Turkey is unleashing one other ugly jihad in Syria.
On November 27, jihadist terror teams — led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant; HTS) — launched a coordinated assault on Aleppo Governorate in northwestern Syria, reduce off the primary freeway from Damascus to Aleppo, captured and killed dozens of Syrian Army troopers, promised mass executions and beheadings “in entrance of TV cameras,” and seized management of a army base and a number of other villages.
Meanwhile, the jihadists posted movies on social media displaying them capturing a number of coaching plane within the Kuweires Air Base close to Aleppo.
The metropolis of Aleppo is now successfully below the management of jihadist teams. Tens of hundreds of Christians, Kurds and different minorities are at risk of extermination. Videos of jihadists abducting Kurdish ladies have additionally surfaced on social media.
The X account “Babak Taghvaee – The Crisis Watch” reported:
“These painful scenes are harking back to the horror of October 7 in Israel. Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists of Turkey, have captured a whole bunch of Kurdish ladies in Tall Rafaat, Syria. They are already threatening to promote them as intercourse slaves. The precise factor they did to Yazidi ladies in 2014.”
The X account Nioh Berg famous:
‘Whether it is jihadists in Gaza or in Syria, all of them have one morbid factor in frequent:
“Taking intercourse slaves.”
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a part of an alliance of terrorist teams energetic in Syria and with hyperlinks to the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda, was previously generally known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and served as Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. The group is a jihadist group that upholds Sharia regulation, occupies Syria’s Idlib space and cooperates with the Turkish army and Turkish-backed teams in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the chief of ISIS, was additionally concerned in HTS’s formation.
In 2018, the US State Department added HTS to the Jabhat al-Nusra’s current designation as a overseas terrorist group.
The Turkish media experiences that the jihadist group named “Syrian National Army” (SNA), which calls its ongoing onslaught towards Aleppo “Operation Dawn of Freedom,” took management of Kuweires Air Base, in addition to three villages and a hill in Tel Rifaat, reducing off the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces’ provide line between Tel Rifaat and Manbij.
Turkey, because the SNA was formally established in 2017 below its auspices, gives funding, coaching and army help to it. The SNA was beforehand known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Basically, it’s a coalition of armed Islamist teams working in Syria.
Nadine Maenza, the Former Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), posted on X:
“”MISSING FROM MEDIA REPORTS ON ALEPPO: ‘Rebels’ taking metropolis are NOT Freedom Fighters however Turkish-backed Islamists with identical ideology as ISIS that focus on Yazidis, Christians and different spiritual and ethnic minorities.
“The USCIRF experiences they ‘goal spiritual minorities, particularly Yazidis, for rape, assassination, kidnapping for ransom, confiscation of property, and desecration of cemeteries and locations of worship.’
USCIRF Factsheet says Hay’s Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) ‘stays a potent supply of a Salafi-jihadism that restricts the spiritual freedom of non-conforming Sunni Muslims and threatens the property, security, and existence of non secular minority teams similar to Alawites, Christians, and Druze.’ They additionally report ‘torture, pressured disappearance, rape and different sexual violence, and killing in detention.’
“Expect the identical horrific crimes from these Turkish-backed Islamist militias (together with HTS) that now we have seen from them in different components of Syria. They realized from the worldwide response to ISIS to not make a direct public show of this violence.
“…. [A]reas below authorities management are additionally horrible as they endure ‘egregious human rights abuses similar to arbitrary detention and torture, enforced disappearance.’ The one brilliant spot in Syria? The Northeast. Read about how they constructed self-governance that protects spiritual freedom with half the leaders being ladies.”
Aleppo and its surrounding areas are residence to a number of ethnic and spiritual minorities similar to Kurds, Christians and Druze. A jihadist takeover means both outright massacres or enslavement for these communities. Reports from the bottom present jihadists have began kidnapping Kurdish ladies. The terrorists are heard informing the kidnapped ladies: “You are pigs, enemies of Allah. Cover your hair!”
The X account “Greco-Levantines WorldWide” reported:
“This is how Turkish-backed rebels are treating Kurdish ladies in Aleppo. If that is how they deal with Muslim ladies who do not put on a headband, what could be anticipated for Christian ladies?”
Meanwhile, the jihadist forces are advancing. Mazloum Abdi, chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, stated his forces are “coordinating with all related events in Syria” to soundly evacuate the individuals of Tal Rifaat and Shahba to Rojava (an space in Syria managed by Kurdish forces) after assaults by Turkish-backed jihadists disrupted the SDF’s hall.
