Tens of thousands return to Afrin while fear of abuses keeps others away

ERBIL — Omar Jamil (a pseudonym), 35, returned home with his wife, parents and five children on December 4 to his village in the Sherawa area of Syria’s northwestern Afrin countryside. He had been gone for around seven years, displaced in a neighboring village as his home, on the line of contact between Turkish-backed opposition factions and Kurdish forces, faced regular shelling.

Both Jamil’s native village and the village he was displaced to for years were, until December 2024, controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). He initially fled his home to put a few kilometers between himself and the regularly bombed line of contact. Jamil asked Syria Direct not to identify either village by name, out of fear for his and his family’s safety. 

On December 1, 2024, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) launched Operation Dawn of Freedom, a military offensive against the SDF coinciding with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led Operation Deterring Aggression that ultimately led to the Assad regime’s fall on December 8. 

The SNA quickly seized control of 11 villages in the Sherawa area in early December, including Jamil’s village. It also took the al-Shahbaa area of the northern Aleppo countryside, where 103,000 people—or around 25,000 families—lived, including 4,000 families displaced from Afrin by an earlier SNA operation in 2018. 

Jamil preferred returning to his village—now no longer on an active frontline—over a new displacement to SDF-held northeastern Syria. He was one of more than 70,000 people who chose to return to the Afrin area, according to figures Syria Direct obtained from the local council in Afrin city, which is affiliated with the Ankara-backed Syrian Interim Government (SIG). 

They returned despite the fear of attacks or extortion by SNA factions that have committed a host of abuses against civilians in areas they control—particularly targeting Afrin’s Kurdish population. 

Many of the displaced returned as soon as the SNA took control of al-Shahbaa and Sherawa, while others returned later, after initially fleeing to northeastern Syria, because they could not find housing there and were forced to sleep out in the open for days, Syria Direct found. 

Read more: Afrin’s displaced torn between another exile and danger in northern Aleppo

Days after Jamil returned to his village, Amal Ahmad (a pseudonym), 26, returned to the Afrin countryside with her children on December 13. She initially fled the al-Shahbaa area in early December for the SDF-controlled city of Tabqa, in the Raqqa province countryside. 

Ahmad and her husband were displaced from Afrin in 2018, and had not previously considered returning for fear he would be arrested. Her husband had completed mandatory self-defense duty in Afrin, then joined the SDF’s Internal Security Forces (Asayish) in al-Shahbaa. Ahmad herself did not face any harassment by SNA forces while returning to Afrin, she told Syria Direct. 

Since thousands of Afrin residents were displaced from their homes during Operation Olive Branch, a 2018 offensive launched by Ankara and Turkish-backed Syrian factions, the area has not seen returns “like what is happening today,” Azad Othman, a member of the Afrin city local council, said in late December. 

“Afrin’s people encouraged their relatives to return,” while “a small number fled to northeastern Syria, believing the rumors spread by the PKK that the SNA factions are [the Islamic State] IS and will cut their heads off,” he added. By “PKK,” Othman referred to the SDF, which Ankara considers an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. 

“Coordination by the people of Afrin, the local councils, the Association of Independent Syrian Kurds [affiliated with the Istanbul-based Syrian National Coalition] and the Kurdish National Council [KNC], as well as Afrin notables” also contributed to returns, Othman said. 

Local councils “sent staff to facilitate returns, in coordination with civil society organizations that provided emergency services, such as first aid and food, to returnees,” he added. Activists from Afrin, meanwhile, “sent cars to bring displaced people who did not have means of transportation to their villages.” 

Between December 1 and December 20, around 70 families returned to Jamil’s village in the Sherawa area. Those who came back were those who had fled the village for neighboring villages and camps in the al-Shahbaa region in recent years. At the same time, 15 families who had not left the village fled to northeastern Syria when the SNA moved in, multiple sources in the village told Syria Direct.

Violations during return

After Operation Dawn of Freedom, Ahmad received a call from her husband’s family in Afrin, reassuring them that “the factions weren’t intercepting anyone.” She decided to return, like “most of the displaced families, especially women and children, while 10 families from my village remained in the [SDF-controlled] Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh [neighborhoods of Aleppo city], as well as northeastern Syria.” They were “afraid to return,” she added. 

Before returning from Tabqa, where she could not find housing, to her village in Afrin, Ahmad sought refuge with her family in the countryside of SDF-controlled Kobani (Ain al-Arab), where they stayed for four days. However, fearing an expected SNA military operation against Kobani, she moved again to Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, before ultimately returning to her village. 

“The road was safe. [SNA] members at one checkpoint asked for our names and where we were heading, then we continued on our way,” she told Syria Direct in mid-December. 

Ahmad’s family’s happiness at returning did not last long. Four days after she reached her village, her husband decided to follow her. He was “arrested while crossing an [SNA] checkpoint” on December 17, she said. Ahmad’s husband was still detained at the time of publication, though “many employees of [SDF-backed] Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria [AANES] institutions and the Asayish returned and were not arrested,” she said. 

