Afrinpost – Special
The militia leadership of the so-called “Third Squad” of the Islamic militias affiliated with the Turkish occupation and the Muslim Brotherhood organization, known as the “Syrian National Army”, issued a circular in which it requested all its groups located inside the city of Afrin to vacate its headquarters within a maximum period of a week without knowing additional details, except More than 15 militia affiliated with it refused to evacuate their headquarters in Al-Ashrafieh neighborhood in the center of Afrin region, according to the “Afrinpost” correspondent.
Perhaps the face of it suggests a positive step, in terms of evacuating the city from the militia military manifestations, which have exhausted the Kurdish people of Afrin, and even settlers who collectively demanded the militias to evacuate the city after a series of security incidents.
Settlers demanding the exit of the militias from the city
After the clashes that erupted between the elements of “Al-Hamzah Squad” militia, “Jaish Al-Islam” and “Ahrar al-Sham” militia in Afrin on the 28th of last May, against the background of armed men from Al-Hamzah militia attacking a settler in a grocery store, and killing a settler and two children others were injured. The next day, a delegation from Eastern Ghouta settlers went to meet the Turkish governor in the city of Afrin. The delegation included the Shura Council of Arbin, the political body for Damascus and its countryside, representatives of civil and independent actors, and those they called “the guardians of blood.” However, the delegation did not meet the governor because he was back then in Hatay state, so the delegation presented its demands to the deputy governor and included:
1- Punishing the killers and handing them over to the Turkish authorities exclusively, and referring them to the Turkish judiciary, since the region in which the crime was committed is supervised by the Turkish authorities.
2- Paying the blood money for the dead family and taking care of the treatment and expenses of the wounded, and sponsoring the children of a dead person called “Abu Firas”.
3- Emptying residential areas from the military headquarters or removing military headquarters outside the cities.
4- Supporting the civil police, and formally assigning them to control security and checkpoints, and expanding their powers to pursue corrupt members of any faction.
5- Activating a judiciary with open powers to decide on all issues that affect the security and safety of citizens in the region.
The governor promised to respond to all the demands, but indicated that he “does not have the powers to approve them, because they need the decision of the leadership in Ankara and he will raise the demands immediately.”
The deputy governor asserted that “the demand to remove the military forces from the residential neighborhoods is under consideration with those whom they named partners in Syria (meaning the Muslim Brotherhood militia) for some time.”
On 1/6/2020, a meeting was held by phone, which included a delegation of Damascus residents, with the governor of Afrin, in the presence of the head of the local council in Afrin, and the meeting lasted for three hours. During the meeting, there was talk about the violations against civilians carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood militia, and fighting between them, and points were agreed upon, including: arresting the criminal who caused the recent events in the city and those with him and holding them accountable and closing All-Hamzat headquarters that was stormed by the demonstrators, and the headquarters will be transferred to a university later, and a request to remove the militias from Afrin, may take place later, but not during this period, and the governor asked the delegation to inform him if the previous problem was not addressed, and the governor emphasized the improvement of services and approval of the opening of the College of Engineering in Afrin. And to prevent civilians from being evicted from their homes, and any militia that does so will be held responsible.
The removal of the militias from the city was a step under consideration by the occupation authorities before it was a demand of the settlers, in the context of moving to the next step of consolidating the occupation and beautifying its image.
The coalition claims to be the decision maker
On 7/12/2020, the so-called new “head of the coalition” appointed by the Turkish occupation, called “Nasr al-Hariri”, claimed that they were about to expel armed militias from the cities of “Afrin” and “Sari Kaniyeh / Ras Al-Ain”, and published in a tweet: “ Within the sacred function of the National Army in maintaining security and stability, defending borders against any external threat, confronting terrorist or separatist organizations, avoiding contact with civilians, and activating the military police, the decision to leave the military formations from the cities of Ras al-Ain and Afrin is an important step in the right direction.
In this context, the “Sultan Murad Squad” militia issued a decision to expel its military headquarters from Afrin to outside the city, after a similar decision in the city of Serêkaniyê / Ras al-Ain, north of Hasaka. On 7/11/2020, the “Sultan Murad” militia issued a statement ordering the group to “leave all headquarters from within the city of Afrin and establish camps outside the city within a maximum period of three days, as far as the claim.
The first steps in implementing the decision were rejected
On 07/14/2020, the “Military Police” militia removed the checkpoint of the “Al-Shamiya Front” militia at the Vin restaurant, and another checkpoint at “Mem u Zin” coffee store. The Military Police militia withdrew weapons from the militants, without the militants being able to resist them, which clearly indicates that the Turkish decision came in the context of improving the image of the occupation, which has been widely exposed in recent times. On the other hand, the people of the gunmen fear the living conditions outside the city, especially since the gunmen used to make a living on theft and looting inside the city of Afrin.
In June, the militias, except for the “civil police” and the “military police”, were informed to hand over their headquarters and leave the city, within a three-month deadline. The necessity of the decision to start with was rejected, and as a result, short-lived clashes erupted between the “Military Police” militia and the “Al-Hamzah Squad” militia, and an armed clash occurred between them in the town of “Turinde / Al-Zarifa”.
An attempt to embellish the occupation
The main task entrusted to the militias was to harass the Kurdish people and push them out of the region, and those who remained were exhausted with royalties, arbitrary fines, looting, theft of seasons and fines, as well as kidnappings, ransom demands, and arrest on charges of working for the Autonomous Administration previously or just having a relationship with it, and all these violations occur with the knowledge of the occupation authorities and the security institutions, but rather with the directives of the Turkish intelligence itself, and for this reason all complaints were neglected and the lawsuits filed in cases of murder, kidnapping and all acts of theft and seizure of property were lost.
In this way, the process of removing the militias from the city comes as a embellishing process for the occupation, or in other words to consolidate the occupation and improve its conditions, while ignoring the fact that the occupation is the main cause of all that happens in terms of chaos, fighting and security incidents, and that it is the occupation who leads the armed militias directly. Settlers were brought to the region from the Damascus countryside and Al-Ghouta in the context of the Russian-Turkish agreement, and they were used in the process of demographic change.
