SNA in Syria’s Afrin goes ahead investing quake disaster to steal aid
AFRIN, Syria (North Press) – Disaster of the Feb. 6 earthquake has given a favorable opportunity for the Turkish-backed Syrian armed opposition factions, also known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), in areas northwest Syria, especially Afrin, to make fortune, exploiting aid meant for the people affected by the earthquake.
Recently, talks have increased about establishing temporary shelters under the pretext of housing those affected by the earthquake on transit routes on which international aid convoys travel a step many saw as another way to steal the aid since they also accommodate people who have not been affected by the quake.
Kamiran Ali, 39, a pseudonym for a resident of the town of Jindires in the west of Afrin, said the [Turkish-backed] local council in the town, in the first days of the earthquake, hurried to establish a temporary shelter in a driving school on Jindires-Afrin route.
Ali added the council, through establishing the shelter, aimed at “getting around the disaster and investing it to steal life-saving aid provided by organizations operating in the region, and international and local ones for the people plagued by the earthquake.”
He went further saying that the council placed the shelter in the most adequate site for stealing, so it can convert the support provided to people in the stricken areas to the shelter’s residents, most of whom are not affected by the earthquake, in order to steal all they can of the provided aid.
Abu al-Aina’ al-Deri, a commander within Ahrar al-Sharqiya, an SNA faction, established a shelter housing his gunmen in the town of Jindires for the purpose of “stealing humanitarian aid” by using fake names, a local source told North Press on Feb. 25.
Al-Deri takes NGOs to the shelter to register the names of people unaffected by the earthquake in order to get aid, which is already in short supply, the source added.
The stealing was not limited to aid only but also to robbing properties of devastated and cracked houses, whose residents fled and resorted to tents and neighboring villages, according to Ibo Abdurrahman, 36, who spoke using a pseudonym.
Unknown individuals infiltrated into Abdurrahman’s house and stole all his properties and $500 he had saved after he was forced to leave his quake-affected house, fleeing with his family to the town of Sharan north of Aleppo.
However, when he came back to the house to bring some clothes for his children, there was the surprise to see his house was stolen, but he did not care because “those who have not learned from death, nothing will curb them from stealing.”
Rinas Shamio, a pseudonym for a quake-affected lady, has resorted to a tent placed on al-Mazot Street west of Afrin for fear of being trapped under rubble of her house that sustained cracks due to aftershocks.
Shamio told North Press that after she and her children came to the tent and after erecting many other tents for residents and settlers near her tent “the official responsible of the newly established camp registered names of those affected by the earthquake in order to obtain aid for them from the organizations arriving in the region.”
She added that the official “registered more than ten tents and raised them under fake names to organizations to be for people affected by the earthquake and that they had lost their possessions and were drastically hit thus he can obtain support in order to steal and sell it for his own interest.”
Shamio stresses that these acts happen not only in the camp where she resides but in most of the camps that have been established following the earthquake with the aim to steal the aid and exploit it for the SNA officials’ interests.
Humanitarian organizations withdrew from the town of Soran in the northern countryside of Aleppo due to stealing humanitarian aid meant to be delivered to Syrians hit by the earthquake.
An exclusive source told North Press a number of local and international organizations announced suspending their work in the town until further notice after a group of the Turkish-backed Levant Front stole relief aid.
The earthquakes in Turkey and Syria on February 6 killed over 50.000 people, including over 6.000 in Syria alone. Thousands of residents in northwest Syria have been made homeless; millions have been displaced.