AFRIN, Syria (North Press) – Zaineb Umm Adnan, from northern Syria’s Afrin, is unemployed despite being a university graduate, while unqualified settlers brought in from outside of Afrin took all job opportunities in her city’s institutes and schools.
She said that what annoyed her most was the presence of teachers and staff working in Afrin schools “who do not even know how to read and write properly.”
Turkey and its affiliated opposition groups took control of Afrin on March 18, 2018, and the education sector is now controlled by the Turkish-backed Syrian Interim Government.
Umm Adnan said “The schools’ administration in Afrin is hiring high school graduates who have no teaching experience and ignore the most qualified.”
“This is in addition to hiring those who have personal relationships with the school administration’s staffs, not to mention the offices that forge certificates,” she added.
She wondered: “How will this generation succeed if its teachers are high school graduates who only care about their salaries at the end of the month, while those who have university certificates are sitting at home?”
A study published by Middle East Directions Programme in 2019 said that Turkey imposed a quiet demographic change by replacing the indigenous Kurdish population of the region with a new displaced Arab population.
Samer Saleh, a graduate of the Faculty of History at the University of Aleppo from Afrin, said that he was shocked when the school administration dismissed him from the school in which he was teaching.
He told North Press, “I worked for a semester in a school, and in the second semester I was surprised by the decision to dismiss and replace me with a relative of the school manager, even though he was a first-year university student from the Damascus countryside.”
After an inquiry and investigation through his teacher’s friends, Samer realized that the one who replaced him had obtained a forged university degree.
Samer stopped looking for a new job within his university specialization, and began growing vegetables and selling them in the city market.
The Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018 displaced more than 300,000 people to areas held by the Syrian government and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The percentage of the indigenous Kurdish population in Afrin decreased to 34.8%, down from 97% before 2018, according to data reported by the Human Rights Organization in Afrin.
Rashid Abu Mahfouz, a resident of Afrin, said that Turkish-backed armed groups are reducing the role of the indigenous population and putting settlers in control of the fate of local residents.
“The area has turned into a spot of corruption; the armed groups are acting as if it is the land of their fathers,” Abu Mahfouz added.
A report issued by the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry on Syria on Tuesday, documented war crimes committed by Turkish-backed armed opposition groups against civilians in the Afrin region.
The UN report documented multiple accounts of the looting of Kurdish properties throughout the Afrin region and their seizure by members of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army in a coordinated manner.