Syria
Civilians fleeing the city of Afrin in northern Syria (Rojava), heading towards the checkpoint in az-Ziyarah, on March 16, 2018. Photo: AFP/George Ourfalian.
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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdish politician on Saturday said that more than 600 settler families have left Afrin, while 400 Kurdish families have returned to their homes.
“The percentage of Kurds in Afrin and its countryside has increased, while the percentage of [settled] Arabs has decreased,” Ahmed Hassan told Rudaw. He is the head of the local council for the Kurdish National Council (ENKS/KNC) - a coalition of Kurdish political parties that is considered the main opposition in northeast Syria (Rojava).
“Some villages in Afrin have been completely emptied of displaced Arabs who had settled there,” he added.
In 2018, Turkey and its allied Syrian militias seized control of Afrin, a Kurdish enclave in northwest Syria. Thousands of Kurds fled, many moving to the nearby Shahba region and families displaced from elsewhere in Syria moved into Afrin.
International organizations have recorded numerous human rights violations against Afrin’s Kurdish population since 2018, including killings, kidnappings, looting of agricultural crops, cutting down olive trees, and imposing taxes on farmers.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa visited Afrin in mid-February, and met with locals, the majority of whom were Kurds. He pledged to remove armed groups and put an end to the violations, a representative from ENKS who attended the meeting told Rudaw.
Hassan confirmed that the general security forces under the Syrian government in Damascus are present in the center of Afrin, while armed factions still control several other districts.
“The general security forces have informed residents of these districts that within 15-20 days, they will extend their control there as well, and no armed factions will remain. Residents should be able to return safely,” he said.
He added that the situation in Afrin “has significantly improved compared to previous years” and that the return of property to its original owners “is being resolved within a matter of days.”
“Armed factions are no longer interfering, and their presence is now limited to only a few areas,” he said.
Kurds returning to Afrin are no longer subjected to imprisonment or forced to pay levies. Displaced families returning to their homes had been forced to pay fees, ranging from $1,000 to $1,500.
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