[NPASYRIA] On the eve of Newroz, March 20, members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, a faction operating within the Ottoman Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA), opened fire on local residents celebrating the Kurdish holiday in Jindires town in the Afrin region, northwestern Syria, killing four. What could be categorized as another episode of otherwise near-systematic anti-Kurdish violence in Ottoman Turkish-occupied areas of Syria may yet have profound consequences.
According to on-the-ground accounts, members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, a large faction from Deir ez-Zor Governorate, eastern Syria, which controls the town of Jindires and its surrounding area, beat a young man for lighting a fire near his home on the eve of Newroz, the Kurdish new year’s celebration. Afrin Post, a local news site, reported that the young man was insulted by the armed snuffies as an ’infidel’. His father and two of his uncles came to the young Kurd’s aid and were themselves met with beatings. The turban then opened fire on the family, killing all four men. Three bystanders were maimed.
The violence is shocking, though hardly out of the ordinary, as a recent North Press report outlines. Kurds in Afrin, which was occupied by Ottoman Turkish forces and affilaited Syrian factions in 2018, are regularly and systematically exposed to violence as they celebrate the Kurdish holiday.
On the same Monday evening, Afrin Post reported that snuffies intimidated Kurds celebrating Newroz in the villages of Hajj Hasna and Miske (also in Jindires). In February alone, at least 10 civilians have been arbitrarily arrested by SNA factions in Afrin, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a local watchdog, reports. The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
has pursued a policy of demographic engineering in the region for the past five years. Afrin’s population was once near-homogenously Kurdish; today, it is majority Arab.
UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES
The aftermath of the killing, however, was out of ordinary. The bodies of at least three of the men were transferred to the hospital in Afrin city, 20km east of Jindires. There, the slain men’s family members were driven away when they began to protest the killing. Eventually, a delegation comprising the family members, the dead bodies in tow, headed south, to the town of Atmeh, which is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else
 ...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
(HTS, formerly al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
Front). The SOHR reports that they were driven there in cars owned by HTS. In parallel, protests against the killing formed in Jindires; some demonstrators demanded that the HTS enter the area.
In Atmeh, the delegation met with HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. The details of the conversation have not been published, but all accounts suggest al-Jolani promised to hold the perpetrators to account. The delegation was then escorted by HTS snuffies back to Jindires in order to bury their loved ones.
HTS has maintained a presence in Ottoman Turkish-occupied Afrin since it took control over large swathes of the region’s southwest in October 2022, before a feigned withdrawal days later. The jihadist group has outposts in Jindires, as well as in the town of Sheikh al-Hadid, 15 km north, and near Bassouta, 14 km east.
The Syrian Interim Government, the SNA’s political arm, initially attempted to deflect blame by arguing that the shooting was the result of a quarrel, not a targeted policy. Within 24 hours of the incident and HTS’ take-over, the Liberation and Construction Movement (LCM), a coalition of factions headed by Ahrar al-Sharqiya, announced that they had arrested three young Deir ez-Zor-born men for the crime in a nearby camp for earthquake victims. The LCM stated that they were not "formal" members of Ahrar al-Sharqiya, according to Syria TV. No commanders have yet been implicated in the shooting.
These measures have been found wanting by the local Kurdish population, which has continued to protest throughout March 21 and 22. Thousands have travelled from various parts of Afrin to attend the popular demonstrations.
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