SDF arrests 40 ISIS suspects during ongoing operation
This included the “facilitators of terrorist acts, recruiters of potential terrorists, and logistical suppliers.”
Syria SDF northeast Syria Syria ISIS
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The media center of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement that 40 ISIS suspects were arrested during its ongoing Operation Al-Jazeera Thunderbolt on the third and fourth day.
This included the “facilitators of terrorist acts, recruiters of potential terrorists, and logistical suppliers.”
The SDF resumed Operation Al-Jazeera Thunderbolt on Dec. 29 in the Hasakah province, including al-Hol, Tal Hamis, and Tal Brak to prevent an ISIS resurgence.
“Today during the early morning hours of the fourth day (on Sunday) in Tal Brak, the forces managed to spot the movements of a terrorist cell trying to flee the area, to hide in remote areas.”
“However, joint forces successfully raided the hideout, immobilized them, and arrested six wanted terrorists involved in acts of terror in the al-Hasakah area,” the SDF said.
The SDF said the operation prevented “ISIS operative cells from carrying out terrorist acts during the New Year’s celebrations which passed off peacefully thanks to the security measures and pre-emptive strikes.”
Although the SDF and the coalition forces announced the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in March 2019, sleeper cells continue to carry out attacks in northeastern Syria.
On Dec. 26, six SDF-linked security forces were killed in an attack on the headquarters of the Internal Security Forces in Raqqa, near a security prison. Also on Dec. 29, another Asayish member was killed in the countryside of Raqqa.
Moreover, on Dec. 30, 10 oil workers were killed and 2 others injured in a suspected ISIS attack in a Syrian government-held area in Deir ez-Zor.
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HUMAN RIGHT WATCH SLANDERS AANES AUTHORITIES
Syria: Repatriations Lag for Foreigners with Alleged ISIS Ties [EN/AR]
Format News and Press Release Source
Posted 15 Dec 2022 Originally published 15 Dec 2022 Origin View original
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More than 42,400 Adults and Children Held in Life-Threatening Conditions
(New York) – More than 42,400 foreigners accused of Islamic State (ISIS) links remain abandoned by their countries in camps and prisons in northeast Syria despite increased repatriations of women and children in recent months, Human Rights Watch said today. Kurdish-led authorities are holding the detainees, most of them children, along with 23,200 Syrians in life-threatening conditions.
Recent Turkish air and artillery strikes have compounded the danger. But even before Turkey’s attacks, at least 42 people had been killed during 2022 in al-Hol, the largest camp, some by ISIS loyalists. Hundreds of others were killed in an attempted ISIS prison break in January. Children have drowned in sewage pits, died in tent fires, and been run over by water trucks, and hundreds have died from treatable illnesses, staff, aid workers, and detainees said.
“Turkey’s attacks highlight the urgent need for all governments to help end the unlawful detention of their nationals in northeast Syria, allowing all to come home and prosecuting adults as warranted,” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “For every person brought home, about seven remain in unconscionable conditions, and most are children.”
Turkish air strikes since November 20 targeting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the region’s armed force, struck perilously close to al-Hol camp and Cherkin prison, which together hold thousands of the detainees. The strikes, which reportedly killed eight guards, temporarily cut off power, stopped water, fuel, and bread deliveries, and reduced already limited medical and other services in al-Hol and Roj, a smaller detention camp, detainees, relatives, and aid and family groups told Human Rights Watch.
During a trip to northeast Syria in May 2022 and subsequent calls and text messages, Human Rights Watch interviewed 63 foreign ISIS suspects and family members in camps, prisons, and other detention centers. Human Rights Watch also spoke with 44 camp and detention center administrators and staff, aid workers, foreign government officials, and relatives in detainees’ countries of origin.
Medical care, clean water, shelter, and education and recreation for children were grossly inadequate, Human Rights Watch found. Mothers said they hid their children in their tents to protect them from sexual predators, camp guards, and ISIS recruiters and killers.
In Roj, six women said guards had transferred them to detention centers for weeks or months, in some cases physically abusing them and leaving their children to fend for themselves. Boys and their mothers said guards had forcibly disappeared adolescent boys from the camps and placed them in detention centers, where they lost contact with relatives for months or years.
In al-Hol, an Iraqi man said that ISIS loyalists killed several of his close relatives in the camp in 2022, calling them “spies.” Then, he said, “they left me a [written] message with a knife struck through it: ‘Allahu Akbar [God is greatest], the Islamic State remains. Your slaughter is near.’”
In Roj, a woman said guards held her for days in early 2022 in a toilet stall where they interrogated her and subjected her to electric shocks, accusing her of involvement in a camp protest. “I kept telling them I wasn’t involved, but they kept torturing me,” she said.
In Alaya prison, a wounded French teen whom guards snatched from his family and placed in a crowded cell for 23 hours a day pleaded for care for his disabled arm but said that most of all, “I just want to see my mother.”
The foreigners come from about 60 countries. Most were rounded up by the SDF, a Kurdish-led, US-backed regional armed force, when it routed ISIS from its last physical holdout in Syria in early 2019.
None of the foreigners have been brought before a judicial authority in northeast Syria to determine the necessity and legality of their detention, making their captivity arbitrary and unlawful. Detention based solely on family ties amounts to collective punishment, a war crime.
The foreigners are held in northeast Syria with the tacit or explicit consent of their countries of nationality. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom and Denmark, have revoked the citizenship of many or some of their nationals, leaving several stateless in violation of their right to a nationality.
Governments that knowingly and significantly contribute to this abusive confinement may be complicit in the foreigners’ unlawful detention, Human Rights Watch said. Unlawful detention committed as part of a widespread or systematic “attack directed against any civilian population,” meaning a state or organizational policy to detain people unlawfully, can amount to a crime against humanity.
Since 2019, at least 34 countries have repatriated or allowed home more than 6,000 foreigners, including nearly 4,000 to neighboring Iraq, according to figures from the Administration of North and East Syria, the region’s governing body, and other contacts. Repatriations increased in 2022 with more than 3,100 foreigners taken home as of December 12, the Autonomous Administration said. Since October, at least eight countries have brought nationals home: 659 to Iraq, 17 to Australia, 4 to Canada, 58 to France, 12 to Germany, 40 to the Netherlands, 38 to Russia, and 2 to the UK. In November, Spain said it would repatriate at least 16 nationals by year’s end. Most countries have brought back few, if any, men. Many repatriated children are successfully reintegrating in their home countries, Human Rights Watch found.
In a written response to Human Rights Watch requests for comment on the detainees’ treatment, the Autonomous Administration said it was trying its best to uphold human rights law. “This does not mean that there are no mistakes here and there on the level of individuals or some small groups within the military forces,” it added. The Autonomous Administration “takes into account” any reports of detainee abuse, it said.
The Autonomous Administration has repeatedly urged governments to repatriate their nationals and in the meantime to increase aid to ensure the detainees’ humane treatment. They have also called on governments to help regional authorities prosecute foreign ISIS suspects. “It is very difficult for us to carry this burden on our own,” Abdulkarim Omar, the administration’s European envoy and former foreign relations co-chair, told Human Rights Watch.
The United States and the UK, members of the Global Coalition Against ISIS, have spent millions of dollars on prisons to hold the detainees in northeast Syria. But foreign governments have not taken steps to provide the detainees with judicial review.
“While better conditions are essential, indefinite detention without judicial review is unlawful even in the best of prisons,” Tayler said. “Countries risk complicity in this abuse if they enable detentions that violate basic rights or that create direct or indirect obstacles to their nationals’ returns.”
Security Concerns
Governments that have stalled on taking back their nationals cite security concerns and public backlash. In addition, officials from five governments with nationals detained in northeast Syria have told Human Rights Watch that the authorities there had at times set repatriation conditions that compounded the already challenging task of extracting their nationals.
But top United Nations and US officials have urged countries to repatriate their nationals, saying the detainees represent a greater threat if left in northeast Syria, where hardliners among them could escape, particularly while the SDF is diverted to responding to Turkey’s attacks, and children could be vulnerable to recruitment. The US, which leads the 85-member Global Coalition Against ISIS and has brought back 39 nationals – nearly all its citizens detained in the region – has helped several countries extract their nationals for repatriation.
At the same time, the US military was spending $155 million in 2022 and requested $183 million for 2023 to train, equip, and pay thousands of SDF and Asayish, a regional security force that also guards the detainees. The US is also using the funds to increase security at al-Hol camp and to build a new prison in the town of Rumaylan and refurbish at least three existing detention centers, including for boys.
The detention centers are a stop-gap effort pending repatriations to “improve the SDF’s ability to securely and humanely” detain the ISIS suspects, the US Department of Defense told Human Rights Watch. They also will improve conditions for those who at risk of serious harm if they were sent home, according to the department’s reports. Several thousand detainees come from countries with records of counterterrorism abuse.
The UK, which has taken back 11 nationals but left an estimated 60 others, has spent at least $20 million on a new prison called Panorama for the detainees in al-Hasakah.
The Detainees and Places of Detention
As of December 12, the SDF and Asayish were holding roughly 65,600 men, women, and children as ISIS suspects and family members in camps, prisons, and other detention centers in northeast Syria, according to the Autonomous Administration and US government figures.
More than 37,400 foreigners, including more than 27,300 Iraqis, are detained in al-Hol and Roj camps. Nearly two-thirds of foreign camp detainees are children, most under age 12. Nearly one-third are women. The camps also hold about 18,200 Syrian men, women and children whose conditions are dire although they have more freedom of movement than the foreigners.
The SDF is also holding about 10,000 men and boys in prisons and makeshift detention centers –about 5,000 Syrians, 3,000 Iraqis and 2,000 from more than 20 other countries, according to the US Department of Defense and other sources. They include as many 700 Syrian and foreign boys, four sources with knowledge of the facilities estimated, and hundreds of young men held since they were children, according to the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria. Humanitarian access to these detention centers is highly restricted.
At least 180 other foreign boys are estimated to be locked in detention facilities that regional authorities inaccurately describe as “rehabilitation” centers, including the Houry Center, Alaya prison, and a new center called Orkesh, five sources said.
In January, ISIS fighters attacked al-Sina’a Prison in the Ghweran neighborhood of al-Hasakah city in an effort to free about 4,000 men and boys detained for alleged ISIS links, sparking a 10-day battle with the SDF, backed by US airstrikes and US and UK troops. The SDF said that more than 500 ISIS attackers, detainees, guards, and their own forces died before they recaptured the prison but did not say how many of the dead were detainees. Detainees inside the prison during the battle told Human Rights Watch that several children were among those wounded and killed.
Citing security concerns, northeast Syrian authorities declined repeated Human Rights Watch requests to inspect prison cells holding foreign men, women, and boys.
Human Rights Watch is using pseudonyms and withholding other identifying details of most detainees, who said they feared reprisals by pro-ISIS detainees or camp authorities.
Violence and Death in Camps
During two visits to Roj and one to al-Hol in May, detainees begged for help, saying they were living under the constant threat of violence and death. At al-Hol, mangers only allowed Human Rights Watch to enter two small areas, saying armed ISIS members controlled entire sections of the camp.
Human Rights Watch separately interviewed 10 detained Iraqis and Syrians at al-Hol who said that ISIS members in the camp had killed their relatives, or robbed, threatened, or harmed them, accusing them of cooperating with camp authorities.
One man showed Human Rights Watch a wound on his chest that he said was from pro-ISIS detainees who shot him because they considered him an informant. A woman who had worked at a kindergarten camp said two ISIS members robbed her, pointed a gun at her, and warned her: “This is the last day you work at the kindergarten, or we will kill you.” She immediately quit.
The 42 people killed in al-Hol from January to mid-November included 22 women and 4 children, and 83 people were killed in the camp in 2021, the UN Human Rights Office said. From 2019 to 2021, at least 972 detainees in al-Hol, many of them children, were reported to have been killed or died from other causes, including accidents, malnutrition, and hypothermia, according to the World Health Organization and Kurdish Red Crescent.
In May, an 8-year-old Iraqi boy drowned in one of the many open sewage canals crisscrossing al-Hol, camp managers said. Days later, Human Rights Watch saw children playing in a camp sewage canal. The bullet-riddled body of an Iraqi woman was also found that month in an al-Hol sewage pit, camp managers said. In November, two Egyptian sisters, both under 15, were found dead in an al-Hol sewage canal after being raped and stabbed.
Aid workers have also been threatened, robbed, or even killed, in some cases forcing them to suspend operations, sources including two aid organizations operating in the region said.
In September, the SDF, aided by US military intelligence, carried out a three-week sweep of al-Hol, arresting 300 alleged ISIS operatives, confiscating explosives and hand grenades, and freeing six women who were found chained and tortured, including a Yezidi woman whom the US military said ISIS captured in 2014 at age 9.
No murders have been reported in Roj but more than a dozen women there said that pro-ISIS women had threatened or targeted them and their children. “They throw rocks at me and my son, saying I need to wear the veil,” a French woman said.
Camp managers at Roj and al-Hol, aid workers, and women held at Roj said that detainees, both children and adults, at times sexually abused other detainees, including children. Some women resort to sex work to buy food and medicine for their children, risking execution by ISIS enforcers for doing so, and children often work or beg for food, making them vulnerable to exploitation, aid workers said.
Among other case, an aid worker said, two pregnant women held in the camps alleged they had been raped in 2022 by masked men they believed to be camp guards. and a man held in the camp had raped a young boy.
“When we were under the Islamic State, we had to find a safe place to protect our children from the bombs, one Canadian mother in Roj said. “Now we have to find them a safe place to protect them from other people in the camps.” Like many women, the mother said she also needed to protect her children from increasing traumatization as the years passed by in the camps. Days earlier, she said, her young son had tried to hang himself with a tent rope.
Inadequate Medical Care
In both camps, detained women said shortages of medicine and medical care were severe. Many mothers in Roj said their children suffered from severe asthma exacerbated by fumes from an adjacent oil field but that they could not obtain sufficient oxygen or other medicine. Three women said that their children required surgery that they would have to pay for themselves, but they had no way to earn money inside the camp.
Women held in both camps said that guards delayed or denied requests to bring women or severely ill or injured children to hospitals for emergency care, and that some had died. A Doctors Without Borders report on al-Hol in September described camp authorities waiting so long to transport two young children needing emergency care to hospitals – two days in one case and hours in another – that both died en route, without their mothers.
Amira, a 32-year-old Egyptian widow held in Roj with her two young children, said she wanted to return to Egypt, a country with a record of mass abuses of terrorism suspects, if her children could receive medical care and start new lives there:
I have two kids, all of the time they are crying. They are asking, “Why we are in here?” My son is sick. He has a problem breathing. At night he goes, “hnghhh, hnghhh.” He needs surgery or something to help him breathe. [I say] “It’s okay, it’s okay, you will be fine… tomorrow we will go out.… And tomorrow comes and we do not leave. … Please, anyone [who] see this message, anyone responsible… please move. For the children, for kids. To get their rights.
