Looting by rebels in Afrin slammed
afrin — Turkish-led forces secured the city of Afrin on Monday after a deadly two-month assault that dealt the Kurds a major blow and could reshape the region.
Opposition groups supporting the capture of Afrin from the Kurds condemned looting carried out by Ankara’s Syrian proxies when they seized the northern city on Sunday.
The most significant control of territory change in Syria this year coincided with the regime’s grinding down of Eastern Ghouta, a sixyear-old rebel bastion near Damascus.
President Bashar Al Assad visited reconquered areas there on Sunday to hail his troops’ advances, which led tens of thousands of civilians to flee to government areas after years of siege.
The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) could do little when Syrian Arab fighters backed by Nato’s second-largest army thrust into Afrin, nearly two months into a massive assault on the region.
The fighters, mostly former antiAssad rebels, celebrated their victory by destroying the statue of Kurdish hero Kawa and looting shops and other property.
The pillaging drew widespread condemnation, including from Syrian opposition groups supporting the Turkish intervention.
“The looting and stealing of private and public property is a crime,” said Mohamed Alloush, a key figure in the Jaish Al Islam rebel group.
“All those who took part in this decadence need to have their hands slapped hard.”
An AFP reporter said looting was still taking place on Monday, with fighters joking at checkpoints about their spoils. The Britain-based Syria Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, which relies on an extensive network of sources across Syria, also said pillaging was still under way.
The mosaic of factions hired by Turkey from Idlib province and elsewhere to wage the offensive were spray-painting their groups’ names on Afrin shop fronts and walls.
They also picked through debris for bombs and unexploded ordnance after explosions killed at least 13 of them on Sunday.
The command of the operation Ankara launched on January 20 appeared to be rotating some fighters out in order to bring a police holding force. Turkey, which has threatened to push deeper into Syria, said its operation was aimed at securing the north of the country to allow the three million Syrian refugees on its soil to return.
Ankara was also worried that the Kurds, who control some 30 per cent of Syrian territory, would consolidate a statelet stretching all along the border.
Nicholas Heras, a security fellow at the Centre for a New American Security, said taking Afrin was a success for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who shrugged off international concern to press on with the operation. —
The looting and stealing of private and public property is a crime. All those who took part in this decadence need to have their hands slapped hard. Mohamed Alloush, Member of Jaish Al Islam group