The inhabitants of the `Afrin region, northwest Syria, are still being subjected to many serious violations, especially with the militarization policies imposed by the National Army factions supported by the Turkish government on `Afrin and its countryside, after the Turkish army and those armed factions invaded the city and the surrounding villages in January 2018.
These armed factions supported by Türkiye are forcing the owners of olive orchards in `Afrin, which is the main crop the inhabitants have to eke out a livelihood, to pay illegal and exorbitant duties, especially during the harvest season. Otherwise, the militias will confiscate the farmers’ lands and arrest the owners in the event that they pay cannot those duties. This is especially the case for those whose land ownership documents are in the name of a family member who lives outside the area controlled by the National Army. These practices may constitute a war crime by those armed factions.
Reports of human rights violations inside the `Afrin region to human rights organizations and relevant international bodies are scarce, due to the National Army factions strict surveillance and the threat of reprisals against the victims of these violations and their families in the event of these crimes and violations being reported. Nonetheless, some reports of violations have reached the ears of public opinion about assaults on farmers, local women, and even children and the elderly. This include coverage of the events of last September in the village of Kakhira/Yakhur [its Arabic/Kurdish names], located some 20 km west of `Afrin, which is one example of the serious violations faced by olive farm owners and their families.
In order to monitor and document these violations in the village of Kakhira/Yakhur, Insight Organization conducted interviews with four people from the village, who conveyed the distress calls of their relatives who suffer from the crimes of these factions, in addition to using open sources. These include media and political sources, including sources supporting the Syrian opposition coalition and the National Army, which is affiliated with the armed group that assaulted farmers and their families in the village.
The village of Kakhira/Yakhur currently includes about 500 families, less than 200 of whom are Indigenous Kurds who are hostile to Türkiye. The rest are displaced families from other Syrian regions that Türkiye has brought in since 2018 to dilute the Indigenous Kurdish population, and most of them are families of National Army militants.
Inhumane treatment and gender-based violence
On Sunday, 15 September, the ‘Sulaiman Shah’ faction, known as ‘al-Amshat,’ one of the factions of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, gathered the men and women of the village of Kakhira/Yakhur, affiliated with the Mawbata/Ma`batli District in `Afrin, northwest Syria, to extorted them on the spot to pay $8 for each tree they own, or authorize the armed faction would take over the lands.
Audio clips attributed to the ‘al-Amshat’ militants and the mukhtar of the village of Kakhira/Yakhur were circulated before and after mid-September, in which they imposed deadlines not exceeding hours to sign the amounts forcibly imposed on each family, with the threat of confiscating the farms in the event of nonpayment. A witness quoted his relative in the village, which is 28 km west of `Afrin city, as saying that the faction members began to estimate the fees imposed on each family and sign a “pledge to pay the amount.” The new fees include “every tree,” whether olive, fruit bearing or non-fruit bearing, regardless of its age and whether it has reached fruition or not. The amounts decided by the faction members ranged between $1,000 and $13,000 per family, as they decided that some families own more than 1,600 trees on their lands, according to what the witness reported. He added that the majority of the residents refused to pay these amounts, despite their being accustomed to the levies imposed on them by the National Army factions, but they cannot secure the huge amounts demanded by al-Amshat elements.
When the farmers in the village of Kakhira/Yakhur refused to give up their properties due to their inability to pay the illegal levies, they were subjected to attacks and threats of arbitrary arrest, which prompted the women of the village to head to a security point of the faction to protest, but the gunmen attacked the women by beating them with “sticks and water hoses,” according to witnesses. More than 20 people were injured, most of whom were women, some of whom were elderly, and among the injured were children and men. People from the village who live outside the country conveyed the distress calls of families, most of whose members fled the war and the violations of the factions.
Another young man from the village of Kakhira/Yakhur, who now lives in the city of Aleppo, told Insight that his aunt had sustained injuries and fractures due to being beaten by members of the armed faction, while others had sustained serious injuries after they were beaten with sticks, batons and water hoses. He added that he could not provide any accurate information about the number of victims, because his relatives asked him not to contact them for fear that their homes would be stormed at any moment.
After news of the village spread on social media, about 20 military police vehicles arrived in the village, and the security point official of al-Amshat faction gathered those who had not been arrested in the village to impose a version of events such that what happened in the village was the result of a quarrel between two families. The next day, Mohammed al-Jassim, the leader of the Suleiman Shah militants, visited the village with Saif Abu Bakr, the leader of the Hamza Division, a partner with al-Amshat in forming the ‘Joint Force.’ They published video clips depicting the matter as if it stemmed from a feud between a Kurdish and an Arab family.
The faction and the military police exploited the publication of this fake news on social media about the killing of women in the village, activists confirmed that the names were of previous deaths or living people, their fabricated story of a quarrel between two families, for which they brought witnesses from the village residents under duress. Journalists and activists from the `Afrin region had warned on the first day of the factions’ deception by publishing inaccurate news about victims and then refuting the real violations. Activists published a video clip that they said showed the vandalism of the house of the village mayor, Ahmed Qasim, and media sources reported that they had obtained the names of 20 injured people, most of whom are women.
The headquarters of al-Amshat faction is located in the Shih/Sheikh al-Hadid district, but it has established its security points in Mawbata/Ma`batli district villages. One of them is in the village of Kakhira/Yakhur, after al-Amshat and the ‘Hamza Division’ allied with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra), and the withdrawal of the Third Corps (al-Jabha al-Shamiya and Jaysh al-Islam) in the clashes to the `Azaz area.