Sources including aid groups estimated that hundreds of detained boys and men transferred from al-Sina’a to Panorama prison after ISIS’s attempted prison break in January have tuberculosis that was untreated for months, and that dozens need specialized surgery or advanced treatment for wounds or other medical conditions.
Food and Water Shortages
Food and clean water shortages, particularly in al-Hol, are recurrent. For two months over the summer, al-Hol detainees did not receive their basic food rations, an aid worker told Human Rights Watch. For several days during that period, authorities in al-Hol prevented all detainees in the “Annex,” the sections holding non-Iraqi foreigners, from going to the camp market to buy fresh food, milk, and bottled water, two detainees said. The authorities cut off the market access after a group of women complained of mistreatment by guards and interrogators, the two detainees said.
In Roj, one woman said that guards had entered a section of the camp in June and threatened to “take all boys ages 7 and up” if a woman did not return food she had stolen from the market.
Al-Hol also suffered water shortages after camp managers suspected that ISIS was smuggling arms into the camp with water deliveries, aid workers said.
Transfers of Women and Children to Other Detention Centers
Seven women in Roj described being detained in late 2021 and early 2022 by camp guards, two of them after several detainees staged a protest. Guards held about 20 women for periods between a few days and four months, leaving about 45 children behind, according to three women. One French mother with young children said that she was held for four months, first in a toilet stall, then in a prison:
They closed us into toilet stalls and interrogated us. I was there for two days, other women for many more. They told us, “You will never get out. You will never see your children. These days will be your last.” Please let me come home with my children, even if I have to go to prison. For the sake of my children. We have no rights here.
Women whom regional authorities allege are ISIS morality police are periodically transferred from the camps to a prison in al-Hasakah. Since October 2021, up to 55 of the women’s children have spent nights with them in prison and eight hours a day in a heavily guarded day care center inside the prison compound called Helat. The children are 18 months to 13 years old, Helat director Parwin Hussein al-Ali told Human Rights Watch in May.
Helat has Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck painted on its high walls, trailers that al-Ali said were donated by the US military that the children use for naps, movies, and other activities, and a swimming pool and flush toilets, though neither had water on the day that Human Rights Watch visited. Children from countries including France, Russia, Tajikistan and the UK played in a courtyard. Al-Ali said the center lacked funds for fresh food and toys.
Several of the 10 children Human Rights Watch spoke with there said they would rather live in the locked camps than spend nights in prison.
“Why are we in prison?” asked an 11-year-old boy from Tajikistan, who had a scar on his skull that he said was from an airstrike. “When will we get out?”
“In prison we just sit and do nothing and nothing and nothing,” said a 12-year-old girl from Azerbaijan.
During the January attack on nearby al-Sina’a prison, two ISIS suicide bombers tried to scale the walls of Helat but were killed by guards, al-Ali said.
Boys Detained Apart from Their Families
Scores or possibly hundreds of boys have been forcibly removed from al-Hol and Roj camps by Asayish and SDF forces and held in separate detention centers when they reach or approach adolescence, said mothers, boys who were taken, and several camp and aid workers. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria reported in September that those taken included “scores of boys ages 10 to 12” from al-Hol camp. A Doctors Without Borders report in November called the practice “routine and systematic.”
In many cases, guards took the children without informing their mothers and camp authorities did not respond to mothers’ pleas to know where their sons were held for weeks or months, mothers said, which would make their removals enforced disappearances.
Northeast Syrian authorities acknowledged that boys were taken but declined to say how many or where all of them were held. They said that nearly 110 boys are held at the Houry Center, a locked building with a courtyard that the Autonomous Administration calls a recreation center, and that older boys are then transferred to military prisons for men. Those prisons also hold boys who were immediately separated from their parents by the SDF upon their capture in 2019 or earlier. Several aid and camp workers and organizations said that they do not know all the places where the boys are taken.
Bawarmand Rasho, a regional official overseeing al-Hol and Roj, said that the authorities only took boys they considered a security threat. He denied accusations that the authorities did not inform mothers of the transfers. “We don’t kidnap them,” he said. “We say, ‘We are taking your child to a rehabilitation center.’”
“Abar,” an Egyptian mother held in Roj burst into tears as she said her son, then 14, was among four boys who had been taken without warning eight months earlier. “Please, please, can you help me find him?” she begged. “I know nothing about him.” Camp officials later told the mother that her son was brought to Ghweran, the prison that ISIS attacked in January. For months, Abar thought her son might be among the dead.
In July, camp officials gave the mother a brief audio message and photo of her son in which he said he was fine but looked gaunt and wore winter clothes although it was summer, a family member told Human Rights Watch. As of December, 14 months after her son was taken, Abar had still not seen her son.
“Bader,” a boy at the Houry Center who said he was 15 and a US citizen, said that armed guards took him from al-Hol in December 2020, when he was at the camp market, “without my family even knowing.” He said his captors detained him for a month incommunicado in a latrine with 18 other boys and men, then took him to the Houry Center:
I went out shopping and they just picked me up from the middle of the store. We were four kids. They sent us to little jails, two rooms. It was a toilet [latrine]… They kept me there for one month. … We told them, “Why? We didn’t do anything.” And they said, “If you guys are bigger than 12 years old, 13 years old, you are not allowed to stay in the camp.” It was actually cold in that time, and they didn’t let us get our bags or anything, our clothes. And then they brought us here.
Bader said his father had brought him, his eight siblings, and his mother to Syria to live under ISIS in 2016, telling them they were going camping. He said the authorities have only allowed two visits, from one family member, since he was taken to the Houry Center.
During Human Rights Watch’s visit, boys from about two dozen countries including Algeria, France, Germany, Morocco, Trinidad, and Russia milled around the Houry Center courtyard or sat on cots in dormitories with vacant stares. An aid organization provides basic limited instruction in subjects such as English, Arabic, math, and music but the center lacks sufficient resources, said Khadija Mussa, the camp administrator.
Like other boys whom Human Rights Watch interviewed at the Houry Center, Bader said that most of the time he does nothing:
You know how in our age outside, in schools, how we’re supposed to be like, eating, and walking around, and playing, and soccer, and bicycle, and learning, and stuff like that. It’s not only me it’s a lot of kids.… No one wants to stay, growing up here, doing nothing.
At least 60 other foreign boys and young men are held at Alaya military prison, two sources said. The foreigners are in separate cells from the other 800 detainees, most of them Syrians convicted of terrorism. When Human Rights Watch visited Alaya in May, 30 foreign boys and young men were held there. The number swelled during the security sweep in al-Hol, the two sources said.
The youths are held separately from the men in a “rehabilitation center,” the prison manager, Farhad Hassan, said in May. The boys come from more than a dozen countries including Afghanistan, France, Morocco, Pakistan, and Russia, he said.
Four youths interviewed said that all 30 boys and young men were confined for 23 hours a day to one crowded, locked cell with one shower and one toilet, with minimal activities. They said they spent the remaining hour in a courtyard that was too small for them to all play at once. For over a month, one boy said, they hadn’t had a football. The boys said they lacked adequate medical care and fresh food.
“Yasir,” a 19-year-old from France who said his parents brought him to Syria in 2014, said that armed guards took him from al-Hol camp in 2020, bringing him first to Houry and then to Alaya:
I was sitting in my tent and they came, the armed men. They said, “You’ll be coming back in two minutes.” But they never brought me back. Psychologically, I’m tired to death. I just want my mother. … I also need a doctor. I can’t move my left hand. My hand is dead.
Yasir’s left arm dangled limp by his side and a scar crisscrossed the back of his head – wounds he said were from a 2018 airstrike. Surgeons operated on his arm, but he needs special surgery that is not available in northeast Syria, a prison doctor said.
“Kemal,” a 20-year-old from Germany who was brought to Syria by his stepfather when he was 11, said armed guards snatched him from Roj in late 2019 in the middle of the night and brought him and three other boys to the Houry Center.
In May 2022, Kemal said, he was brought to Alaya. “Other boys get moved, too,” he said. “It’s scary to be here. Sometimes they [guards] come by surprise and we don’t know what’s going to happen.” Since being taken from Roj, he said, he had only seen his mother and three young siblings once, in 2020. “I can’t call my mother,” he said. “I hope she gets my letters.”
Some detained boys at Alaya and Houry said they sometimes did not receive family members’ letters for months. Delays were similar or longer in other prisons, family members said.
“Mum, more than a year has passed since the Red Cross came so I was surprised not to find a new letter,” Jack Letts, 27, a Canadian-British national until the UK government revoked his citizenship in 2019, wrote his mother in a September 2021 letter from a prison in northeast Syria. Letts’ mother, Sally Lane, received the letter seven months later.
Information from governments about detainees has also been scant or nil, several family members with relatives imprisoned in northeast Syria said. “It’s now four years that I’ve been asking you to clarify the state of my brother’s physical and mental health,” a Canadian woman wrote to Canadian authorities about her brother, whom she said was “very sick” when she last visited him in a prison in northeast Syria in 2021. “Do you have a medical report on his health?”
In October 2022, Germany repatriated Kemal along with 11 German women and children. When Kemal arrived, the federal public prosecutor’s office immediately detained him, saying they suspect he fought with ISIS at age 14 and 15 and that after being taken from Roj he had beaten and threatened other boys to try to make them support ISIS.
Abdulkarim Omar, the northeast Syria official, said that the Autonomous Administration was seeking international funding for 15 or 16 rehabilitation centers for boys and potentially girls as they become adolescents. In 2021, Fionnuala Ní Aolaín, the UN special rapporteur on countering terrorism, denounced the boys’ detentions at Houry and in prisons as “the de facto culling, separation, and warehousing of adolescent boys from their mothers” in “an abhorrent process inconsistent with the rights of the child.”
International Legal Standards
Countries have a responsibility to take steps to protect their citizens when they face serious human rights violations, including loss of life and torture. This obligation can extend to nationals in foreign countries when reasonable action by their home governments can protect them from such harm. International human rights law also provides that everyone has the right to a nationality. Governments have an international legal obligation to provide access to nationality as soon as possible to all children born abroad to one of their nationals who would otherwise be stateless. Everyone has the right to adequate food, water, clothing, shelter, mental and physical health, and fair trials. All children have the right to education.
Detaining people in inhuman or degrading conditions such as those in the camps and prisons in northeast Syria is strictly prohibited under international human rights law and the laws of war. Enforced disappearances, which include the refusal by authorities to provide information on what became of a person they detained or where they were being held, are also strictly prohibited. If widespread or systematic, enforced disappearances are crimes against humanity.
The Autonomous Administration’s indefinite detention of foreigners without providing them with the opportunity to challenge the legality and necessity of their confinement is arbitrary and unlawful. The blanket detention of ISIS suspects’ family members amounts to collective punishment, a war crime.
Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children should only be detained as an exceptional measure of last resort. Criminal liability should only be sought for children transitioning to adulthood in rare circumstances. Children should not be separated from their parents absent independent evaluation that separation is in the best interests of the child. Children associated with armed groups should be considered first and foremost as victims.
In separate rulings in February and October, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child found that France and Finland violated the rights to life and to freedom from inhuman treatment of children they had not repatriated from northeast Syria. In September, the European Court of Human Rights found that France violated the rights of women and children seeking repatriation by failing to adequately and fairly examine their requests for repatriation.
UN Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 2396 of 2017, emphasize the importance of assisting women and children associated with groups like ISIS who may themselves be victims of terrorism, including through rehabilitation and reintegration.
Recommendations
Countries should repatriate or help bring home detainees, prioritizing the most vulnerable including children and their mothers. UN entities, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF, as well as the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and donor countries, should work to safely resettle abroad foreigners facing risks of death or torture and other ill-treatment at home. Governments should provide those repatriated or resettled with rehabilitation and reintegration services and prosecute adults when warranted.
In the meantime, these countries, donors, UN entities, and the Coalition to Defeat ISIS should immediately increase aid to end inhuman and other degrading treatment through efforts that include improving food, shelter, medical services, and education for children. They should maintain family unity when in the best interests of the child and help local authorities remove boys and young men from military detention. They should increase communication between detainees and family members in northeast Syria and in countries of origin, including proof of life.
These governments and entities should also promptly resume stalled efforts to create a judicial process in northeast Syria or elsewhere to allow all foreigners to fairly contest their detention, allowing the immediate and voluntary release with safe passage of all those who will not be criminally charged or do not pose an imminent security threat.
Northeast Syrian authorities, including the Autonomous Administration, the SDF, and the Asayish, should cooperate with these efforts, allow aid groups and independent observers unfettered access to all detention sites, and ensure prompt treatment for detainees needing advanced and life-saving medical care.
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Day-X is now: North and East Syria under attack – a weekly news review
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Last Saturday night, less than a week after Turkey’s Home Minster, Süleyman Soylu, defied evidence and logic to announce to the world that the bomb attack in Istanbul was carried out by the PKK and Rojava’s People’s Protection Units (YPG), Turkish jets began to bomb the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, launching an air assault that exceeds anything in their previous attacks. And President Erdoğan has repeated his warnings of an imminent ground assault. As many people had predicted, Erdoğan, who has long made clear his desire to launch another major attack on the region, has used the Istanbul bomb as a casus belli.
Erdoğan has publicly declared his intention to control a 30 km strip of Syria territory along the length of Turkey’s southern border, combining his dreams of a greater Turkey with the destruction of Kurdish communities and of the multi-ethnic, feminist, radical democracy that they have created. Early in the Syrian civil war, the chair of the Turkish Intelligence Service, Hakan Fidan, said, “If necessary, I will send four men to Syria. I will fire eight missiles at Turkey and produce a justification for war.” Today, with Turkey’s general and presidential elections due to take place by next June, and with a large part of the Turkish population suffering from poverty wages, Erdoğan wants to reap his carefully cultivated popular nationalist support. He is planning for a kaki election, or, better still, a victory. As the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Foreign Affairs co-spokesperson, Hişyar Özsoy, points out, Erdoğan has made a habit of carrying out invasions prior to elections.
The fact that Soylu’s accusation was never credible, and that it has been contradicted by every new piece of evidence, has not prevented international governments from responding as though it were legitimate. Even an incredible claim can be used as an excuse for inaction.
The Istanbul bombing
Last week I looked at some of the contradictions that had already begun to appear in the official narrative. I argued that neither the PKK nor the YPG had a motive to carry out the bombing – in fact, as Turkey’s violent and predictable reaction demonstrates, quite the opposite – and that neither organisation participated in this kind of action against civilians. And I noted that the beneficiaries of such a bombing would be Erdoğan’s government, who have a history of wrongly accusing the PKK, and the militant Islamists they work with, who have shown no compunction about targeting civilians
Before looking at the bloody, traumatic, and destabilising events of the last few days, and at reactions to them, I want to add the latest pieces of evidence that undermine Soylu’s claims.