The authorities of Turkey has supported jihadists in Syria because the starting of the civil battle in 2011. Turkey has allowed Islamists to make use of the Turkish territory to cross the border to Syria to affix terrorist organizations there. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point experiences on different Syria-related jihad actions in Turkey:
“According to Israel’s army intelligence chief in January 2014, al-Qa’ida-linked teams allegedly have at the very least three bases in Turkey. A report in al-Monitor instructed that, previous to 2013, alleged fighters had been thought to remain at particular inns, such because the Ottoman and Narin inns, within the Turkish metropolis of Antakya. In July 2012, a six-minute video titled Turkish Mujahidin Who Are Conducting Jihad in Syria, launched by a Syrian opposition group, confirmed a bunch of fighters apparently situated in Syria talking in Turkish and calling for Muslims to battle Syrian authorities forces.
“One overseas fighter is named ‘Yilmaz,’ a Dutch-Turkish former soldier offering firearms coaching to jihadists.”
Turkey has additionally occupied components of northern Syria, together with Afrin and Idlib, by means of native jihadist teams. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — which varieties an integral a part of the US-led battle towards ISIS however which the Turkish authorities lists as a “terrorist group” — took management of Afrin after Syrian authorities forces withdrew from town in 2012. De facto autonomous Kurdish rule was then declared. In 2015, a US-allied group, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the YPG is a member, was fashioned.
Turkey has focused US allies in Syria by means of army incursions such because the 2018 “Operation Olive Branch” and 2019 “Operation Peace Spring.”
“Operation Olive Branch,” in Afrin, started on January 20, 2018, and concluded on March 18, 2018, with the defeat of the YPG by the hands of the Turkish army and its Islamist auxiliaries. Turkey’s Islamist allies in Afrin have since dedicated many crimes towards civilians, particularly Christians, Yazidis and Kurds. These crimes embody extortion, detention, abduction, rape, torture and homicide. Investigative journalist Jonathan Spyer has documented a few of these crimes. “[US] State Department, UN and NGO experiences cite a sample of grave human rights violations, assaults and concentrating on of girls,” he wrote.
The US State Department’s “2020 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Syria” said:
“ISIS and armed opposition forces such because the Turkish-backed SNA [Syrian National Army], reportedly arrested, detained, tortured, killed, and in any other case abused quite a few Kurdish activists and people in addition to members of the SDF in the course of the yr. The COI [Country of Origin Information] reported a constant, discernible sample of abuses by SNA forces towards Kurdish residents in Afrin and Ras al-Ayn, together with “[c]ases of detentions, killings, beatings, and abductions, along with widespread looting and appropriation of civilian houses.
“The COI, STJ [Syrians for Truth and Justice], the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), and different screens documented a pattern of TSO [the Turkey-supported opposition] kidnappings of girls in Afrin, the place some ladies remained lacking for years.”
The authorities of Turkey is the ability behind Al-Qaeda associates in Idlib such because the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies:
“In May 2018, the group [HTS] was added to the State Department’s current designation of its predecessor, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Today, HTS could be considered a comparatively localized Syrian terrorist group, which retains a Salafi-jihadist ideology regardless of its public break up from al-Qaeda in 2017.”
A 2021 examine by the Middle East Institute particulars how Turkey and HTS are collectively occupying and exploiting components of northwest Syria:
“The most important shift in HTS financial coverage occurred in July 2017, when the group took over the Bab al-Hawa crossing, one of many greatest sources of income in NW [north-west] Syria and a very strategic acquisition when it comes to the connection with Turkey.”
In January 2018, the Watad Petroleum Company was fashioned in HTS-occupied northwest Syria, and granted unique rights to import oil derivatives and gasoline from Turkey into the world. In June 2020, HTS started changing the Syrian pound with the Turkish lira, indexing the costs of products to the lira. The Turkish authorities, by means of its huge financial help to the group, thereby turned a lifeline for the jihadist HTS.
The seize of Aleppo by Turkey-backed, Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces is terrifying information for Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and everybody else whom jihadists understand as their prey. If one is celebrating the advance of those Islamists invading components of Syria, one is celebrating the advance of bloodthirsty jihadists who wish to set up an Islamic caliphate and would fortunately slaughter anybody who stood of their approach.
Although the primary pressing precedence of the civilized world ought to be to get rid of these jihadists, the subsequent purpose ought to be to make sure a democratic federal state, or autonomous areas in components of Syria that will be dominated and defended by Kurds, Christians and Yazidis collectively.
Until Christians and different minorities in Syria have autonomy and are armed, they are going to be weak to the assaults of Islamic extremists. For peace and stability in Syria, self-rule for Christians and Kurds is a should.
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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