SNA in north Syria committed multiple abuses against civilians in 2023.
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – People in the Turkish-occupied areas in northern Syria were subjected in 2023 to abuses including arbitrary arrest, disappearance and torture by the Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, aka the Syrian National Army (SNA), the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday in its World Report 2024.
The report mentioned that scores of people were subjected to abuses included arbitrary arrest and detention, forcible disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, sexual violence, and unfair military trials. All these with impunity.
The HRW added that the SNA factions continued to violate civilians’ housing, land, and property rights through forceful seizure of homes, lands, and businesses. The report indicated that following the Turkish military operations in northern Syria, during which it occupied the three majority-Kurdish cities of Afrin, Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad, “hundreds of thousands of Syrians who fled their homes remain displaced and dispossessed.”
It is noteworthy that in August 2023, the U.S Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Turkish-backed Suleiman Shah Brigade and Hamza Division, as well as their leaders, Mohammad Hussein al-Jassem, Walid Hussein al-Jassem, and Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr for committing serious human rights abuses against those residing in Afrin Region in northwest Syria, particularly the Kurds.
In 2018, Turkey and its affiliated SNA factions launched the so-called Olive Branch military operations on Afrin Region and occupied it after two months of clashes with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), and in 2019, invaded and occupied both Sere Kaniye and Tel Abyad following an operation dubbed Peace Spring.
The HRW report added that the airstrikes launched by the Turkish forces led to civilian deaths and injuries. It also noted to water cuts by Turkey to the areas of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) saying that it “jeopardizes the right to water of nearly 1 million people in al-Hasakeh city and its surroundings.”
As for the economic crisis sweeping the country, the HRW said that by mid-2023, over 90 percent of the Syrians lived below the poverty line, at least 12 million could not access or afford enough quality food, and at least 15 million required some form of humanitarian aid to survive.
“More than 600,000 children were chronically malnourished. More than 12 years of war have decimated Syria’s civilian infrastructure and services, severely affecting access to shelter, health care, electricity, education, public transportation, water, and sanitation,” the report read.
Additionally, the Syrian government continued to impose severe restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid in the government-held areas and elsewhere in the country and to divert aid to punish those who express dissent, according to the report.
The report mentioned the issue of the displaced people in the AANES-held areas saying, “In northeast Syria, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people live in overstretched and under-resourced camps and temporary shelters, some of which do not receive sustained or sufficient aid.”
It also noted to the issue of refugees, saying that 12.3 million have been forced to flee the country, according to OCHA, with 6.7 million currently internally displaced across the country since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011.
“Against a backdrop of anti-refugee sentiment,” the report read, “Türkiye deported thousands of Syrians to northern Syria in 2023. Turkish border guards indiscriminately shot at Syrian civilians on the border with Syria as well as tortured and used excessive force against asylum seekers and migrants trying to cross into Türkiye.”
“Between April and May, Lebanese Armed Forces summarily deported thousands of Syrians, including unaccompanied children, back to Syria. Lebanon hosts more than an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees who fled since 2011, making it the country with the highest population of refugees per capita in the world,” the HRW report indicated.