The people who have been arrested for the bombing are Arab, not Kurdish, and last Saturday, before Turkey launched their attack, we learnt that a man who has been accused of organising the bombing had said in his police statement that his brother died fighting in the Free Syrian Army (FSA – the mercenary groups that fight for Turkey). Then, on Wednesday, Mazloum Abdi, the Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which includes the YPG, told Amberin Zaman in an interview for al Monitor that the SDF had established that “the woman who was arrested for planting the bomb comes from a family linked to the Islamic State. Three of her brothers died fighting for the Islamic State. One died in Raqqa, another in Manbij and a third died in Iraq. Another brother is a commander in the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition in Afrin. She was married to three different Islamic State fighters and the family is from Aleppo.”
This comes on top of the discovery that the woman’s phone had received calls from Mehmet Emin İlhan, a district president of the National Movement Party (MHP), the far-right party that is in alliance with Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). İlhan claimed that this was a case of stolen identity. The Peoples’ Democratic Party has now called for a full investigation into the phone records.
North and East Syria
Turkey announced their attacks as “payback time”. They were carried out by a combination of warplanes, drones, and shelling. By Thursday evening, after five days, the death toll stood at: 16 civilians, 18 SDF soldiers, 24 Syrian regime soldiers, five members of the Afrîn Liberation Forces, one member of the local security forces (Asayish), and two Administration guards. Many more people are injured, both physically and psychologically,
Attacks have taken place right across the north of the region, but also in Deir ez-Zor, 70 km from the border. In Kobanê, a hospital, a school and a medical centre have all been hit. Many of the attacks have targeted energy infrastructure – electricity stations and oil sites. On Thursday, the city of Qamishlo was plunged into darkness. Ekrem Suleyman, who works in Jazira region’s Office of Electricity, told Rojava Information Centre, “these places which have been attacked… are very well-known spots and have been precisely targeted. Turkey knows how to make instability here… if the fields and power stations are gone this is a massive problem. It will cause displacement and force migration. It is also a big economic problem”.
One of the targets on the first night was a power station near Derik, that had been hit several times before, despite not having any military function. This latest attack was a double tap: when local people came to help the wounded, the bombers struck again, leaving 11 people dead.
Attacks on civilian infrastructure are considered a war crime – but not, it seems, if you are a member of NATO.
By destroying the possibility of any form of normal life in the region, Turkey aims to turn the population against the administration, and also to drive people to leave the area altogether. They would then be replaced by refugees from other parts of Syria, who Turkey plans to send “back” and by the families of Turkey’s Islamist mercenaries. The instability Turkey creates provides fertile soil for the growth of ISIS, while their occupied areas provide ISIS with safe havens.
Another attack narrowly missed a prison housing captured ISIS fighters outside Qamishlo, and, on Wednesday, a Turkish drone attack hit an SDF security checkpoint for Al-Hol detention camp, which houses ISIS wives and families, many of whom remain committed to the group’s violent ideology. Six escapees have been recaptured, but it is not clear if there were more. Eight members of the SDF lost their lives.
YPG spokesperson, Nori Mahmoud, puts it bluntly: “Erdoğan is preparing to use Syrian Daesh for a ground attack with attacks on the Al-Hol camp and the prisons where ISIS is held in the north and east Syria. Erdoğan has allied with ISIS from the start against our forces.”
On Wednesday night, Mazloum Abdi stated that the SDF had to pause its anti-ISIS operations. He explained that, “due to our forces’ preoccupation with addressing the Turkish occupation, they cannot continue their mission of pursuing ISIS cells. Currently, we’re forced to be preoccupied with confronting Turkish aggression.”
Besides the threat of a resurgent ISIS, Turkey has put day to day control over the occupied areas in the hands of other militant jihadi groups, including, increasingly, of Al Qaeda descendent, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Abdi told al Monitor that the most likely target of a ground invasion would be the symbolically important city of Kobanê, that this would not require much preparation, and that, “Unless there is a serious effort to deter Turkey, especially on the part of the United States and Russia, [Turkey] will do it.” He was clear that the statements put out by the US and Russia were “absolutely not strong enough when compared against Turkey’s threats and certainly not enough to deter further Turkish aggression. They need to do more”. And he agreed that without permission from the US and Russia, Turkey would not carry out a ground offensive: “If there is a ground invasion it will be because such permission was accorded or because they chose to remain silent.
Russia and the United States both have troops on the ground, and, between them, they control the airspace, and both are guarantors of ceasefires with Turkey agreed after their last invasion in 2019. Both have tolerated Turkey’s daily breaches of those ceasefires, and it appears that both have chosen not to stand in the way of Turkey’s air attacks. Abdi notes that the war in Ukraine has made both more ready to appease Turkey, and that Russia wants the Autonomous Administration to come to an agreement with the Syrian regime in Damascus, but is not applying enough pressure on President Assad. He adds that US failure to formulate a clear policy “makes it harder for us to negotiate successfully with Damascus.” Russia also wants to see a reconciliation between Assad and Erdoğan, which would effectively suffocate North and East Syrian autonomy. At the same time as killing Syrian regime soldiers and threatening invasion, Erdoğan has again expressed interest in a meeting with Assad, though there are still many problems in the way of any agreement, which would be opposed by the Islamist militias.
International response
At this time of existential crisis, the so-called international community is notable largely for its absence.
NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, called for Turkey’s “response” to the Istanbul bomb to be “proportional”, and this has been a repeated theme. But, as far as the YPG and PKK are concerned, there is nothing to respond to. Any proportion of zero is zero.
Statements from the United States display an extraordinary callousness towards their allies in the fight against ISIS. The Department of Defence condemned “the loss of civilian life that has occurred in both Turkiye and Syria as a result of these actions” while recognising “Turkiye’s legitimate security concerns”. What loss of life has there been in Turkey as a result of these actions? What about the deaths of their SDF allies? And why should Turkey have any security concerns from North and East Syria? “Justified security concerns” is another much repeated and deeply insidious phrase.
There have been statements of condemnation of various strengths from left groups and politicians, but little from those actually in power. Although the chair of Germany’s Defence Committee was clear that the attacks lacked justification or evidence, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson stated that “The German government takes the suspicion that the PKK or groups close to the PKK are responsible for the Taksim attack very seriously”, and merely called on Turkey to act “proportionately”. And the interior Minister met with Soylu in Ankara on Monday to discuss, among other issues, cooperation in the “fight against terrorism”. MEPs from the Kurdistan Friendship Group, including MEPs who had recently visited North and East Syria, gave a press conference at the European Parliament, but the emergency statement made by the Parliament’s president only called on the Turkish authorities to “show restraint and respect international law and standards”. A session has been timetabled to debate the airstrikes – but not until mid-December.
Iran
While bombs have been falling on North and East Syria, the revolution in Iran has only intensified – and so has the violence of the regime’s crackdown. Internet blackouts make it difficult to comprehend all that is happening, but government forces are shooting to kill and wound, as well as carrying out abductions and torture. On Thursday, Iran’s exiled Kurdish political parties called a general strike, shutting down city centres across Rojhelat (East or Iranian Kurdistan). By the end of that day, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights had recorded 112 civilian deaths in Rojhelat since the beginning of the protests in September, and more than 5,000 arrests.
The crackdown has been especially severe in Rojhelat, the epicentre of the revolution, and in the province of Sistan and Baluchistan, where Human Rights in Iran has recorded 126 deaths. Like the Kurds, the Baluchis have suffered severe ethnic-based oppression, and the two communities have shown solidarity towards each other despite being at different ends of the country. Total deaths in the whole of Iran are now at least 416, of which 40 were in Tehran.
Abdurrahman Gok, for Mesopotamia Agency, reports, “Everyone states that ‘young women and men’ lead the actions that started on September 17, adding: ‘However, at this stage, their families, who tried to keep those young people off the streets at first, are now shoulder to shoulder with their children.’ With this situation, it is emphasized that the demonstrations are now at the point of no return.”
The Human Rights Council of the United Nations has voted, in a special session called by Germany, to set up a fact-finding investigation into Iran with a view to potential prosecutions in international courts. While this can be welcomed, it is highly unlikely to make the Iranian government moderate its behaviour, let alone step down.
On Monday, Iran carried out another airstrike on the Iraqi bases of two Rojhelat parties – Komala, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran – and also on one of their refugee camps, where one person was killed.
Tanks and armoured vehicles are being moved towards the Iraqi border. Iran claims that these are to prevent the exiled groups accessing Iran, though they can also be seen as a threat to Iraq for hosting the Kurdish opposition groups. Meanwhile, Iraq is redeploying federal guards along its borders with Iran and Turkey. In the Iranian case, this appears to have been requested by Iran to control cross border movement.
Turkey
Within Turkey itself, the main “opposition” party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which is founded on ethnic nationalism even while it claims to be a social democratic party, is cowed into silence. As Öszoy explains, “They realize the scheme Erdoğan put forward, but they remain silent because they are either nationalists themselves or are afraid of a nationalist wave.”
And the usual round of oppression continues. Many people have been detained for protesting against the attacks on North and East Syria, and for attempting to commemorate the Suruç bomb attack, when ISIS killed 33 young people who were on their way to help reconstruct Kobanê in 2015, after the city had broken the ISIS siege. Women were battered and detained while campaigning against violence against women. And the Kobanê case moved onto its next session. This is the case in which 108 people, including leading members of the HDP, face potential life imprisonment without parole for calling on people to protest against the ISIS attack on Kobanê in 2014, and against the Turkish Government’s refusal to help the defence or even to allow individuals to cross the border to defend the besieged city.
On the European Street
In Europe, Turkey’s attacks drew people onto the streets in spontaneous demonstrations, and bigger planned demos have followed. Demonstrators want to show their solidarity with those under attack and to put public pressure on their own governments to stop ignoring Turkish aggression and authoritarianism. There are many actions that governments can take without resorting to sanctions that harm the wider population – beginning with an end to arms sales. Protestors in Hamburg were met with teargas and police truncheons because they insisted on their right – recently confirmed in court – to carry YPG flags. PKK flags are firmly banned, as they are now in the UK. The campaign to remove the PKK from the European Union’s Terrorist list recognises how this listing, which was clearly made for political reasons rather than legal ones, is being used to delegitimise the Kurdish Struggle and allow Turkey to oppress the Kurds with impunity. It needs to be accompanied by a drive towards resumption of peace talks.
Sarah Glynn is a writer and activist – check her website and follow her on Twitter
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For the first time information about the woman who did the explosion in Istanbul, Mazlum Kobane reveals her identity.
Anbarin Zaman, Almonitor, interview with General Mazlum Kobane,
– You are one of those demanded by Turkey, were you the target of the recent attacks?
– Mazlum Kobane: I can’t definitely confirm what I was aiming for this time, but Turkey once wanted to kill me, but here I am.
– Is it of the belief that Turkey warned America before the attacks, especially American troops existed in that area and besides your general commander?
– Mazlum Kobane: The Turks know that the Americans are here, we have shared institutions together, we have shared training. Do you have to ask the American self this question whether Turkey has warned them or not? According to my knowledge, they have defacted Americans, or put America into real America.
– what do you mean?
– Mazlum Kobane: I don’t believe the Americans were aware of this attack. We can say the attack happened, their existence (Americans).
– I know for sure why Turkey’s threats to invade the American people. Did they tell them they wouldn’t allow this invasion?
– Mazlum Kobani: That’s the attitude of those so far. They say they don’t agree to do such a thing in Turkey, they will oppose it. After today’s attacks we spoke to our opponents at Americans, but the current situation is very different so we will evaluate the situation together.
Now I am in Erbil, here the officials say if you put a separate line between you and the PKK, Turkey is ready to deal with you, what is your answer?
– Mazlum Kobane: I don’t think this is the main problem, it’s just a passage, Turkey is against any achievement of Kurds, if it was to come, the Ank would have run here, Turkey would have been against it. Turkey is against the Kurds.
Some of the terrorists in Turkey say: the explosions were done by the members of the deep state to re-elect Erdogan’s efforts against the Kurds, especially the president of PKK Ojalan. Do you see it by logic?
– Mazlum Kobane: We heard those talks. Actually before the election, there are two ways before Erdogan: either he should agree with the Kurdish survivors Bizavi, which will make him strong, or to raise a fight, Erdogan chose a fight.
In your opinion, who did the explosion in Istanbul?
– Mazlum Kobane: I think it was a destructive act to make way for a war against us. We did a lot of investigations and found out what caused the explosion, the Red Opposition groups operating under Turkey’s authorities. For example, we proved and declared for the first time to the media agencies, that women came from a family related to ISIS terrorist organization, three brothers killed in ISIS lines, one of them killed in Rqqqa, the second in Manbaj and the third. Inside the lines of ISIS in Iraq, he was killed.
One of the other brothers is the commander of the Syrian opposition forces in Afrin which are supported by Turkey, in a family living in Halab. This action is not related to us at all and we never have such a policy.
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Turkey launches Operation Claw-Sword against SDF, PKK, YPG
- By Al Mayadeen English
- Source: Agencies + Al Mayadeen Net
- 20 Nov 09:45
Reports that Turkey has carried out several raids on the armed opposition faction Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) sites in Raqqa and the two countrysides of Hasakah and Aleppo in Syria, as well as Sulaymaniyah and Erbil in Iraq.
Turkey has launched Operation Claw-Sword with air raids targeting the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in both Iraq and Syria according to Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar, while Al Mayadeen’s sources noted attacks against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as well.
“We are starting Operation Claw-Sword from now on,” Akar said before the planes left their bases to hit the targets.
Furthermore, Akar said “Terrorists’ shelters, bunkers, and caves were cracked down,” adding “The claws of our Turkish armed forces were once again on the top of the terrorists.”
According to Al Mayadeen sources, the raids also targeted positions of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in Mount Karachuk and a power station in the vicinity of the city of Al-Malikiyah, northeast of Al-Hasakah.
“Turkish raids were carried out on silos in the town of Dahr al-Arab in the Darbasiyah countryside, northwest of Hasakah,” the sources noted.
In a related context, Turkey carried out air raids targeting sites of SDF militants in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
The Turkish warplanes also targeted a site of the SDF in Khafiyyat Al-Salem silos, west of Ain Issa district, north of Raqqa.
Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in Syria reported that a Turkish military convoy entered the northern countryside of Aleppo, after Turkish raids on SDF positions in the countrysides of Aleppo and Raqqa, while our correspondent in Iraq said that the strikes launched by Turkey this morning targeted regions in Sulaymaniyah and Erbil.
For its part, the SDF accused Turkey, on Saturday night, of launching airstrikes on the city of Ayn al-Arab. The raids come days after Ankara accused the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) of being behind the Istanbul attack.
Read more: US disappointed with Turkey rejecting sympathy after terrorist attack
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YPG denies any connection with Istanbul bombing
The People’s Protection Units (YPG) denied any connection with the Istanbul bombing bomber, and described the Turkish state’s allegations as a “play prepared by the Justice and Development government and Erdogan.”
NEWS 14 Nov 2022, Mon – 19:20 2022-11-14T19:20:00 Newsdesk
This came in a statement to the spokesperson for the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in response to the allegations of the Turkish state regarding the bombing that took place yesterday in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
The body of the statement stated:
Yesterday, Sunday, the city of Istanbul witnessed a terrorist explosion in the middle of Istiklal Street, which killed unarmed civilians.