In August 2023, the United States imposed sanctions on the ‘Sulayman Shah’ and Hamza Division groups of the Syrian National Army, and some of their leaders, for committing serious human rights violations against civilians in `Afrin.
Systematic and widespread looting of land and property
Since the first days of the Turkish and National Army invasion of the `Afrin region in 2018, media and human rights institutions have looted and confiscated the displaced persons` property. These violations have occurred systematically and on a large scale to force displacement and demographically alter the composition of the majority Kurdish population in the areas of `Afrin, Tal Abyad and Ra’s al-Ain. The majority of the Turkish-backed factions have adopted the extremist ideology of the Turkish occupation. They carry out collective punishment of the Kurdish population in `Afrin, claiming that the inhabitants support the Kurdistan Workers` Party (PKK), which is banned in Türkiye as a terrorist organization.
In `Afrin, phrases were spread on homes, shops and farms stating that this property had been confiscated in favor of one of the National Army factions, and then the factions divided the villages and towns of `Afrin among themselves, despite that, previous years witnessed disputes between them over tributes that sometimes reached the point of armed clashes.
In the case of the village of Kakhira/Yakhur, the factions detained about 50 women in the faction’s security center, and threatened to sexually assault them if the men did not agree to accept the duties imposed on their trees, and to give up the management of the trees of their relatives who were displaced from the village or emigrated from the country to the faction.
Social researcher Mohammed Zeno, who hails from the village of Kakhira/Yakhur and lives outside the country, says that the faction intends to collect US$640 thousand for 80 thousand olive trees in his village of Kakhira/Yakhur alone, and the amount in `Afrin in general reaches half a billion dollars according to the journalist Roj Mûsa, who hails from `Afrin and lives in Germany.
The witnesses agree that the faction knows very well that these duties are prohibitive, because their main purpose is to confiscate those lands and trees and thus seize the profits of the olive season, which is the main source of livelihood for the people, for the benefit of those factions.
After the Kakhira/Yakhur incident, the Suleiman Shah faction informed the residents of other villages affiliated with Mawbata/Ma`batli, including Qantariya, Shitka, Raja, Jumzna, `Ali Jariya, and Ma`sarka, that they must pay $8 per tree, or delegate the faction to manage the lands. The Hamza Division also did the same steps in the villages of Raju district, north of the `Afrin region.
The Suleiman Shah faction and other factions affiliated with the Turkish-backed National Army in `Afrin and its countryside continue to impose successive amounts of money according to the number of trees, then according to the quantity of production, during the shipment of olives to the presses, then to the oil presses, then during marketing, transportation, and sale.
On September 17, the faction`s economic elements forced many farmers, especially a large number of women in the village, to sign “blank papers” that allow the faction to obtain authorization to manage their lands and the lands of their displaced relatives, or to collect the amounts it determines for each field. Both al-Amshat and al-Hamzat forces and other factions established the “Economic Office of the Faction” which collects the money it collects through violations after accusing the residents of dealing with the former self-administration in `Afrin, or their relatives and landowners of belonging to the Democratic Union Party (PYD).
It is worth noting that the Turkish authorities run the region under the direct supervision of the governor of Hatay or the Turkish intelligence, or indirectly through the military police and the National Army factions.
Siege and collective punishment
Following the attack by the Suleiman Shah faction on women and farmers in protest against the imposition of these fees, a collective siege and curfew were imposed on the village, and many young Kurds in the village were arrested, and means of communication and the Internet were cut off, for their objection to paying the taxes imposed on olives and houses.
During the attack on the residents of the village of Kakhira/Yakhur on 15 September, the “al-Amshat” faction prevented the injured from being taken to hospitals after besieging the village and cutting off the Internet. With the return of the Internet in the following days, activists published photos of some of the women who were victims of the attack by “al-Amshat” elements and their names, while the majority of the victims refrained from announcing what they were subjected to due to fear of reprisals.
With activists and media personnel unable to reach the village, and the “Sulayman Shah” faction militants threatening residents with leaking information about what is happening, it is difficult to verify the extent of the risks threatening the residents of Kakhira/Yakhur and other villages in the area, as the militants prevent entry into the areas under their control, with the exception of a few cases under strict supervision, including leaders and members of the National Coalition, whose representative attends its meetings. Even the head of the Syrian Coalition, Hadi al-Bahra, did not visit the village of Kakhira/Yakhur during the tour he made that included nearby Jandairis, despite announcing that the visit was to listen to the needs of the residents and the difficulties they face.
Human rights and civil society organizations in North and East Syria believe that the international community has not paid attention to the repeated calls for help and reports from `Afrin since Türkiye and its loyal National Army took control of it more than six years ago, which facilitates impunity and the recurrence of crimes, especially against the Kurdish population, in forced displacement, and deprivation of access to adequate food, potable water, and medical supplies. The Turkish government and the factions it supports bear responsibility for these practices that amount to war crimes and a violation of its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and breaches the prohibition of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights against depriving a people of its means of subsistence, as well as other rules of international humanitarian law.
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Photo on frontpage: Local `Afrin residents demonstrating against the Turkish-backed militias’ destruction of their habitat. Source: North Press. Image on this page: Map of the military situation in Syria as of October 2024. Source: Wikipedia. See detailed map here.
