive Branch in Afrin on January 20, 2018, taking control of the Kurdish enclave from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) two months later. The YPG is the backbone of the United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control northeast Syria (Rojava).
Local and international rights groups have repeatedly accused the militia groups of committing human rights abuses against the Kurdish residents of Afrin.
The abuses have continued after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus.
On Thursday, a source from Afrin said members of the armed group al-Amshat apprehended two residents, Masoud Mohammed and Shiyar Jamil Shekho. The group also allegedly stole a car and a tractor whose owners were accused of “not paying taxes to the armed group,” the source told Rudaw, speaking on condition of anonymity.
When the rebel forces led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took Aleppo at the end of November and started their rapid advance on Damascus, Turkish-backed groups of the Syrian National Army (SNA) launched an offensive against Kurdish-held areas north of Aleppo. Thousands of civilians, many of them previously displaced from Afrin, fled. Some have returned to Afrin.
“Around three to four thousand families have returned from Tabqa, Raqqa and Manbij. They are in Aleppo right now,” Ahmed Hassan, the head of the local branch of the Kurdish National Council (ENKS/KNC) told Rudaw’s Nalin Hassan.
“Going from Aleppo to Afrin is very easy now,” he said, adding that tens of thousands of people are waiting to return on tractors.
Some families are asked for money upon their return. “They tax them,” said Hassan.
They are demanded to pay up to $500 per family, according to Azad Osman, another ENKS member.
According to Hassan, the checkpoints in Aleppo are managed by the SNA and the situation on the ground has not changed with the new government in Damascus.
“Aleppo is still the same. There are still taxes, arrests, and the prisoners still haven’t been freed,” he said.
People who are newly detained are taken to court where they can be released if they pay hundreds of dollars for bail, according to Hassa. The courts are managed by the transitional government led by HTS.