We completely deny any relationship or role that we have with the perpetrator of the terrorist operation, Ahlam Al-Bashir.
The world has become aware enough that the method of our forces in defense of the rights of our people and the war against terrorism. We denounce any operations targeting civilians.
Our forces work on the scope and basics of democracy, women’s and human rights, and the fight against terrorism and dictatorships.
The statement that the perpetrator of the attack, Ahlam al-Bashir, headed from the Afrin region, which has been occupied since 2018. Since that time, it has been completely under the influence of the intelligence of the Justice and Development Party, the Turkish National Movement, and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Al-Qaeda) towards Turkish territory to carry out the attack; we confirms that this play is prepared by the government of Justice and Development and Erdogan.
The crisis that Erdogan’s government is experiencing, especially due to the approaching elections next year, Erdogan is trying before heading to Indonesia to participate in the G20 summit to find a reason to get international approval to launch an attack on the areas of Rojava and northeastern Syria. This operation that will be a life card for him in the next elections.
While the women in our forces continue to achieve heroic achievements in the fight against ISIS terrorism and through the slogan “Woman, life, freedom – jin, jiyan, azadi” clearly influence even the women’s revolution in Iran, Afghanistan and the world. This constituted a clear concern for the Erdogan government and the Justice and Development Party. They began to slander, lie and make plays to save their personal interests at the expense of the freedom of their people and stability in the Middle East region.
But we assure our people and the world that we are committed to the values of our people and our revolution, and we will always fight against dictatorships and terrorism.
ANHA
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Kurdistan’s Weekly Brief Sept 27, 2022
A weekly brief of events occurred in the Kurdistan regions of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Iran
Iranians continued protesting the death of a Kurdish woman named Zhina Mahsa Amini last week. Amini died after being taken into custody by Iran’s morality police on September 16. Iranian security forces have responded to the unrest by killing at least 50 demonstrators, including 18 in Iranian Kurdistan, where the unrest began. Additionally, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported that Iranian security forces wounded at least 898 Kurds in Oshnavieh (Shinno), Urmia, Kermanshah, Divandareh, Saqqez, Ilam, Dewalan, Piranshahr, and Eslamabad-e Gharb. Iranian authorities have also detained over one thousand activists and civilians. Concurrently, the Iranian regime shut down the internet across Iran and imposed curfews on Kurdish cities after protesters took control of Shinno. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken called for the Iranian regime to “end its systemic persecution of women and allow peaceful protest.” High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Joseph Borrell criticized the regime’s use of force. Simultaneously, the US sanctioned several Iranian security officials and issued Iran General License D-2 to facilitate Iranians’ access to the internet.
Iranian artillery bombarded several areas near Bradost in Iraqi Kurdistan on two consecutive days. The attacks caused no reported casualties and targeted several Kurdish opposition groups in retaliation for the ongoing unrest in Iran. Meanwhile, the exiled Cooperation Center for Iranian Kurdistan’s Political Parties (CCIKP) expressed support for the protests but rejected their militarization and advocated they remain part of the “civilian struggle.”
Iraq
Most of Iraq’s political parties agreed to form a government led by the Iranian-backed Coordination Framework. Several unconfirmed leaked articles from the agreement claimed Iraq’s Sunni and Kurdish parties agreed to join the Coordination Framework in forming a new alliance known as the State Administration Coalition. The parties also agreed on 28 points, including the adoption of new oil and gas laws, abolishing the Accountability and Justice Commission and transferring its files to the judiciary, moving the military and militias out of cities, and resettling those displaced from Sunni areas. The Coordination Framework commemorated the agreement by announcing, “With God’s blessings, the ship of the State Administration Coalition has sailed.” Muqtada al Sadr’s bloc had no say in the process because it has rejected all political participation since al Sadr “quit” politics and his followers resigned en masse from the Council of Representatives. A former lawmaker from al Sadr’s coalition responded to the Coalition Framework’s announcement by saying, “The ship will sink on its first voyage.” Concomitantly, it remains unclear if the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have agreed on a presidential candidate.
Turkish warplanes struck six locations in Sulaymaniyah Governorate’s Mawat District and terrified the residents of several nearby villages on Monday. Turkish jets also hit several areas in Dohuk Governorate’s Amedi District on Sunday. Turkish airstrikes have killed dozens of civilians during Turkey’s ongoing incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan that it claims is targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallander visited Iraqi Kurdistan and renewed a memorandum of understanding between the Department of Defense and the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs. The memorandum was initially signed in 2016 to support the Peshmerga’s efforts to combat ISIS (Da’esh).
Syria
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria’s (AANES) internal security forces (Asayesh) killed three Da’esh terrorists who were plotting to attack the al Hol camp with two car bombs and launch a follow-on assault to free imprisoned Da’esh operatives. Meanwhile, despite the Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) most recent clearing operation, Da’esh sympathizers hoisted the organization’s flag in the camp on Sunday. Separately, the SDF arrested 12 Da’esh terrorists in Deir Ez Zor and Raqqa. Lastly, a Turkish drone struck an administration office in Kobani on Monday, causing no reported casualties. The Rojava Information Center asserted the attack was the 80th Turkish drone strike on the AANES in 2022.
Thousands of Kurdish women rallied in support of Mahsa Amini in Qamishli and the rest of the AANES. The women denounced Amini’s death and demanded her killers face justice.
Turkey
The jailed Kurdish politicians Selahattin Demirtas and Selçuk Mızraklı shaved their heads, protesting the death of a Kurdish woman in Iran, Zhina Mahsa Amini. “Resisting oppression and oppression is not only the responsibility of women. My cellmate Dr. Selçuk Mızraklı and I shaved our hair today to support the struggle for equality and freedom that women are bravely leading and to state that we stand with the people who resist freedom in Iran,” read Demirtas’s statement.
The Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) called upon several international rights organizations to appeal to the Serbian government and halt the extradition of a Kurdish politician back to Turkey. The Kurdish politician Ecevit Piroğlu fled to Europe, escaping imprisonment by the government, but the Serbian government jailed him and planned to deport him. Separately, the Armenian government handed over two members of the PKK to the Turkish government last week, despite opposition by some lawmakers. The move raised anger among the European Kurdish organization and was described as a “betrayal.”
The Turkish police arrested three soccer fans for waving the Kurdistan flag during a match in Diyarbakir (Amed). The Amed Bar Association voiced opposition to the detention and said the Iraqi constitution recognizes the Kurdistan Region flag, calling for their immediate release.
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SDF claims 23 Turkish soldiers killed in northeast Syria
11-08-2022
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claimed on Thursday that its forces killed 23 Turkish soldiers in northeast Syria (Rojava) earlier this week, amid renewed calls from the Turkish president to launch a fresh offensive on northern Syria.
“Our forces carried out on the eighth of August three qualitative and effective operations targeting the movements of the Turkish occupation army on the borders adjacent to the city of Mardin,” the SDF statement reads, adding that the operations were in retaliation to Turkish attacks on its fighters.
The SDF operations were conducted through three separate attacks, which targeted Turkish troops as well as their vehicles.
Turkey has not commented explicitly on the operation, but on Thursday said it had killed six SDF fighters who fired at them along the Mardin border without specifying the date.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed his calls for launching a fresh offensive in northern Syria, saying “we will continue our fight against terrorism,” referring to Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) which Turkey seeks to expel from the areas of Manbij and Tal Rifaat and establish a 30 kilometer deep safe zone along its southern border.
The YPG, the backbone of the SDF, is considered by Turkey as the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and both groups are firmly placed on the terror blacklist by Ankara.
The threat of a Turkish invasion into northern Syria has recently gained momentum, with Ankara targeting key leaders of the SDF and launching an influx of drone attacks against the force.
The SDF late last month confirmed the death of one of its commanders and two other fighters who were targeted by a Turkish drone the day before. The forces’ General Commander Mazloum Abdi vowed to avenge their deaths.
A hundred French MPs denounced Erdogan’s “policy of war” against Kurds in northern Syria in July, as they called on Western countries to shift their attention to the Turkish president’s strategy of taking advantage of Turkey’s status as a NATO member on good terms with opposing sides of Russia’s invasion on Ukraine to attack northern Syria without consequences.
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What drives Turkey’s recent increased attacks on Syrian Kurds?
1 Aug 2022
Rumors said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions of launching a new military operation against Syrian Kurds were put down during his visit to Tehran, but the reality on the ground shows otherwise.
While Russia and Iran remain staunch supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, both countries urged Turkey against conducting further military campaigns in northern Syria during their trilateral summit last month.
Turkey has recently renewed threats to carry out a new military operation against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria’s Manbij and Tal Rifaat towns in a bid to complete the 30 kilometer “safe zone” it began creating along its southern borders in recent years.
However, reports emerging from the summit claim that Russia has pledged to remove Kurdish fighters from the Aleppo-Hasaka highway, also known as M4, and to hand them over to the Syrian regime forces.
M4 is seen as the de-facto border between the Syrian regime forces and the SDF on one hand and the Turkish armed forces backed by Syrian proxies on another. With variances at different points, it categorically corresponds to Erdogan’s 30 km security zone.
However, an unprecedented number of airstrikes and drone attacks targeted Syrian Kurds following the summit. The life of a senior Kurdish commander was claimed in a Turkish airstrike, making July the deadliest month for the Kurdish fighters in 2022. Ankara seems to have been granted the green light to use the airspace.
Turkey is said to have struck a conciliatory deal with Tehran.
”Iran made a deal with Turkey at the Tehran conference. The deal is that Turkey can conduct unlimited airstrikes against the PYD [the ruling Kurdish party in Rojava]. In exchange, Turkey will not invade Aleppo,” US Middle East researcher Nicholas Heras said via WhatsApp.
”Iran is willing to trade the PYD to further its war with Israel”, Heras added.
Previously used in Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya, Ukraine, and recently – notably intensively – in northeast Syria (Rojava), Turkey’s strategy of drone strikes against the Kurdish forces is lethal.
The highly advanced airspace technology of Bayraktar TB 2 results in heinous damage on the ground.
Drone strikes seem to be an alternative for Ankara which is still longing for the green light from Tehran and Moscow to launch its full-scale invasion. Undeniably, the impact made by the armed drones in Rojava is substantial.
On 20 July, a Turkish drone struck a car some 40 km deep in Syrian territory. Earlier in the day, two SDF members were killed by Zor Maghar in western Kobane in a similar act.
Another attack in eastern Qamishli on July 22 killed three members of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), an SDF-affiliated force. The strike was resounding for a set of reasons.
First, one of the targeted YPJ members was high-profile field commander Salwa Yusuf. She was a deputy commander of the SDF and played a major role in leading the force in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) since 2017. While the Global Coalition offered condolences, failing to mention the perpetrator, the SDF in a statement pledged retaliation.
Second, Qamishli’s airspace is protected by Russia or believed to be. Third, the attack occurred at the eastern entrance of the city which was namely excluded from the joint Turkish-Russian patrols enshrined in the Sochi agreement of 2019. The attack came just after the three fighters exited a meeting held in the city.
Back in Kobane, where the US-led Global Coalition and the Kurdish partnership was first forged, Sahin Tekintangac, a local commander of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), was reported “neutralized” by the Turkish Intelligence Services (MIT), on July 23.
On the same day, 19 villages underwent Turkish bombardment in Tal Tamr.
Three members of the Assyrian Khabur Guards were reported injured.
On Monday, an SDF commander was reported killed in Ain Issa. On the following day, a Turkish drone in northern Raqqa killed another soldier marking the third death in less than 24 hours.
Two Turkish soldiers were reported killed by Kurdish fighters in Euphrates Shield zones on Wednesday. Seven people were injured on a separate occasion in Tal Rifaat.
On the following day, four members of the internal security forces (Asayish) were killed near Tal al-Semin camp in northern Raqqa.
From another point of view, recent escalation seems to be used as a pressing card by Russia against the Kurdish forces to acquiesce.
This has a foundation to build upon in the sense that the Turkish threat has pushed the Syrian Kurds to the lap of the Syrian regime. This, ironically, plays into the hands of the parts involved in the Astana talks.
Recently, Syrian regime forces were heavily deployed to posts held for years by the SDF. The Syrian army has been deployed to Tal Rifaat, Manbij, Kobane, and Ain Issa.
The US expressed its deep concerns, called for immediate de-escalation, and urged all parts to respect the ceasefire agreement.
This being the case, the Kurds seem to possess few options that could entail making painful concessions.
It was in May when Erdogan announced his country would carry out a military incursion against the Kurdish fighters.
Erdogan seeks to push the SDF some 30 kilometers deep in Syrian territory to create a ”security zone.” However, the latter, maintains that any Turkish operation will undermine the fight against ISIS.
Turkish officials say they do not need permission from any country to carry out its military incursion that “could start any minute.”
Strikingly, Russian military police patrolled eastern Qamishli areas for the very first time with a depth of 30 km.
Amid this uncertainty of the affair, Erdogan is scheduled to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the city resort of Sochi on August 5 with northern Syria expected to put forth on the table of discussion.
Lazghine Ya’qoube is a translator and researcher focusing on the modern history of Mesopotamia, with a special focus on Yazidi and Assyrian affairs in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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Turkish drone attacks in 48 hours | Nearly 15 people killed and injured in four attacks on SDF-held areas
On Jul 23, 2022
As Turkish forces continued to escalate their aerial operations on areas under the control of the Autonomous Administration in north and north-east Syria, SOHR monitored four drone attacks carried out by Turkish Airforce in the past 48 hours. Turkish forces waged two attacks on Ain Al-Arab (Kobani) in Aleppo, while two drones hit Al-Qamishli in Al-Hasakah province.
Turkish drone attacks left six military personnel, including four women, dead and at least eight others injured. The death toll is believed to rise.
This comes in light of ongoing Turkish propaganda of an imminent military operation in Syria, following the tripartite summit between Iran, Russia, and Turkey presidents.
Here are further details of the Turkish drone attacks that occurred in the last 48 hours:
• July 20: A Turkish drone hit the entrance to a tunnel in a tree reserve near “SDF” academy, in the countryside of Ain Al-Arab (Kobani), east of Aleppo, leaving three SDF fighters, including a woman, dead.
• July 21: A Turkish drone hit a SDF military vehicle in Qira village, nearly 40 kilometres from Syria-Turkey border south-west of Al-Qamishli, leaving causalities.
• July 22: A Turkish drone fired two missiles around a regime forces military post in Zur Maghar village in the western countryside of Ain Al-Arab/Kobani, east of Aleppo, leaving no casualties.
• July22: three women of Women’s Protection Units were killed due to a Turkish drone attack on their car on Al-Qamishly-Al-Malkiyah (Direk) road in Al-Hasakah province. Other people were injured by shrapnel while they were passing in the area.
Accordingly, the number of attacks carried out by Turkish drones on areas controlled by the “Autonomous Administration in northern and north-eastern Syria, AANES” since early 2022 has reached 38. These attacks left 27 people dead, including two children and nine women, and over 74 others injured. Here is a monthly distribution of attacks by Turkish drones in 2022:
• January: Three attacks left three people dead and 13 others injured.
