The autonomous Kurdish region of Northern Syria is getting more unsafe

The Society for Threatened Peoples has sent an appeal to the President of the United Nations Security Council, Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, hoping that it will be possible to prevent an imminent attack by the Turkish army and its allies, radical Islamists from Syria, against the predominantly Kurdish region of Afrin in the north-west of Syria. “The people of Afrin are living in constant fear of attacks by the Turkish army. Its unpredictable attacks against individual targets is creating a hardly bearable situation of insecurity and tension among the many refugees in the region,” reported Kamal Sido, the STP’s Middle East Consultant, in Göttingen on Tuesday. Further, he warned: “Intensified attacks would lead to a new mass exodus to Europe.”

The human rights activist is deeply concerned about the international media reports regarding a possible deal between Turkey, Iran, and Russia, according to which Turkey should drop the Islamists in the Syrian province of Idlib in the west of Afrin. In return, Russia would tolerate a Turkish attack against the Kurds in Afrin. Most recently, on August 16, the Turkish military carried out artillery attacks on the surroundings of the Kurdish village of Jalbul, near the refugee camp Robar, where several thousand families from North Aleppo are now living. A total number of 30 civilians from Afrin lost their lives in attacks by Turkish military in the period from 2011 to 2017, and at least 35 people were injured. About 15,000 olive trees were destroyed, and grain fields were set on fire in the summer months.

“The international community, and especially the UN Security Council, must try to put an end to the Turkish missile and artillery attacks against Afrin,” the Alawi-Kurdish President of the Canton of Afrin, Hevi Mustafa, stated in a phone call with Sido. Muhiddin Sheikhali, Head of the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party in Syria, stated: “The people of Afrin and their autonomous self-administration aren’t a threat to Turkey. On the contrary, we would like to establish good neighborly relations – and we are hoping that the Turkish government will finally open up the border crossings for humanitarian aid and border trade.”

From the Kurdish people’s point of view, the region of Afrin with its 366 villages and seven cities is to be seen as a canton. There are almost one million people living there – about 50 percent of them refugees, mainly from nearby Aleppo. The city of Afrin, which had up to 80,000 inhabitants before the civil war, is located 25 kilometers to the south of the Syrian-Turkish border. The canton is self-governed. Most of the Kurds in the Canton are Sunni Muslims, but there is also an Alawi-Kurdish village with about 5,000 inhabitants – and there are several thousand Yazidis, especially near the canton’s external border.