Afrinpost
In a rare video interview published by the British newspaper “The Investigative Journal – TIJ”, a former armed man affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, called the “Free Syrian Army”, and named “Mahmoud Khalaf” revealed to the journalist Lindsay Snell that the “army” that he believed inonce, raped and mistreated women in Syria.
Khalaf, who covered his face with a black mask during an exclusive video interview conducted by TIJ during the Turkish occupation in the so-called “olive branch” operation of the Kurdish region of Afrin, in January 2018, said, “The rape of women in Afrin is a common practice among Free Syrian Army members. ”
Khalaf spoke of one example during the meeting, saying that “a FSA soldier saw a Syrian woman returning from the market and following her to her home and asking her father to marry her, but when the girl refused he threatened to kill her father, then he brought someone, who he claimed was a sheikh to hold the marriage ceremonies on paper, which was only a tool to justify the rape of a girl every day. We cannot call these men Free Syrian Army, but thieves or mercenaries. ”
Hundreds of civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been abandoned, while the Turkish occupation army and militia have looted the region.
Khalaf admitted, “Turkey launched air strikes during the FSA’s conduct of ground operations, and I was one of the fighters who went to Afrin. The Turks told us that we would fight the PKK and ISIS, but after we entered we realized that this was not true.”
Lindsay did another interview with Ahmed Yayla, the former head of the Turkish anti-terrorist police who served in the northwestern region of Syria in 2014.
Yayla stated that “Turkey knew that there were no ISIS fighters in Afrin, and that this claim was just a cover to interfere in the area, and Erdogan ordered the Turkish army to enter Afrin because he did not want the Kurdish People’s Protection Units YPG to be there,” and Yayla asserted that Turkey and the militias that they used who were The Free Syrian Army militia, looted Afrin.
Politicians and world leaders condemned Erdogan’s repeated interventions in Syria, who saw his actions as criminal, immoral and unlawful attempts to expand his hold on the region by occupying more land in war-stricken countries like Syria and Libya.
Erdogan’s motives, Julie Ward, British politician and a former member of the European Parliament, explained, “The attack on Afrin, which has been repeated elsewhere, is definitely part of Erdogan’s expansionist ambitions. Afrin has been a very successful and peaceful city, targeting a place like this and imposing mass displacement and killing civilians who They were fleeing for their lives, which is only a form of ethnic cleansing. ”
Women have joined the Syrian Kurdish resistance since 2011, and the group called the “Women’s Protection Units” YPJ, which includes mostly Kurdish women, consists of 24,000 fighters.
Afshin, a fighter and member of the units, stated that “when the Free Syrian Army occupies the land, it does not protect the people, but rather steals and mistreats women.”
Lindsey conducted an interview with Kamel Akef, a spokesman for the Center for Democratic Relations of the Democratic Society Movement, which was established to organize the society after the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, and during the interview, Akef commented that “Turkey is playing a dirty game, because its plan is not to occupy a specific region, Rather, control of all regions that were ruled by the Ottoman Empire. ”
