Tag Archives: YPG militia

Human Rights Watch: Turkey-backed forces seizing property in Syria’s Afrin

Men walk through debris in the center of Afrin, Syria March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Turkey-backed rebels in northwest Syria’s Afrin have seized, looted and destroyed Kurdish civilians’ property after taking control of the region in March, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Turkey’s military and its Syrian rebel allies launched a cross-border operation into Syria earlier this year and drove fighters from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia out of the town of Afrin and the surrounding area.

Ankara sees the YPG as a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency on Turkish soil. Turkey has threatened to drive the YPG from the entire length of its border.

The United Nations said 137,000 people were displaced by the Afrin offensive, another large population movement in the seven-year long Syrian conflict which has forced more than half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

Rights group HRW interviewed people who had been displaced from Afrin. They accuse Turkey-backed forces of moving their fighters and people from other parts of Syria into vacated homes and of taking over business premises without paying compensation.

One interviewee, Roni Seydo, left Afrin in March but was told by a friend that an armed group had taken over his house, painting the word “seized” on the outside wall.

He said his neighbors were questioned about his family and it possible links with the PKK.

Another former Afrin resident, photographer Ser Hussein, said one of his two studios was burned down and the other turned into a butchers shop.

“Those who made the decision to take over Afrin also took on the responsibility of ensuring that both the residents of Afrin, and people there who have been displaced elsewhere have basic shelter in a way that doesn’t infringe on either of those groups’ rights,” HRW’s acting emergencies director Priyanka Motaparthy said in a report.

“So far it seems that they are failing to do the right thing by either group.”

Under the laws of war, pillaging, or forcibly taking private property for personal use is prohibited and can constitute a war crime, HRW said. The laws of war also prohibit destruction of property not justified by military necessity.

HRW said owners should be compensated for the use and damage of their property and the rights of rights of owners and returnees should be guaranteed.

Reuters was not immediately able to reach the rebel groups for comment.

HRW said the Free Syrian Army rebel umbrella group issued a statement on March 9 inviting Afrin residents to submit complaints to the military headquarters in Azaz to claim their looted property.

HRW also said rebel faction Ahrar al-Sharqiyah issued a statement on April 20 denying responsibility for property violations and looting and saying it had arrested several people who may have been involved in such acts.

Turkish officials in March said they were looking into allegations of looting and property seizure and that they would ensure Afrin would be a safe place for residents to return to.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Syrian opposition rejects Russia-sponsored peace initiative

Mohammad Alloush (C), the head of the Syrian opposition delegation, attends Syria peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan

BEIRUT/AMMAN/ANKARA (Reuters) – The Syrian opposition has rejected a new, Russian-sponsored initiative to reach a political settlement to the Syrian conflict, and Turkey protested against the invitation of the Syrian Kurdish side as Moscow’s peacemaking bid hit early complications on Wednesday.

Having intervened decisively in the Syrian war in 2015 in support of President Bashar al-Assad, Russia now hopes to build on the collapse of Islamic State to launch a new political process towards ending the six-year-long conflict.

Damascus has said it is ready to attend the Nov. 18 Sochi congress which is set to focus on a new constitution, saying the time is right thanks to Syrian army gains and the “terrorists’ obliteration”.

But officials in the anti-Assad opposition rejected the meeting and insisted any peace talks be held under U.N. sponsorship in Geneva, where peace talks have failed to make any progress towards ending the conflict since it erupted in 2011.

The congress amounted to a meeting “between the regime and the regime”, said Mohammad Alloush, a member of the opposition High Negotiations Committee and a senior official with the Jaish al-Islam rebel group.

The HNC was surprised it had been mentioned in a list of groups invited to the congress and would “issue a statement with other parties setting out the general position rejecting this conference”, Alloush told Reuters.

The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition (SNC) political opposition group said the congress was an attempt to circumvent “the international desire for political transition” in Syria.

“The Coalition will not participate in any negotiations with the regime outside Geneva or without U.N. sponsorship,” SNC spokesman Ahmad Ramadan told Reuters.

A Russian negotiator said on Tuesday that Syrian groups who choose to boycott the congress risked being sidelined as the political process moves ahead.

Russia has invited 33 Syrian groups and political parties to what it calls a “Syrian Congress on National Dialogue”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin first mentioned the idea of the congress last month, saying that he believed Moscow and the Syrian government would soon finally defeat militants in Syria.

Helped by Russia’s air force and an array of Iran-backed Shi’ite militias, Assad has defeated many of the Syrian rebels who were fighting to topple him, leaving him militarily unassailable and the rebels confined to enclaves of the west.

Damascus and its allies have also recovered swathes of central and eastern Syria from Islamic State in recent months, while a separate campaign by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has driven IS from other areas of the country.

The separate campaigns are now converging on Islamic State’s last strongholds in Deir al-Zor province at the Iraqi border.

Russia’s decision to invite the Kurdish groups which dominate the SDF to Sochi triggered Turkish irritation on Wednesday. Ankara, which views the dominant Syrian Kurdish groups as a national security threat, said it was unacceptable that the Kurdish YPG militia had been invited.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Turkish and Russian officials had discussed the issue and that he had held meetings of his own to “solve the problem on the spot.”

Turkey views the YPG and its political affiliate, the PYD, as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging a three-decade insurgency in Turkey.

 

(Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Lisa Barrington in Beirut, and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Larry King and Raissa Kasolowsky)