The Synergy Association for Victims (Hevdesti), a Hasakah-based organization, has documented the arrest of 128 people, including 20 women, among those who returned to Afrin or were stranded in al-Shahbaa after the SNA advanced at the start of December. It also recorded cases of torture and sexual assault, noting in a December 19 report that 52 people were released “after enduring physical and psychological torture,” while the fate of 76 remained unknown. 

Othman, from the Afrin local council, confirmed that SNA-affiliated military police and security agencies “arrested dozens of young people returning to Afrin who performed self-defense duty for the AANES, as well as others accused of dealing with terrorist institutions or being affiliated with the terrorist PKK forces, who could carry out acts of terrorism in retaliation for the opposition advance.” Some of those arrested “were released, while others are being detained until they are transferred to the judiciary and their situation is settled.” 

The issue of Afrin’s detainees is “complicated,” Othman said. He is following it by “contacting the security authorities to release them or transfer them to the judiciary, but so far we have only succeeded with 20 percent.” 

Abdullah Halawa, a military commander with an SNA special forces division, denied that anyone was detained while returning, with the exception of “those involved with the party [PKK].” For others, “civilians and workers in civilian institutions, we give assurances that we will not touch them,” he told Syria Direct. 

“No settlement centers have been prepared for those involved in military acts and institutions who wish to return, because we have not reached an agreement with the SDF,” Halawa added. 

Contrary to Halawa’s account, Ezzedin Saleh, Synergy’s executive director, told Syria Direct all detentions his organization documented involved “civilians, some of whom previously worked in AANES civil institutions before the [Turkish] occupation of Afrin.” Synergy tracked “violations through our field researchers, then documented them through follow-up and investigation, intersecting sources and gathering and verifying evidence and testimony from victims and witnesses,” he added.

Some families told Synergy they paid sums of money in exchange for being allowed to return to Afrin, Saleh added. Othman, from the Afrin local council, did not rule out the possibility that “some returnees were financially extorted by faction middlemen and lawyers.” 

None of the 12 families Syria Direct spoke to about their experience returning to Afrin reported paying bribes.

“The road was safe, and we did not pay at the checkpoints,” Abeer Majid (a pseudonym), 30, who returned to her village in the Sheran area of the Afrin countryside, told Syria Direct.

Majid, who taught at an AANES-affiliated school, was displaced to a village in the al-Shahbaa area in recent years, and had not previously considered returning to Afrin. “We were waiting for the Turkish forces and factions to leave, but after they took control of al-Shahbaa and threatened to take control of northeastern Syria, that hope faded and we preferred returning over repeated displacement,” she said. 

Among those who returned to Afrin, only a small number were able to immediately reoccupy their homes, Othman said. Most are staying with relatives, as their homes are inhabited by people displaced from other parts of Syria who are gradually returning to their own communities after the fall of the regime. There is a proposal to prepare camps to accommodate Kurdish returnees until the Arab displaced can return to their homes, Othman added.

Jamil has not heard of any arrests among those who returned to his Sherawa village. However, employees of AANES and military institutions are staying away for now, “until things become clear,” he said. Some SNA-affiliated forces “robbed the homes of families who preferred to flee to the northeast,” he added. 

Questionable assurances

SNA commander Halawa vowed that no returnees would be harmed, with the exception of “those whose hands are stained with Syrians’ blood,” as he put it, “who will be brought to trial.”

Othman, who is himself Kurdish, called on Afrin’s people to return, warning they could be “fuel for the agendas of cross-border extremists,” in reference to PKK-affiliated SDF commanders. “There is no solution except to return and settle the status of all those implicated or forced to do something, and we have been helping those who are temporarily arrested,” he added. 

Despite these assurances, and others sent by people in Afrin to their relatives and acquaintances outside the area, many of the displaced cannot forget the long history of abuses by the factions controlling Afrin. “How can I return and live among those who committed violations against Afrin,” Kamal Hassan (a pseudonym), 32, wondered. 

Although Hassan has not engaged in any military activity with the SDF against the SNA—with the exception of performing mandatory self-defense duty with the SDF—he fears “arrest or financial extortion” as a Kurdish civilian. 

On December 1, Hassan, alongside his father, his sister and her children, fled al-Shahbaa for Raqqa city while his mother stayed behind, refusing to leave their village. Finding no shelter in Raqqa, his father returned to their village three days later. Hassan is now staying with a relative who managed to rent a house in the Hasakah province city of Qamishli. 

For the same reason, Jaker Muhammad (a pseudonym), 39, has refused to return to his village in Afrin. He is particularly worried because he served as the co-head of his village commune. Communes, local governing assemblies ranging in size from a village to hundreds of families in a larger city, are the base unit of the democratic confederalist system followed by the AANES. 

In Qamishli city, where Muhammad is displaced, he is “at a loss” between staying in the northeast—which is threatened by a military attack by Turkey and the factions it backs—or returning to his village and risking arrest. Even “moving to Damascus is not without risks,” he added. “Which path do you think I should choose,” he asked Syria Direct, with a tone of sarcasm. 

Despite all the risks, challenges and uncertainty returnees face, Majid, who recently returned to the Sheran area, sees it as “best option.” She called on Afrin’s people, whether displaced abroad or inside Syria, to return. “In the end, all a person has is their home and family,” she said. 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.