Government forces tighten grip on Kurdish-majority areas in Aleppo
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Syrian government forces employ different measures to tighten the screws on residents of the Kurdish-majority areas in the city of Aleppo, a source said on Thursday.
The government’s Fourth Division – an elite force led by Maher al-Assad, brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – has intensified its siege on the Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh in the city of Aleppo under the pretext of protecting Syria’s economic security, the source said.
Recently, the Fourth Division has deployed informants in front of jewelry, and remittance and currency exchange shops, in addition to mobile phone stores in both neighborhoods, the source added.
The source explained that these informants take pictures of residents and send them to an office of the Forth Division responsible for the division’s checkpoints at both neighborhoods. These checkpoints, situated at the entrances of both areas, arrest citizens who have been documented by the informants to carry foreign currency or undisclosed merchandise when they exit any of the aforementioned areas.
The source added the Fourth Division in Aleppo implemented this measure after observing a rise in bribery incidents at these checkpoints related to the import and export of money and goods both in and out of the abovementioned areas. Another reason, he said, is the recent decline in funding of the Fourth Division.
He noted that the division has changed the personnel serving at these checkpoints.
North Press received information about some citizens who were arrested upon being photographed by the Fourth Division informants.
Both neighborhoods house many IDPs from the city of Afrin and its countryside who were displaced after Turkish forces, along with their affiliated armed Syrian opposition factions, occupied the region in March 2018 following a military operation dubbed ‘Olive Branch’.
Anwar Qassem, a pseudonym for an IDP from Afrin residing in Ashrafiyeh, revealed to North Press that he was arrested and that the checkpoint personnel confiscated $4,500 in his possession. “This money was intended to cover the expenses of my son’s surgery and was sent by my brother.”
He said that many residents were arrested and their belongings were confiscated without any clear reasons.
“Another young man was arrested alongside me, and an amount of $700 he was carrying was confiscated,” he told North Press.
He noted that the checkpoint personnel also detained another young man and confiscated his cellphone, while an amount of $200 was seized from yet another one.
By Shella Abdulhalim