• February: Ten attacks killed eight people, including two children and a young female fighter, and injured 21 others.
• March: Two attacks injured two people.
• April: 11 attacks left six people dead, including three women, and 19 others injured.
• May: Four attacks left three people dead, including a woman, and seven others injured.
• June: Three attacks left a combatant dead and five others injured.
• July: Five attacks left seven people, including four women, dead and nine others injured.
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Ten years of the Rojava Revolution: What to do?
July 19 marks the tenth anniversary of the start of the Rojava Revolution. To prepare and position itself in times of change, Kon-Med suggests looking to this beacon in the search for alternative models of society.
- ANF
- DORTMUND
- Wednesday, 6 Apr 2022, 11:53
July 19, 2012 marks the beginning of one of the most significant revolutions of the 21st century: the Rojava Revolution. On that day, the uprising in Kobanê gave birth to an emancipatory and social project that is a beacon of hope not only for Syria and the Middle East, but ultimately for the entire world. The people of the Democratic Federation of Northeast Syria have not only succeeded in beating back the barbarism of the so-called ISIS. Their newly organized coexistence opens up prospects for a more just, peaceful and free world.
In view of the tenth anniversary of the revolution, Zübeyde Zümrüt and Engin Sever, the co-presidents of the Kurdish umbrella organization Kon-Med, have now presented an appeal entitled “What to do?” with suggestions on how to mark this day. Furthermore, in view of the current crises, they propose to start looking for alternative models of society in order to prepare and position themselves in times of change. The Rojava revolution could be a shining example in this regard.
“On July 19, 2022, the revolution in Rojava will celebrate its tenth anniversary. A revolution prepared by decades of preliminary work by the Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan was able to emerge and blossom ten years ago during the Arab Spring and in the midst of the Syrian civil war. State forces withdrew from the region and the self-defense forces that had been formed began to beat back the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) piece by piece. Meanwhile, people began to create self-governing structures that included all ethnicities and all faith communities on the ground. The further ISIS was pushed back, the broader the social organization in Rojava became.
What is the situation of the revolution in Rojava after almost ten years?
Neither the constant attacks by ISIS and the Turkish state nor the comprehensive economic embargo faced by Rojava have been able to intimidate the people. Defying all these aggressions, the people of the region built, step by step, a self-government based on the idea of the non-state concept of democratic confederalism.
Always keeping in mind the three pillars of democratic confederalism – women’s liberation, social ecology and grassroots democracy – all areas of life were reorganized. An alternative educational, health and legal system was created. An alternative economic model, which places the establishment of cooperatives at its center, is also spreading more and more. The right of every citizen to have a say is ensured by the communities and councils that have been created. Last but not least, organized self-defense is an important factor in protecting self-government in northern and eastern Syria.
What does the revolution in Rojava mean for us?
Rojava became known primarily for the fight of the YPG and YPJ (People’s Defense Units and Women’s Defense Units) against ISIS. But the importance of this region goes far beyond the armed resistance that has been waged there. In Rojava, not only was the world protected from jihadist terror, but also a democratic model was created there that represents hope for people worldwide. The Rojava revolution may have its starting point in the Middle East, but it is a system that can be thought of and lived globally.
Today we live in times when one crisis is followed by another. Almost every day, new threats seem to emerge that endanger all of humanity. We are indeed on the verge of changing times. It is precisely against this background that it is important to embark on a search for alternative models of society. The revolution of Rojava can serve as a shining example for all of us in this regard.
What to do?
The revolution itself and its ten years of resistance have only been possible because of the international solidarity that has accompanied it from the beginning and that it still experiences today. Accordingly, we as Kon-Med call for July 19, 2022 to be taken as an occasion to celebrate here in all cities, in all villages and everywhere, this day, as the day of the revolution. Organize large and small street festivals, concerts or other events. Network with local structures to existing soli committees and establish contact with our local associations and council structures. If you need help, you are also welcome to approach us. The revolution of Rojava is our common revolution! Therefore, its tenth anniversary is also reason enough to celebrate together! Bijî Şoreşa Rojava!”
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AANES official among those killed in Turkish drone attack in South Kurdistan
The deputy chairman of the Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria was martyred in the deadly Turkish drone attack in the countryside of the Sulaymaniyah city in South Kurdistan on Friday.
- ANF
- SULAYMANIYAH
- Saturday, 18 Jun 2022, 11:57
Four people were killed and another person injured in a drone attack on a car near the village of Berlut in the north of the Kelar town near Sulaymaniyah city of South Kurdistan (North Iraq) on Friday morning. It was not initially known who the victims were, and which state the drone belonged to. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) announced today that one of the four victims was Ferhad Şiblî, the deputy chairman of the AANES Executive Council. Turkey reportedly bombed a civilian vehicle from the air. No information is yet available on the identities of the other dead and injured.
Ferhad Şiblî was in Sulaymaniyah for medical treatment and talks, the AANES stated: “The attack aims to systematically destroy the Autonomous Administration and our people. The Turkish state is disregarding all international legal standards and is carrying out a genocide. The Autonomous Administration calls on the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) government and Iraq to fulfil their responsibilities and take a clear stance on the Turkish terrorist attacks.”
Iraqi airspace is controlled by the USA. On Wednesday, a Turkish drone bombed the Sinune town in Shengal (Sinjar), killing one child and injuring seven people, some of them critically. Shengal is the last contiguous settlement area of the Yazidi people.
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Global Coalition returns to Syria’s Kobani
Jun 16, 2022
Raqqa, Syria (North Press) – The return of the Global Coalition to the Kobani region, north Syria, for the second time after its withdrawal from it in October 2019 is a source of relief and welcome from the residents of Kobani and its countryside.
The Global Coalition stationed in the French cement manufacturer Lafarge near Kobani. It was the main base of the coalition in Syria, but it withdrew during the Turkish invasion of the cities of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad in October 2019.
On Wednesday, two helicopters of the Global Coalition landed at nine p.m in the Lafarge company. Four hours alter the helicopters took off, said Abdulrahim Ahmed, a resident of the town of Jalabiya, 40 km south of Kobani.
Civilian activists circulated a video clip showing the Global Coalition planes taking off from Lafarge company.
For a month, the company’s outskirts have witnessed noticeable movements by the Global Coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which makes the local residents believe that they are working on establishing a military airbase.
After the withdrawal of the Global Coalition in 2019, the Russian forces and the Syrian government entered the areas of Kobani, Manbij, the countryside of Tel Abyad and Sere Kaniye, in coordination with the SDF to stop the Turkish incursion.
The Russian forces stationed in most of the military bases and posts of the coalition forces, which US officials considered at the time to be a Russian occupation of American bases.
However, the base of the Global Coalition in Lafarge remained under the control of the SDF.
The withdrawal of the Global Coalition in October 2019 from its bases in Kobani and Sere Kaniye, was a shock to the residents of the region. It opened the way for the Turkish forces and Turkish-backed opposition SNA factions to occupy the cities of Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad, which caused the displacement of nearly 300,000 people, according to UN reports.
This is the second time for the coalition’s helicopters to return to carry out operations against ISIS members in the area under the control of the SNA. The first operation targeted the leader of ISIS, Abdullah Qaradash, in Idlib, while the second one targeted Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, the Wali (governor) of Raqqa in Jarablus.
Ahmed says that the residents were happy on the nights of the second and third of last February when 6 helicopters of the Global Coalition landed at Lafarge base south of Kobani, for the first time after the withdrawal. The residents believed that the coalition begun to return to its bases in their areas.
In his interview with North Press, Ahmed expresses his satisfaction with the Global Coalition’s use of Lafarge, which is only hundreds of meters away from his home to launch operations against ISIS. This use comes in tandem with Turkish threats to launch a new military operation in northern Syria.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said May 23 that Turkey would soon launch a new military operation into northern Syria to create a 30-kilometer (19-mile) security zone along the border.
Late on Wednesday night, the Global Coalition announced the success of an operation that resulted in the arrest of a prominent leader of ISIS in the city of Jarablus, northern Syria
U.S. officials identified the suspect as Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, whom they said also was known as the Wali of Raqqa, Washington Post newspaper said.
An overnight raid by United States special forces in northwestern Syria led to the death of the Islamic State terror group’s top leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, President Joe Biden said on February 23.
On June 1, Mahmoud Kobani, a leader in the Kobani Military Council, which is affiliated with the SDF, told North Press that they have permanent coordination with the Global Coalition forces to oversee the implementation of the ceasefire agreement with Turkey.
Following the Turkish invasion of the cities of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad in October 2019, Turkey signed a ceasefire agreement with the Russian and American sides.
Reporting by Zana al-Ali
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Turkish threats negatively affect our campaign against ISIS – Mazloum Abdi
Jun 2, 2022
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – On Thursday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi showed concern about recent Turkish threats saying they pose high risk on northern Syria.
“We are concerned about new Turkish threats which pose high risk on northern Syria,” Abdi said in a tweet.
Mazloum Abdi’s tweet comes following Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement in which he said that Ankara would soon launch new military operations along its southern borders to create “30-km deep safe zone in response to threats coming from these regions.”
The SDF Commander-in-chief added that any Turkish attack will divide Syria and cause the displacement of the inhabitants.
“Any offensive will divide Syrians, create a new humanitarian crisis, and displace original inhabitants and IDPs,” he noted.
During the past days, Turkey has promoted for a new military operation against north and northeast Syria, geography held by the Kurdish-majority Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES).
Mazloum Abdi stressed that any “New escalation will also negatively affect our campaign against ISIS.”
On May 31, the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned Chief Advisor to the Turkish President, Ibrahim Kalin against any further escalation in Syrian north.
Sullivan reiterated the importance of refraining from escalation in Syria to preserve existing ceasefire lines and avoid any further destabilization.
Reporting by Jwan Shkaki
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Administrating Rojava’s Revolution: An Interview with Emine Osê
Washington Kurdish Institute
Emine Osê, is the deputy co-chair of the Executive Council of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), commonly referred to as Rojava. In this interview, she was asked about an array of topics from women’s rights, the fight against ISIS, ongoing Turkish attacks, and internationalist volunteers. As one of the Kurdish women leading the most inspiring democratic experiment in the Middle East, her remarks help illuminate the struggles and successes taking place throughout Western Kurdistan, which have relevance to America and the entire world.
Q:For those Americans who are not familiar with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria( AANES), can you briefly describe what it is?
A: We are the democratic governing body of north and east Syria, which ensures all people’s rights are protected. For Americans, they should also know that we have been the main player in the international coalition led by the United States to defeat ISIS terrorism and we have sacrificed thousands of heroes to end their reign of terror. The American people should support us and push their government to strengthen their political and economic ties with our Administration, as we have been loyal partners against defeating ISIS terrorism.
Q: The AANES recently made International Women’s Day (March 8) a national holiday in Rojava. Can you explain the significance of that move and how women are freer in north and east Syria than in other parts of the country?
A: Women’s Day for our people is a national and community holiday. Because our revolution is first and foremost a revolution of women. A revolution led by free women, who embody all the historical responsibilities that come with such a sacred cause. One of our main goals is strengthening the moral and political leadership of women. Through the experiences of previous years, from 2012 until now, women in Rojava have become an inspiration to the entire world.One main reason is the YPJ, who played a pivotal role in the defeat of ISIS. Another is our governing Administration co-chair system that guarantees equal participation of women in every department and institution. Women in Rojava are the ones who decide their own fate and destiny.
Q: Since the start of 2022, the Turkish military has carried out 30 drone strikes and artillery shelling on places like Ain Issa, Manbij, and the Shehba Canton – killing 9 and injuring 28 people. Can you discuss the ways that these attacks affect the people in AANES areas?
A: Yes, this is true. In fact, the Turkish occupation army has been committing war crimes for years since the beginning of the Syrian crisis. Turkish-backed forces commit one crime after another in Afrin, Ras al-Ain, Tal Abyad and all the areas that they occupy and oppress.Even inside the de-escalation zones, we find many human rights abuses. This shows the flaws in theso-called cease-fire and memoranda of understanding that Ankara made with Washington and Moscow. Ever since October of 2019, when Turkey occupied Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad, their grand plan has been clear. They want to fulfill the 1920 Misak-ı Millî Ottoman Oath, that views the lands of northern Syria and northern Iraq (from Aleppo to Mosul) as part of Turkey. To do this, Ankara is targeting our region with attacks to destabilize society and create an atmosphere of horror, which forces civilians to flee.
Q: Turkey recently launched an invasion of Southern Kurdistan (north Iraq) and has threatened to attack Rojava as well. Has Russia or the United States given your Administration reassurances that they would prevent a Turkish land invasion of AANES areas? And what actions would you like to see Moscow and Washington make to prevent that?
A: It must first be acknowledged that the Turkish invasion of Southern Kurdistan (Kurdish region of northern Iraq) and the constant attacks on our regions are clear violations of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter related to legitimate self-defense. They are illegal under international law and should be viewed as such. As for reassurances, we have not received any from Washington or Moscow, who both bear partial responsibility for Ankara’s actions, since they have reached agreements with Turkey to related to their assaults on these areas. In the end, if the US or Russia continues to fail at stopping Turkey’s war crimes, we will have to unilaterally defend our gains and ensure our security militarily by expelling Turkish forces. However, we would like to solve these issues diplomatically without bloodshed, and we are open to dialogue, but it is important that Turkey first stops its systematic intimidation and withdraws from all the Syrian areas it illegally occupies.
Q: The Al Hol Camp is currently housing 56,000 prisoners with connections or loyalty to ISIS (with half of them being minors). How is the AANES ensuring that these youth will not become the next generation of ISIS fighters? And what are some ways that the AANES would like the US and EU to help with this large problem?
A: Al Hol is a dangerous ticking time bomb for the entire world. Everyday we are faced with frightening dangers from this camp. The most recent incident was an attempted escape of the industrial prison in Hasaka, which could have unleashed thousands of ISIS criminals upon the globe. As an Administration, we have repeatedly stated our solutions: (1) Each country should accept the return of all detainees who hold their nationality. (2) The anti-ISIS coalition of nations should help construct an international terrorism court, so that ISIS militants can receive a fair trial and their victims can receive justice. (3) The Administration needs international assistance to help in the rehabilitation of ISIS-related children, so that they can eventually be reintegrated into society.
Q: In January, ISIS attempted to rescue thousands of their prisoners from a prison in Hesekê. In what ways is ISIS making a comeback in North and East Syria?
A: Turkey is trying to resurrect ISIS to use them as a proxy against us like they have previously. Since the liberation of Baghouz, we have discovered hundreds of passports held by ISIS fighters with stamps from Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul. Turkey should be considered the primary party that is most responsible for organizing, assembling, training, and directing ISIS throughout Syria. We have released many reports with full evidence documenting this issue.
Q: On April 17, the AANES wished all Christians a happy Easter. What are some of the ways that the AANES ensures protection and full rights for Christians in North and East Syria?
