Iraq News Now

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Amid global silence about abuses committed against the Kurdish population in Afrin, Turkish-backed Syrian militias have stepped up a campaign of arrests and kidnapping for ransom, according to a conflict monitor. Several politicians are among those arrested – drawing condemnation from civil and rights institutions in northern Syria who have demanded Turkey intervene. 

Hussein Ibish, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Syria (KDP-S) in Afrin and also head of the Kurdish National Council (ENKS) in the Kurdish enclave in northwestern Syria, was arrested by Turkish-backed forces on Sunday. 

He was picked up “amid popular dissatisfaction with the arrests and hundreds of previous kidnappings and detentions,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Thursday. 

Ibish’s party, ENKS, is in opposition to the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Rojava – the Kurdish autonomous region of northern Syria. Turkey considers the PYD and the armed People’s Protection Units (YPG) branches of the PKK and framed their early 2018 military incursion into Afrin as a counter-terror operation. 

ENKS condemned Turkey’s offensive and has called for Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies to be expulsed from Afrin. 

The reason for Ibish’s arrest is not clear. 

A day earlier, an ENKS colleague of Ibish, Mohammed Ali Reza was arrested and then released only to be re-arrested on Wednesday, according to the Observatory. 

A group of civil and rights organizations including women’s groups, culture centres, and health care workers in Rojava issued a statement condemning the “arbitrary arrests.”

ENKS on Tuesday called on the Turkish government to put “pressure on the militias to end its violations and abuses against people and their property and immediately release our friend Hussein Ibish.”

Turkey has come under fire for abuses committed by Syrian militias under its watch. 

“Makeshift justice mechanisms of armed groups and terrorist organizations also unlawfully detained or kidnapped civilians in Idlib and Afrin for expressing political dissent or for ransom,” head of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria Paulo Sergio Pinheiro told the UN Human Rights Council on March 12. 

His Commission documented “pervasive” lawlessness in Afrin since the Kurdish forces were ousted in March 2018.

The Observatory reported that “barely a day passes without violations” by the Syrian militias – including “seizing property, arbitrary arrests, kidnapping, theft and torture.”

The Syria factions have carried out kidnappings for ransom “after international silence that has given power to Turkey in Afrin,” the Observatory stated.