AFRIN, Syria (North Press) – Shiyar Saydo, a pseudonym for a 48-year-old man from Afrin, in northern Aleppo region, had a simple dream: He wanted to enhance the production of his land’s olive harvest this year in order to buy clothes and sell them at a shop managed by his daughter in order to improve the family’s financial situation.
The dream did not come to fruition; it only came further out of reach after the February 6 earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey.
On Feb. 6, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey and Syria, killing hundreds in both countries and causing wide destruction and displacement of thousands of people.
According to Saydo, Afrin’s Turkish-backed Local Council seized his land in order to build a camp for the quake-affected people. They cut down trees to make space and spread the ground with layers of white sand to set up tents.
Saydo told North Press, “The machinery of the Local Council cut down 60 trees spread over 500 square meters. Some were stolen, but I managed to collect some and took them to my house, fearing that they might get stolen, too.”
The dream of improving his financial situation was lost. He said, “After the earthquake, the council seized my land and turned it into a new settlement which only relatives and friends of the council’s members or the leaders of the Syrian opposition factions are allowed to enter.”
Many in Afrin lost their houses as a result of the earthquake. Most of them set up random tents on the outskirts of cities and towns to survive the earthquake and its equally terrifying aftershock.
Radwan Hanan (a pseudonym), 47, from Afrin, told North Press that most people who fled their houses to tents lacked heating in the cold weather.
The poor coordination between aid organizations led to them cutting down olive trees to use as firewood, without considering the importance of those trees to their owners, according to Hanan.
He pointed to trees and the way they were cut, saying, “there is a tree cut down from the stem, another with no branches, and a tree that ended up in someone’s stove, without considering its owner’s grief.”
“I started to check the trees surrounding the al-Ashrafiyeh neighborhood. Every day, I find trees cut down for firewood by the people staying in the camps on my land without my permission,” Hanan added.
This happened not only to Hanan but to the majority of the original population surrounding the city. He added that these trees are of “special significance for us that the takers will not understand.”
In Jan. 2018, Turkish forces and Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, aka Syrian National Army (SNA), launched the so-called “Olive Branch” military operation against Afrin Region to push away the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) under the pretext of protecting “Turkish national security.”
The operation caused the displacement of about 300.000 of the original inhabitants of the Kurds of Afrin who have been taking shelter in 42 villages and five camps in Aleppo northern countryside, locally known as Shahba region, since then.
There are about 16.000 displaced families from Afrin distributed over 42 villages and towns in Shahba region, in addition to 1.870 families, comprising 7.500 individuals, now living in the camps of Barkhodan, Sardam, Afrin, al-Awda, and Shahba, according to the Social Affairs and Labor Board of Afrin, currently operating in Aleppo northern countryside.