A: Guaranteeing the religious rights of all people is a crucial component of our Administration. We affirm that the self-management of all ethnic and religious groups is of primary importance to us, to ensure that all cultures of our community in north and east Syria feel represented and secure. If you go back to the original Social Contract which gives our Administration its mandate from the people, you will see that the rights of Christians are fully protected. To guarantee this we have adopted a democracy which seeks to guard the rights of all geographical areas, all religious groups, and all ethnicities. To accomplish this, we have both elections and agreed upon quotas to make sure all groups are represented and heard, despite their size. No group is excluded from our democracy. We do not allow the majority to suppress the rights of the minority.
Q: Internationalists from around the world recently held their First Internationalist Conference of Rojava and spoke of how they have been inspired by the Rojava Revolution. What are some ways that people around the world can help Rojava and if they want to travel there to help, how can they do that?
A: There are several ways that our international supporters can help. (1) Organize conferences around the world that display the pivotal role that Rojava and its revolution has played in defeating ISIS terrorism and creating gender equality. (2) Support the security and stability of the Autonomous Administration by pushing for all sanctions on the Syrian Regime to be lifted from our areas and encourage nations to form direct economic partnerships with us. (3) Increase the representation of internationals in our region by travelling here and joining in the cultural, civil, and economic work of our project. (4) Putting pressure on Turkey to end its brutal occupation and stop threatening our region. (5) Putting pressure on the Assad Regime to accept a serious dialogue to fully end the war in Syria and establish autonomy in our areas.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here represent those of the interviewee and not necessarily those of the Washington Kurdish Institute
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Syrian Kurdish unity talks crumble as Turkey escalates anti-PKK campaign
The breakdown between sides serves Turkey’s agenda of keeping its Kurdish foes divided and weak.
Syrian Kurds demonstrate on June 10, 2021, in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli against the Turkish offensive on Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) areas in northern Iraq. – DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images
May 12, 2022
Turkey’s military escalation against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has deepened the gulf between Syrian Kurdish groups and put the kibosh on US-mediated talks that were aimed at forging unity in northeast Syria between the ruling Democratic Union Party (PYD) and an array of opposition parties known as the Kurdish National Council (KNC).
In a series of interviews, each side blamed the other for the hiatus, which serves Turkey’s agenda of keeping its Kurdish foes divided and weak. It also discourages the United States from deeper political engagement in the affairs of Kurdish-led northeast Syria, where an estimated 900 special operations forces are deployed to aid in efforts to prevent the Islamic State from staging a comeback.
The finger-pointing comes amid a spate of arson attacks against KNC offices across the northeast that the latter has blamed on the Revolutionary Youth Movement (Ciwanen Soresger).
The organization sees itself as an enforcer of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s ideals and operates on the margins of the autonomous administration in northeast Syria in a gray zone outside its direct control. The KNC says at least eight of its offices, including those of parties operating under its umbrella, were targeted last month alone. PYD officials deny all responsibility, saying investigations into the attacks are ongoing and several suspects have been arrested.
The launching of the attacks coincided with Turkey’s latest offensive against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan called Claw-Lock, which aims to cut off the guerrillas simultaneously from the Turkish and Syrian borders as well as from their main headquarters in Qandil, which abuts Iran.
Salih Muslim, a top-ranking member of the PYD’s presidential council, told Al-Monitor, “We don’t know who these people [attacking KNC offices] are, but there is immense popular anger over Turkey’s attacks and there is a widespread perception that the KNC and their Roj peshmerga (forces) are fighting against the PKK together with the Turkish army.”
Muslim said at least 20 Syrian Kurds fighting within the ranks of the PKK had died in the Claw-Lock campaign so far. “We also hear of wounded Roj peshmerga being treated in [Turkish] hospitals in Hakkari and Yuksekova.”
Muslim repeated his claims from an April 20 interview with Al-Monitor that the autonomous administration had offered to provide security to guard the KNC offices, but that those offers had been spurned.
Sleman Osso, a member of the KNC Presidential Council, who is also secretary of the Yekiti Kurdistan Party-Syria, rebutted Muslim’s account. “The media noise that happened during the last campaign last month — there was a lot of noise from the American side and international bodies. So they tried to give the international community and press the idea that they put guards in front of our offices as if they don’t know who is burning these offices. But we know, and they know, that the Revolutionary Youth are the ones committing these violations,” Osso told Al-Monitor.
“The violations are ongoing from time to time. When there’s pressure on them, the violations stop. Then they feel freer and the violations start up. The goal is to scare Kurdish citizens, the KNC, and push them toward refusing negotiations,” he claimed.
He denied that Roj peshmerga, a Syrian Kurdish force that is linked to the KNC parties and based in Iraqi Kurdistan, were participating in battles against the PKK. “A few days ago, the peshmerga-Roj families in Kobani were summoned and threatened and pressured — asked to pressure their kids to leave the peshmerga,” Osso added without specifying by whom.
The unity talks were initiated by Mazlum Kobane, commander in chief of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in the wake of Turkey’s 2019 ground invasion of a swath of territory lying between the northern border towns of Ras al-Ain and Tell Abyad. The purpose from his vantage point was threefold. The first was to win broader legitimacy for the autonomous administration; the second to present a common front with the KNC in future talks with Damascus; and the third to weaken Turkish claims that the PKK is in charge of the area, with a view to fending off further attacks and ideally to developing amicable ties mirroring those between Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. The latter reason served as an incentive for the US buy-in.
Washington’s own relations with Ankara were in a downward spiral because of continued American support for the SDF, which Turkey claims is also dominated by the PKK. A deal between the SDF and the KNC, which has close ties to the KRG as well as the Turkish-backed Syrian opposition, would help ease tensions, or so Washington believed.
But US policy now looks caught up in its own contradictions, as it silently endorses Turkish moves against the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan while apparently hoping that Turkey’s attitudes toward Ocalan-aligned cadres, including Kobane, a former PKK commander, can change. Kobane is on Turkey’s “most wanted” list, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is growing more hawkish by the day.
As things currently stand, the most obvious parallel between Iraqi Kurdistan and Rojava (the Kurdish name for the Syrian Kurdish region) are the seemingly endless divisions besetting the main political groups, which play into their greater enemies’ hands.
SDF commander Kobane, however, has cut a very different figure, outgrowing his guerrilla fatigues to emerge as a political leader respected by Syrian Kurds, Arabs and Christians alike — one who is seen as the best guarantee for the continued presence of US forces in Syria.
“We all depended on him at the beginning of the dialogue. I see him now weakened,” said a senior KNC figure who asked not to be identified by name.
“General Mazlum is a highly effective diplomat who is endlessly pragmatic and open to compromise. This not only makes him a leader, it makes him an invaluable partner to the United States,” said an NSC official speaking on background to Al-Monitor.
In fact, the talks did get off to a good start with the PYD making most of the concessions at Kobane’s urging, as previously reported by Al-Monitor. Osso, who is a member of the KNC’s negotiating team, acknowledged that “the reason for the success was that the American side, and the SDF leadership, were serious about pressuring the other side to reach an agreement around a political vision acceptable to all Syrians.”
Sources with close knowledge of the talks said it was the KNC that “got cold feet” with many speculating that they walked away in October 2020 under pressure from Turkey. This was mainly exerted via the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), which dominates the KRG and whose forces control the main border crossings between northeast Syria and Iraq through which coalition forces and critical aid are supplied.
It did not help that the KNC insisted that a final agreement should stipulate that the autonomous administration commit to purging all PKK elements from within its ranks.
“Why do we say the PKK and PYD need to be disconnected? Because we know that we can agree with the PYD when the PKK’s dominance of the PYD ends,” said Osso.
The KNC stance fed PKK suspicions that the talks had become a vehicle for its destruction.
Osso claims it was the PKK that sabotaged the talks. “After they noticed there was seriousness in reaching an agreement, at that point, PKK symbols started to [reappear] openly in Kurdish cities and towns. Provocations began in an attempt to tank the talks.”
Despite the setbacks, in June 2021, Kobane and David Brownstein, the State Department’s then resident envoy in northeast Syria, co-signed a document in which the sides committed themselves to continuing to serve as guarantors for the unity talks. (Kobane signed the document as “Mazlum Abdi,” the other name he goes by.)
The document, a copy of which was seen by Al-Monitor, stated that a new round of negotiations “begins from the point at which it stopped.” It also calls for ensuring “the non-repetition of violations against the Kurdish National Council in Syria, including encroaching on or burning its offices, and guarantee the non-arrest of its members for political reasons.” Osso, Muslim and a Biden administration source confirmed the document’s authenticity.
Osso said Kobane and Brownstein “promised to release this document to the media and then begin negotiations again. But the document was not published because of [the PYD’s] continued violations, and the document lost all of its meaning before it was announced to the public.”
The SDF did not respond to Al-Monitor’s request for comment.
In breaking their silence, the KNC appears to be drawing on the last and sixth article of the document, which entitles the side to publicly name and blame the other in case of any breaches. Osso said the KNC will not resume the talks unless the document is made public.
The fact that it is even willing to consider doing so points to several things. One may be that the KNC feels increasingly sidelined as the autonomous administration continues to lay the ground for elections in the northeast through a series of consultations with other stakeholders that are meant to culminate in the declaration of a new social compact. Another may be a shift in KRG’s own calculations.
But it’s the PYD that is now dragging its feet. A PYD official called Khabat declared recently that his party had paused the negotiations “because of the KNC support for the occupiers.” He was referring to Turkey. “If the KNC doesn’t stop supporting Erdogan’s [Justice and Development Party] and supporting the occupiers, and opposing Rojava — without stopping those things, the negotiations won’t continue.”
The State Department’s new resident envoy, Matthew Pearl, has met with the sides in a bid to restart the talks but has made little headway. “In the talks, he carries messages from one side to the other. But he has no strategy,” the senior KNC official complained.
In March, a delegation led by the State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs with responsibility for the Levant Ethan Goldrich, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iran and Iraq Jen Gavito, and the National Security Council’s Director for Syria and Iraq Zehra Bell traveled to Rojava to meet with Kobane.
“The United States government strongly supports Kurdish unity talks, and we remain in contact with parties on the best way forward to advance intra-Kurdish dialogue, including through our diplomats on the ground in northeast Syria,” a state department spokesperson told Al-Monitor.
“The Department of State condemned attacks on the KNC offices on April 21 and continues to play an active role in addressing grievances by both sides in order to increase stability in the northeast,” the spokesperson said.
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Rojava and Şengal are encircled
The KDP is encircling Rojava and Şengal. On the border with Rojava, the number of military bases has been increased from eight to 66. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government is building a wall on the border between Şengal and Rojava. % buffered
- ANF / BÊRÎTAN SARYA
- DÊRIK
- Friday, 29 Apr 2022, 16:22
In the past two years, South Kurdistan’s ruling party KDP has transformed the border with Rojava into a fortress. Under Turkey’s direction, a siege situation has been created against Rojava similar to the one against the Medya Defense Zones. On the 33 kilometers of border between Rojava and South Kurdistan, 66 military bases of the KDP, which collaborates with Turkey, were created. In addition, there are hundreds of military positions. Special units of the KDP are massing armored vehicles in the region and thermal cameras are being installed. However, the bases are not used by the KDP alone, but also simultaneously by the Turkish intelligence service MIT and the Turkish army.
Before the Syrian war, the border between West Kurdistan and the KDP-controlled areas in South Kurdistan extended from Pêşxabûr (Sêmalka) in the tri-border area of Syria, Turkey and Iraq to the village of Şihêla. The area from there to the Rabia (al-Yaroubiya/Til Koçer) border crossing was controlled by the Iraqi army. There were only eight Saddam-era military posts on the border until 2012, which were then taken over by the KDP. With the beginning of the Rojava revolution in 2012, the KDP increased the number of border outposts to around 20. But that was not enough; between April and May 2014, the KDP began digging trenches between southern Kurdistan and the canton of Cizîrê in Rojava.
The Iraqi side of the border was also liberated by YPG and YPJ
With the ISIS attacks on Mosul beginning in June 2014, the Iraqi army withdrew and fled from the entire line, from the Şihêla area on the border with Dêrik to the Rabia border crossing. KDP troops and very few PUK troops were deployed in the area.
When ISIS began its onslaught on the Yazidi town of Şengal on August 3, 2014, the KDP withdrew its 12,000-strong force from this region as well in flight, leaving the Yazidis to face genocide. The area between Şengal, Til Koçer and Rabia was occupied by ISIS. Just like the Iraqi army, the peshmergas also withdrew from this line. The YPG and YPJ, in order to save the Yazidis from genocide, began to open a corridor from Til Koçer to Şengal in a fierce battle with ISIS. By the afternoon of August 3, 2014, the fighters had liberated the villages of Tawis, Kail and Mahmudiyê from ISIS, about 15 kilometers from Rabia. In Rabia, fighting with ISIS continued for a long time. Rabia and the border crossing were completely liberated on September 30, 2014, with the participation of a part of peshmerga from the PUK and KDP.
Rabia was liberated and handed over to the peshmerga
The YPG and YPJ bore the brunt of the liberation of Rabia and therefore controlled a large part of the settlement. However, they retreated across the border into Rojava and handed over the strategically important settlement to the peshmerga. In this way, an 86-kilometer-long border strip from Pêşxabûr to the Rabia crossing came under the control of the peshmerga.
KDP withdrew for the second time
Due to the distribution of territories between the PUK and KDP, the border once again passed completely to the KDP and the PUK withdrew. As part of the KDP-initiated independence referendum, the Iraqi army was mobilized in October 2017 and marched into many disputed areas, including Kirkuk. The KDP left the border strip between Dêrik and Til Koçer and retreated to the village of Mahmudiyê, 15 kilometers from Rabia.
33 kilometers of border under KDP control
From mid-October 2017 until today, the KDP has controlled an area in the Pêşxabûr Triangle near Dêrik to the village of Mahmudiyê near Til Koçer. The borderline between Rojava (Qamişlo region) and Şengal was controlled by Hashd al-Shaabi between 2017 and 2021 and then by the Iraqi police. This border line begins at Derîk and extends to Rabia and from there to near Şengal.
After talks with Turkey
After the KDP’s relations with Turkey deteriorated in connection with the “independence referendum,” the Barzani party attempted to compensate for the discrepancy through hostility toward the PKK, the Rojava revolution and the Kurdish freedom struggle. With regard to border policy toward Rojava, Turkey and the KDP pursued a common approach. After Nechirvan Barzani was summoned to Ankara and held talks with Turkish regime leader Erdoğan and his foreign minister Çavuşoğlu, military bases and observation posts were established along the border with Rojava. New military forts and checkpoints were established in the hills around Pêşxabûr up to the village of Mahmudiyê. Troops and heavy weapons were deployed to these bases. The bases were equipped with technological equipment, including thermal cameras. In particular, the bases of Xanikê and Şilikiyê were upgraded.
Stationing of MIT and KDP Intelligence Service
The MIT and the KDP intelligence service “Parastin” were stationed primarily in the bases of al-Qale and Şilikiyê on the Tigris River. They began interrogating travelers from Rojava to southern Kurdistan, especially members of the Self-Defense Forces. A runway for Turkish reconnaissance aircraft was established on Bêxêr Mountain, which faces the border with Rojava.
