ALEPPO, Syria (North Press) – There is a street in Aleppo if you pass through it to go to your house or workplace, you might not reach the end of it. It has instilled terror in the hearts of children and adults. The people who risk passing through this street are called the “Newly born or the missing.”
In Early 2023, Muhammad al-Muhammad, a pseudonym for a 45-year-old man living in the Mahtat Baghdad neighborhood in the city of Aleppo, northwestern Syria, lost his job after being arrested for a while when he passed through a security checkpoint on the al-Awared road leading to Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood.
Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh are two neighborhoods in northern Aleppo city. They are semi-autonomous and run by a civil administration. They have been housing the Kurdish IDPs of Afrin who fled the violations and the invasion of the Turkish army and the Turkish-backed armed opposition factions since their control of Afrin in 2018.
Muhammad had to go daily to his work and then return to his home through that checkpoint. One day, he was arrested by the Syrian government forces stationed at the checkpoint, which is located on the Khaled bin al-Walid road leading to the entrance of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood from the northeast side.
Multiple branches
The checkpoint includes members from multiple branches of the government forces, the Military Security, Intelligence, and Fourth Division. These checkpoints are deployed on the outskirts of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood and al-Ashrafiyeh. Three government checkpoints (al-Awared, Maghsalat al-Jazira/al-Jazira carwash, al-Ashrafiyeh) separate them from the remaining neighborhoods in the city.
The two neighborhoods have become a safe haven for many people from both inside and outside the city of Aleppo. This has led to the activation of trade and industrial movement, but the Syrian government besiege them frequently.
Muhammad told North Press that the members in the checkpoint “terrorize us in frustrating methods not fit for a government authority. They make us feel as if we are dealing with gangs and bandits from the Fourth Division… asking where we are going and inspecting through our belongings as if we are crossing a border.”
Muhammad was arrested without a lawful reason. He was heading to work carrying 600,000 Syrian Pounds (SYP, which equals $70 ) and a sack of wood in the trunk of his car. He was referred to the civil court after staying 25 days in a prison of the Intelligence branch in Aleppo.
He was released on the first day of attending the court after proving he purchased the wood and that he carried the money to pay the wages of the workers in the carpenter shop he works in since 2000 in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood.
Since 2013 the Fourth Armored Division of the Syrian government has been besieging Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh. The neighborhoods were being targeted by the armed opposition factions before their defeat in 2016 when the government forces announced Aleppo’s “liberation from the armed opposition factions.”
Muhammad al-Ahmad, 50, from the Sayf al-Dawla neighborhood, said that Intelligence members detained his brother “for carrying a Xiaomi mobile phone. He entered the al-Ashrafiyeh neighborhood and has not come back.”
Al-Ahmad found out about his brother’s arrest via a phone call made by the Intelligence branch on January 9 for buying an uncustomed mobile phone from a shop in al-Ashrafiyeh.
Arbitrary arrests
Most of the people in government-held areas go to the areas held by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) to buy mobile phones, receive money transfers, or buy clothes “due to difference in prices and exchange rate of the US dollar.”
Al-Ahmad tried several times to release his brother before being referred to Damascus prisons “but to no avail, as they demanded large sums of money. Some asked for two gold coins, and others demanded $1,500, which no one in the city can afford to pay.”
Last week, security checkpoints tightened the measures against the population and prohibited the entry of diesel tankers into Sheikh Maqsoud and al-Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods. This led to the shutting down of electric generators. The people fear the closing of bread bakeries and factories if the embargo is prolonged.
About 100,000 individuals inhabit these neighborhoods, including Arabic and Christian families. The majority of the population are Kurds who were displaced from Afrin region in the northern countryside of Aleppo.
In 2018, the Turkish forces and their affiliated Syrian National Army (SNA) factions invaded Afrin, the Kurdish city in northwestern Syria, to push away the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) under the pretext of protecting “the national security of Turkey”. After 58 days of fierce clashes – from January 20 to March 18, 2018 – Turkey occupied the region, displacing about 300,000 people of the original inhabitants who have sought refuge in both Sheikh Maqsoud and al-Ashrafiyeh in addition to 40 villages and five IDP camps in the north of Aleppo.
Instead, the SNA militants brought their families after they were defeated in their held areas in different areas of Syria such as Homs, Rif Dimashq, Eastern Ghouta, … etc.
The YPG controlled Afrin military in 2012 after the withdrawal of the Syrian government forces.
An exclusive security source told North Press that the purpose of the forces stationed in the entrances and exits of the neighborhoods “is to prevent smuggling operations and follow up on illegal practices, including dealing with unlicensed remittance offices and individuals wanted in security branches.”
The source, who preferred to stay anonymous, added that “many offenses occur in areas outside the control of the government forces, such as selling unlicensed mobile phones and dealing with foreign currencies.”
The source justified that the members stationed at checkpoints are doing their job. He added that in March, “the al-Awared checkpoint stopped the largest smuggling operation into the eastern countryside, and 18 individuals were arrested in various smuggling operations, mostly in Sheikh Maqsoud and al-Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods.”