Complete encirclement after the Şengal agreement
On October 9, 2020, an agreement was reached between the Iraqi government and the KDP, under the direction of the Turkish state, to dissolve the self-government of Şengal and divide control of the region. The agreement was signed under the supervision of former Dutch Defense Minister and UN Special Rapporteur Jeanine Antoinette Hennis-Plasschaert and had the support of the U.S., British and German governments. As early as December, the KDP again deployed special forces to the border area and increased the size of outposts. In the past two and a half months, three new bases have been established near the village of Mahmudiyê. Together with these outposts, this means that at least 66 bases and hundreds of positions have been established along the 33-kilometer border of the KDP area with West Kurdistan. This means that the border to Rojava is de facto completely sealed off.
Economic embargo prevails
Time and again, the KDP closes the Sêmalka/Pêşxabûr border crossing and practices an embargo against Rojava. After the al-Kadhimi government in Iraq joined the KDP’s and Turkey’s anti-Kurdish policies, the al-Walid border crossing near Şengal was also repeatedly closed. People from Rojava who want to cross the Sêmalka border crossing into South Kurdistan have to apply months in advance and obtain permission from the KDP’s intelligence agency Parastin.
Iraq builds wall
To increase pressure, the Iraqi military began building a wall along the border between Şengal and Rojava in March. The construction was prepared with the laying of barbed wire and the installation of camera towers. The aim is to build a wall 3.75 meters high and 250 kilometers long, which will isolate the Şengal region and make it dependent. Since 2019, the KDP has already tried to encircle the Medya Defense Zones with its special forces and repeatedly laid deadly ambushes against the guerrillas.
Triple encirclement serves Turkish expansionism
The triple cut-off is intended to effectively sever the link between Şengal, Rojava and the Medya Defense Zones. For this purpose, the AKP/MHP regime has enlisted the KDP and the Iraqi government.
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AFRIN JIHADIST IN-FIGHTING
Rojava Information Center
April.
Infighting between a number of SNA groups in the Turkish-occupied city of Afrin has left several dead & more injured. Clashes between Mu’tasim Billah & the 9th Division left 2 militia members of the former group dead & 10 others wounded.
Concurrent clashes also occurred between al-Jabhat al-Shamiyah & the 51st Division. Turkey has reportedly closed its borders to members of the SNA, particularly of al-Jabhat al-Shamiyah.
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U.S., Russia Allies Witness Friction in Northeast Syria
Friday March 4th, 2022 by ASHARQ AL-AWSAT (London-based pan-Arab)
Clashes between the Syrian regime and the SDF occurred in al-Hassakeh, according to Asharq al-Awsat.
Syrian government forces used automatic weapons to attack a military checkpoint in the village of Kozliya in the northern countryside of al-Hassakeh governorate. The outpost was run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is backed by the Washington-led International Coalition.
The attack resulted in the death of a government officer and soldier and two SDF fighters.
“Damascus has launched a provocative attack against the SDF in the vicinity of Kozliya, which is located west of Tal Tamar,” said a commander in the Tal Tamar Military Council which operates under SDF rule.
“Our forces immediately responded to this attack, as a result of which two of our fighters were martyred and another was wounded, while two soldiers from the regime forces were killed, and two others were wounded,” revealed the commander who requested anonymity.
The clashes that took place on Tuesday resulted in four deaths, including an officer with the rank of first lieutenant.
The commander indicated that the command of the forces “is following up the investigation to clarify the cause of this serious incident, and based on the results of the investigations, necessary action will be taken.”
The official SANA news agency said that a “patrol of U.S. forces accompanied by members of the SDF militia tried to penetrate points controlled by the Syrian army” in the Hassakeh governorate.
It did not mention whether there were victims but said the SDF attacked after soldiers blocked the patrol’s passage.
The SDF confirmed the toll in a statement. It did not mention the presence of U.S. personnel and called the incident “a dangerous provocation by the Syrian regime.”
The war in Syria is estimated to have killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions more since it began with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011.
It quickly spiraled into a complex conflict that pulled in numerous actors, including jihadist groups and foreign powers.
Russia intervened militarily in Syria more than six years ago to shore up President Bashar al-Assad.
Neighboring Turkey views some Syrian Kurdish fighters as “terrorists” and has launched several operations against them.
This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
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HRW calls on SDF to ensure humane treatment of Hasaka prison detainees
RUDAW 04-02-2022
Also in Syria
Syria jihadist group denies knowledge of strike on IS chief
UNICEF calls on foreign countries to repatriate children following Hasaka prison siege
SDF arrests two explosives-clad ISIS suspects in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor
SDF investigates, arrests own members following Hasaka prison break attempt
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The New York-based rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday voiced major concern about the fate of recaptured Islamic State (ISIS) detainees following the Hasaka prison siege around two weeks ago.
Five days since the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced complete control over the al-Sina’a prison in Hasaka, northeast Syria (Rojava), HRW expressed concern over a lack of transparency from the Kurdish-led force over the fate of the detainees and their whereabouts in the aftermath of the assault, and has called on the force to permit international humanitarian groups to visit the detainees and provide them with care.
“The Syrian Democratic Forces began evacuating men and boys from the besieged prison days ago, yet the world still has no idea how many are alive or dead,” Letta Tayler, Associate Director of the Crisis and Conflict Division at HRW said in a statement published on Friday.
Tayler added that, “the detaining authorities in northeast Syria should end their silence on the fate of these detainees, including hundreds of children who were victims of ISIS.”
Sources have told HRW that the detainees are being held in a new, more secure, UK-funded prison facility near al-Sina’a.
Siyamend Ali, head of media for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a core component of the SDF, told HRW that “everyone is in safe places,” and “they received good care.”
The SDF accused ISIS of using the detained boys as human shields, adding that measures were taken to ensure their safety as the Kurdish force advanced deeper into the facility.
ISIS attempted to break thousands of its affiliates and members out of al-Sina’a prison, known to locals as Ghweran prison. The SDF arrested 26 people who were “active in smuggling and transferring detainees out of Ghweran prison,” it said in a tweet on Sunday.
On Monday, the SDF raised the death toll from the brazen prison break attempt to 495 people, with 121 SDF fighters, prison guards, and civilians, as well as 374 ISIS members.
According to the rights organization, the now-defunct prison facility in Hasaka housed around 4,000 male ISIS suspects, including 700 boys, most from Syria and Iraq and the rest from dozens of other countries.
SDF officials have placed the figure at around 5,000 prisoners.
The Kurdish force last week called on the international community to accelerate repatriation efforts of their ISIS-affiliated nationals.
On Thursday, the Netherlands repatriated five Dutch women and eleven children from Roj camp, which holds thousands of suspected ISIS-affiliated members and their families. Tayler welcomed the news, commenting that, “16 more Dutch home; many more to go. As Netherlands demonstrates, adults can be prosecuted upon return.”
By Julian Bechocha
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Four years of horror: Why & how Turkey occupied Afrin
NEWS 23 Jan 2022, Sun – 08:53 2022-01-23T
By Dr. Thoreau Redcrow
As we reach the four-year anniversary of Turkey’s sadistic occupation of Afrin in Rojava, it is helpful to look back at how this terrifying reality came to be. Not only is the state of Turkey illegally establishing their own terrorist vilayets throughout northern Syria, which feature every human rights abuse the mind can conjure up, but they are doing so as a NATO member and with the acquiescence of Western states who claim to be fighting a “war on terror” against the very thing which Turkey represents. And since it is in the Kurdish city of Afrin where Turkey’s sociopathic barbarism and pathological hatred of Kurds is most on display, this open-air crime scene is a helpful case study. As if you want to diagnose an illness, you must first understand its symptoms.
Why Turkey invaded Afrin
The city and lush mountainous area around Afrin has been a Kurdish cultural hub for more than a millennia. Over the centuries, Afrin developed as the center of a distinctive Sufi “Kurdish Islam”, which was less conservative, and more secularly tolerant than surrounding regions. In fact, Afrin has always had the fewest mosques of any place in Syria and its inhabitants were typically not strict adherents to religious conventions. Consequently, vibrant Yazidi, Alevi, and Christian communities historically thrived there as well. This embedded culture of accepting diversity was rooted all the way into the present, when Afrin became a welcoming haven for refugees fleeing the violence throughout Syria’s Civil War.
In the spring of 2012, the Syrian Government pulled out of Afrin, which laid the foundation for what would later become the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) to take over in January of 2014. From 2014, until Turkey’s military invasion in January of 2018, Afrin blossomed into a flourishing and peaceful Canton of around 700,000 people. Because of the lack of sectarian tensions and area’s reputation for being accepting of cultural and religious differences, around 400,000 refugees and IDPs of all ethnicities within Syria escaped to Afrin. As such, although Afrin was a majority Kurdish city and Canton, it was also home to Arabs, Assyrians, and Turkmen.
Unfortunately, the harmonious social fabric that was being constructed in Afrin was seen as an existential threat by the Turkish regime of Tayyip Erdogan across the border, for two reasons. For starters, it showed that the Kurdish-led Democratic Confederalist experiment taking place throughout Rojava / northern Syria was a viable model for the entire Middle East region. And, secondly, this progressive-minded philosophy was a direct rebuke of the ultra-conservative and nationalist AKP & MHP alliance of Erdogan’s coalition, which was centered around Turkish ethnic chauvinism against Kurds and a fascistic re-interpretation of Salafi Islam, that was embodied by groups such as ISIS and other radical jihadist proxies—who by 2018 were the only allies Turkey had left in Syria.
Thus, Erdogan decided that he would use the Turkish military alongside a coalition of Islamist jihadists to invade, encircle, destroy, ethnically cleanse, and occupy the Canton of Afrin in January of 2018—with the goal of establishing a semi-annexed Turkified quasi-colony, with outside settlers who were indebted and thus loyal to his regime.
How Turkey invaded Afrin
The Turkish invasion was cynically carried out under the pretext of protecting its national security from the local forces in Afrin. However, the Turkish Government never provided evidence about the existence of any threats to its national security from Afrin, as none had occurred. Nevertheless, because Ankara was averse to risking the lives of their own soldiers, they contracted out Afrin’s invasion to a coalition of radical Islamist groups numbering upwards of 25,000 – that were trained, armed, and paid by Turkey. These groups included various jihadist militants such as Ahrar al-Sham, the Sham Legion, and ex-ISIS fighters—as was reported by The Independent. Behind them were around 6,400 soldiers of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and members of the neo-fascist Grey Wolves from Turkey, who relied mostly on artillery shelling, a relentless bombing campaign from Turkish jets—since Afrin had no anti-aircraft defenses—and heavy armor salvoes, since Afrin’s defenders also lacked tanks.
Turkey’s illegal military invasion of Afrin—which was absurdly named “Operation Olive Branch”—officially began on January 20, 2018, and was a flagrant violation of international law, i.e. attacking the territory of a sovereign state without the authorization of the official authorities. To achieve victory, Turkey’s military deliberately targeted densely populated cities and towns, killing around 500 innocent civilians, including women, children, and the elderly in the first weeks. Turkey also indiscriminately shot refugees fleeing from conflict areas and used chemical gas to attack Kurdish resistance fighters. In doing so, Turkey and its affiliated Islamist extremist groups breached the Geneva Conventions and committed a litany of war crimes—as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The ideological motivations of Turkey’s invading force was soon evidently clear, as the jihadists who comprised the vast majority of ground troops viewed the Kurdish population of Afrin as “atheists” deserving of death. This was portrayed in a series of videos where the Turkish proxies threatened to cut off the heads of Kurds who they described as “infidels”; or another where several international Islamists sung praises of previous battles where they had fought, including Tora Bora (the former headquarters of Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan), Grozny in Chechnya, and Dagestan in Russia. This aforementioned video was concluded by them declaring “And now Afrin is calling to us”.
Then as the fighting began, several videos soon emerged showing Turkish-backed militants mutilating and posing for selfies with the bodies of Kurdish YPJ women fighters, with one in particular portraying a young woman codenamed Barin Kobani, who had her breasts cut off – followed by chants of “God is great”. With such heinous beliefs as their driving force and coupled with overwhelming military superiority, Turkey’s military would encircle and fully occupy Afrin after sixty-three days of bombardment.
During those attacks a number of credible observers would warn of Turkey’s abuses, such as The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, who cautioned, “In the city of Afrin, which was captured by Turkish forces yesterday, scores of civilians have been killed and injured due to airstrikes, ground-based strikes, and explosive hazards, and thousands have been displaced.” This matched the diagnosis of Human Rights Watch (HRW), which criticized Turkey for having, “failed to take necessary precautions to avoid civilian casualties” during the offensive, with HRW’s deputy Middle East director Lama Fakih opining how, “It appears that vulnerable civilians are facing displacement and death because of the way Turkey’s latest offensive is being conducted.”
What Turkey has done since occupying Afrin
Turkey’s occupation of Afrin and its surrounding 282 towns and villages officially began on March 25, 2018, and the brutal policies and actions of their subjugation in the four years since have turned this once thriving oasis of ethnic and religious solidarity, into a dystopian nightmare where over 300,000 mostly-Kurds have been displaced.
The oppression was foreshadowed from the moment the city fell under Turkish control, as the first action of the invading Islamist forces was to destroy Afrin’s statue of the mythical Kurdish figure Kawa the Blacksmith, which is central to the Kurd’s Newroz (New Year) festival, and according to legend symbolizes the struggle for freedom against tyranny. Fittingly, from that day forward, Erdogan’s regime, the Turkish Army, and their allied militant proxies have carried out a systematic campaign of unrelenting state terrorism.
As I previously noted in my September 2019 speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Afrin’s Kurdish population are suffering social oppression, economic robbery, and cultural annihilation.
Socially, the Kurds of Afrin are suffering arbitrary arrest, assaults, torture, rapes, human trafficking, sexual enslavement, assassinations, enforced disappearances at checkpoints, late-night abductions by criminal gangs, burning down of their villages, and neighborhood demolition to build walls around the city.
Economically, the Kurds of Afrin are suffering looting of stores, seizure of homes, stealing of cars, pillaging of livestock, confiscation of land, forced sharia taxes, extortion of businesses, over 5,000 kidnappings for ransom, deliberate arson of over 11,000 hectares of forest, and the systematic theft of Afrin’s olive oil industry – which is then illegally sold in Europe.
Culturally, the Kurds of Afrin are suffering demographic ethnic cleansing, Turkification of the education system and street names, destruction of Kurdish cultural monuments, vandalism of tombs, pillaging of grave sites, desecration of Alevi and Yazidi holy shrines, cutting down of sacred ribbon trees, and the archaeological excavation and smuggling of over 16,000 historical artifacts – which are then illegally sold to museums in Turkey.
On other occasions, Afrin’s residents are threatened by gangs of “brokers” into obligatory land sales at set prices, which are supervised by MIT Turkish intelligence with the goal of transferring legal ownership to new settlers. Meanwhile, the largest and most luxurious homes are often commandeered by mercenaries under the pretext of turning them into military headquarters or torture chambers, as SDC US representative Sinam Sherkany has written about with regards to her own family home.
Moreover, a 2019 report to the High Commissioner’s Office of the United Nations Human Rights Council noted how, “The victims of abductions by armed groups and/or criminal gangs were often of Kurdish origin, as well as civilians perceived as being prosperous, including doctors, businesspersons and merchants”, while also noting how, “young men arrested on suspicion of being affiliated with Kurdish structures were forced to pay a fine of $400 in order to be released.”
The motivations for all these actions are: terrorizing Kurdish residents to incentivize them to leave in order to accelerate resettlement plans, accruing financial gain to pay off Turkey’s many radical Islamist militias who are motivated by state-sanctioned “jihad”, and obliterating Kurdish cultural identity and archaeological multi-ethnicity to enable a Turkification strategy for a de-facto annexation of Afrin.
With regards to resettlement and population transfers, from the start of Afrin’s occupation the Turkish Army and its allied militants began emptying all Kurdish villages with the goal of bringing in loyal Arab outsiders from other parts of Syria. At least half of these mercenary families numbering over 40,000 were brought to Afrin from eastern Ghouta, eastern Qalamoun, and southern Damascus, and have connections to jihadist factions such as the Al Rahman Legion and the Army of Islam. In other instances, families from Idlib, belonging to the al-Nusra Front and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have been resettled in Afrin, while families from other Turkish-occupied Syrian cities such as Azaz, al-Bab, and Jarablus were given abandoned villages that persecuted Yazidis were forced to flee from. In many of these instances, markings were painted on the outside of stolen homes, which was reminiscent of what ISIS did to the Christians of Raqqa and Mosul.
With regards to funding Turkey’s state-sanctioned “jihad”, at the onset of Afrin’s assault, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (aka Diyanet) called all mosques in Turkey to read The Quran’s chapter 48 on conquest (Al-Fath) and asked that all Muslims pray for invading Turkish soldiers. Fatwas were then issued by the Istanbul-based Syrian Islamic Council supporting various war crimes, such as one in February of 2018, defending the looting of private property as “jihad for the sake of Allah” and merely the “spoils of war”; and ones in May and June of 2018, which describe the mostly-Kurdish PYD as “spiteful”, “secular”, “corrupt”, and “deviant”—thereby justifying a range of mistreatment and theft in relation to them.
Turkey’s Diyanet is also overseeing a coordinated effort to impose Sharia law and strict Islamic dress (veil) on women, similar to what ISIS did, while destroying ancient religious Alevi and Yazidi shrines and replacing them with private mosques—as the first step to forced conversions. At one point it became so egregious that a retired Turkish General himself spoke out, decrying afterwards how, “It is as if we are preparing the region for militant jihadists [like ISIS], and my colleagues who served in the area suffer from the moral humiliation of the way the operation evolved.”
With regards to Yazidis—who ISIS tried to eradicate themselves through genocide—their shrines named after Barsa Khatum, Jil Khaneh, King Adi, and Qara Jerneh, plus Sheikhs Hamid, Gahrib, Barakat, and Manan, have all been destroyed under Turkey’s occupation; while the Yazidi villages of Qastel Jindo, Alqino, Bafalon, Sinka, Qatma, Basoufan, Ghazawiyeh, Iska, Arsh Qibar, Ishkan Sharqi, Shih Al Dir, and Ain Dara have been completely uprooted and emptied.
As for Alevis, the shrines at Yagmur Dada, Ali Dada and Aslan Dada in the Bulbul district were looted and destroyed. In both cases of Yazidis and Alevis, gravesites were vandalized and destroyed, because authorities said they violated a new law requiring a lower height, which mimics the legal justifications that ISIS used against idolatry as well. The discrimination and desecration has even extended to the sacred perennial trees in many villages where Alevis tie little ribbons to and make wishes, which Turkey’s Islamists have cut down as a result.
Turkey’s desecration extends to the archaeological realm as well, which began during the invasion when Turkish airstrikes destroyed many ancient buildings including the Julianus Church—which is one of the oldest Christian sanctuaries in the world, the famous Iron-Age Ain Dara Temple, the Syriac Maronite tomb of Saint Maron, and site of Brad (which were UNESCO World Heritage Sites). Less notable Roman-Era Byzantine monasteries and cemeteries were also destroyed, ostensibly because they pre-dated Islam to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE.
This practice coincides with how Turkey has pillaged through 35 historical mounds in various parts of Afrin including Ereb Shexo, El-Didriye, Zivinge, Ibedan, Sewan, Qurbe, Ster, En Hecere, Kefer Rume, Cumke, Sindiyange, Durumiye and Meydanke. In these situations the grave areas are bulldozed and exhumed in search of gold and precious objects. Politically, Turkey also destroyed the shrine dedicated to the Kurdish revolutionary and writer Mehmet Nuri Dersimi (1893-1973) alongside his wife Farida, showing the ethnic connection to such symbolic defilements.
Lastly, with regards to Ankara’s Turkification strategy, the claim of them liberating “Syrian” territory was called into question from the first moment of conquest in Afrin, when the Turkish military raised the Turkish flag over government buildings and not the flag of their so-called “Free Syrian Army”. The Turkish state then began forcing schoolchildren to carry the Turkish flag in propaganda videos, while praising pictures of Erdogan. This was followed up by changing the official names of places from Kurdish into Turkish, banning the Kurdish language, issuing Turkish ID and temporary residence cards, and appointing a Wali (Custodian) and Qaim Maqam (Governor) in Afrin and linking it to the Turkish province of Antakya.
All of these point to the unfortunate reality that the Turkish state has no intention of ever leaving Afrin, as they intend to permanently occupy it, similar to how they have Hatay (Liwa Iskenderun) since 1939 and northern Cyprus since 1974. Which is all the more reason why the international community must stand up now and demand that Turkey leave Afrin and all the other areas of Syria they have terrorized and seized.
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SDF operation continues after ISIS prison attack in Heseke
The circle around ISIS has tightened as the operation against members of the mercenary organization continues in Hesekê after an attack and mass outbreak attempt at Sina prison.
ANF HESEKÊ Saturday, 22 Jan 2022, 13:56
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which had arrived in the evening to provide support, sealed off the neighbourhood and the area around Sina prison with a wide security corridor. After the attack, the SDF and Asayish maintained control around the prison. The SDF announced on Friday that 89 mercenaries who tried to escape from prison have been captured.
Sporadic clashes continue in the Ghweiran neighborhood between the Asayish, SDF and the ISIS mercenaries. The siege around the group has been tightened and particular attention is paid to civilian safety in the ongoing operation.
According to reports from the ground, many ISIS members have been killed and another group has been captured. The international anti-ISIS Coalition jets and helicopters have carried out strikes in the area since yesterday.
In the meantime, the General Command of North-East Syrian Internal Security Forces released a statement on Saturday, saying that they have foiled the attacks with the support of the Syrian Democratic Forces and a number of terrorists have been captured. In addition, a search operation has been launched for the mercenaries hiding in the neighborhoods around the prison.
“7 of our members were injured and our comrade Xalid Ilêwî martyred during the events. Three civilians who did not allow ISIS mercenaries to enter the neighborhood have also fallen as martyrs,” said the statement.
The statement by Internal Security Forces added, “Our forces have completely encircled the Ghweiran neighborhood. The operations launched to capture the mercenaries in the neighborhood continue unabated. We promise to follow in the footsteps of our martyrs to ensure security in the entire region.”
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YPG International: With the spirit of the resistance of Afrin, against all occupation in Rojava
The YPG international released a statement to pay tribute to the resistance of Afrin and the fallen fighters, including international martyrs Şehîd Hêlîn Qerecox, Şehîd Kendal Breizh, Şehîd Baran Galicia, Şehîd Şahîn Huseynî.
- ANF
- NEWS DESK
- Thursday, 20 Jan 2022, 10:31
Today is the fourth anniversary of the day the Turkish state launched its invasion of Afrin (Efrîn). The YPG International released a statement and paid tribute to the resistance of Afrin and the fallen fighters, including international martyrs, Şehîd Hêlîn Qerecox, Şehîd Kendal Breizh, Şehîd Baran Galicia, Şehîd Şahîn Huseynî.
The statement reminds that Afrin is “a region which local comrades call ‘the heart of the revolution’. Together with its jihadist mercenaries (many affiliated with Daesh or Al Qaeda) the Turkish army began its campaign of terror and occupation against the people of Efrîn and the democratic revolution being built by the people of Rojava. For two months the brave fighters of the Women’s protection units (YPJ) and the people’s protection units (YPG) defended the freedom of their homeland with an immense resistance.
Shoulder to shoulder with the people of Efrîn were our Internationalist comrades, participating in the defence against the fascist attacks. The hope which the revolution in Rojava represents makes the building of a truly free society worth all sacrifices. A revolution in which genuine democracy, ecology and the liberation of women are the foundations which our comrades strive towards. As internationalists, we join in the struggle against fascism and for an alternative way of life to capitalist modernity.”
The statement added: “YPG International has been present since the war of liberation against Daesh and the aggression of the Turkish state and its Islamic gangs. We continue to defend Rojava against all threats and play our role in the growth and success of the revolution. Shining examples and sources of constant inspiration are the comrades who gave their lives in the defence of Efrîn. Our international martyrs, Şehîd Hêlîn Qerecox, Şehîd Kendal Breizh, Şehîd Baran Galicia, Şehîd Şahîn Huseynî are amongst the many brave comrades who sacrificed everything. Their willingness to fight far from home against a ruthless and highly equipped enemy for our common ideals is still today, four years later, a huge source of motivation for all comrades here in Rojava, and abroad. We follow the path that our martyrs have paved for us; continuing our struggle is the way in which we remember and honour our fallen friends.”
The statement continued: “Now, after four years of occupation by the Fascist Turkish state and its jihadist gangs, the people of Efrîn still face atrocities on a daily basis. A system of ethnic cleansing of the region is being carried out, alongside disappearances, tortures, rapes, and the destruction of the graveyards of our martyrs. The Fascist Turkish state acts as a colonising power, forbidding and destroying the Kurdish culture, plundering resources, displacing the local population, and politically and economically annexing the region. Despite acknowledging the crimes against humanity being carried out by the occupiers, the international state community refuses to act. With new threats of invasion from the Fascist Turkish state, the freedom of Rojava is once again in danger today.”
This is why, said the statement, “we as an internationalist force place our trust and effort in solidarity and comradeship from people across the globe to assist in our fight, whether that means coming and joining the struggle here in Rojava, or supporting it from afar – there are many frontlines in the fight for a free society. The revolution in Rojava represents more than just the freedom of North and Eastern Syria, but is an example of hope and inspiration for all oppressed and exploited people across the world. All comrades of YPG International are dedicated to put action behind our words, and will remain a fighting force to defend the revolution from fascist attacks in all its spheres. Whilst the states do not act when confronted with the crimes in Efrîn, it is the people of the world who take action, sacrifice their lives, and make a difference in the defence of freedom.”
The statement concluded: “The anniversary of the war on Efrîn is for us once more a reminder of what misery and pain such an occupation brings to the people. We especially also remember and seek strength from our fallen friends – as we say in Kurdish, Şehîd namirin (Martyrs never die). As YPG International we make a promise to the people of North and Eastern Syria and to all of our comrades across the globe – We will defend the success of the Rojava revolution at all costs.”
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Northwest Syria witnesses shelling between government and opposition
2022-01-02
IDLIB, Syria (North Press) – The de-escalation areas in northwest Syria witnessed military escalation and exchange of shelling between the Syrian government forces and Turkish-backed opposition factions on Sunday.
The opposition factions’ sites in the villages of al-Enkawi, Qalidin, al-Daqmaq, al-Hamidiya and Khirbat al-Naqus in the Ghab Plain, west of Hama, were bombed by the heavy artillery shelling and missiles of the government forces ,North Press reported military sources of the opposition.
“The opposition sites in the villages and towns of Fatterah, Kafr Oweid, Sfuhen, Kansafra and Fleifel in the Zawiya Mountain area, south of Idlib, were bombed. The government bombardment also hit the opposition’ sites in the area near al-Kabina in Jabal al-Akrad, north of Latakia,” the sources added.
The bombing coincided with intense flight of Russian reconnaissance planes over the region, according to the same sources.
“The opposition factions announced targeting the Syrian government forces’ sites near Khan al-Sabil ,southeast of Idlib. The Syrian government forces’ sites in Jabal Abu Ali, north of Lattakia, were also hit with while mortar shells by the opposition factions ” according to the sources.
For about a week, separate areas in northwest Syria have witnessed military escalation, which left dead and wounded from both sides.
Although the de-escalation zone in northwest Syria is subject to a Russian-Turkish ceasefire agreement signed in March 2020, the area witnesses frequent mutual bombardment despite the entry of the ceasefire into force.
Reporting by Bara’ al-Shami
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YPJ General Command issues message for New Year
The YPJ General Command said in its New Year’s message that they are ready to fulfil all their responsibilities “for a free and dignified life”.
- ANF
- NEWS DESK
- Saturday, 1 Jan 2022, 09:52
The YPJ (Women Protection Units) General Command said in its New Year’s message that they are ready to fulfil all their responsibilities “for a free and dignified life”.
The YPJ General Command especially called on women to organize and build their self-defense forces.
The message said: “We will fight for the freedom of women and society to be guaranteed, whatever the cost.”
The message added:
“In 2021, occupation and all kinds of enemy attacks continued uninterruptedly in Northern and Eastern Syria. Many valuable patriots lost their lives in these attacks. Likewise, our esteemed commander Sosin Bîrhat and other comrades fell as martyrs. But thanks to our esteemed martyrs, the resistance, the will of our people, and the self-sacrificing spirit of our freedom fighters, the enemy’s plans will not achieve their goal. With this in mind, we commemorate our martyrs with respect and renew our promise that we will follow their path. Again, we salute the work and sacrifice of our people led by women.
In addition, in 2021, especially in the Middle East and all over the world, women were subjected to all kinds of oppression, violence, massacre, rape and other attacks. The male-dominated system has turned women’s lives into hell with such violence against women. Women all over the world have stood up to these attacks and have demonstrated unparalleled resistance. Women in Northern and Eastern Syria, especially Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians, fought relentlessly against the invasion attacks and the patriarchal mentality.”
The statement continued: “Women all over the world need to build a legitimate defense system in order to be able to wage a permanent struggle against the understanding of power and the occupying fascist system. Now we call women freedom time. Women now have an organization and an army. The reality of the revolution in Northern and Eastern Syria has shown that women can lead a democratic and free society.
Our self-defense system has reached a level thanks to the heroism of thousands of martyrs, creating great hope for all women in the region and the world. From today on, whatever the cost, we are ready to fight for a free and dignified life for free women and society, and we will fulfil our responsibilities.
We call on women whose hearts beat for freedom to organize themselves and build their self-defense forces.
In 2022, we celebrate the new year of all humanity and working women and say JIN JYAN AZADI.”
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Underground Histories 