For 2 years, occupied Afrin hasn’t seen peace for one day

6 years of occupation, during which the Turkish occupation state and its mercenaries did not stop committing crimes of a retaliatory nature against the people and against the nature and geography of Afrin Canton.

80% of the people of Afrin were displaced at the beginning of the occupation of their region on March 18, 2018, after they resisted for 58 days in the face of the advanced aircraft and weapons of the Turkish occupation state.

 The IDP from Afrin, Fidan Ahmed from the Sharan district, like others, only carried with her a little food and clothing. She was displaced from her homeland, accompanied by her husband and two sons (by motorcycle), when Turkey and its mercenaries occupied her homeland, leaving behind memories that she will not forget even if a thousand years have passed.

Reality is different from imagination

Fidan is the mother of 6 children (4 young women and two young men). After her displacement, she headed towards Aleppo to stay there, but the repercussions of the siege were no less severe than the war, and her path became difficult until she decided to return to Afrin as a last resort, deluding herself that she was able to live as she used to live in peace, security and stability before the occupation.

The other reason is that she could not bear the bitterness of longing and being far from her land and home, but she was disappointed and the pictures she had drawn in her imagination that upon her return she would kiss the walls of her house faded away, only to be confronted with the reality that she had no ownership over her property and that she was no different from strangers.

first crime she exposed to

The return was on 2021 (she does not remember the exact date of her return), accompanied by her husband, called Mamo Hamza, who is 59 years old, and her uncle and his wife, by hiring a smuggler for an amount of two million per person.

Upon their arrival in the Sharan district, her husband and her uncle, who is 90 years old, were kidnapped by Mercenaries of the "Sultan Murad Division" were taken to an unknown place.

After ten days of torture, they returned after the family paid a royalty of $100 for each person.

This was the first crime against the family of citizen Fidan, at the beginning of her arrival, and then the crimes against the family continued, so that the mercenaries prevented her from entering her house and staying in it, and when she insisted on giving her the house, the settlers attacked her sister’s son and tortured him.

Citizen Fidan owns 130 olive trees, 4 Aqabiya trees, and a field of sumac trees located in the village of Qara Jarna in the Sharan district.

For 2 years, the mercenaries prevented the citizen Fidan from harvesting the olive crop, and they cut down 25 olive trees and all the Aqabiya trees, while they seized the sumac field, and to provoke her further, they offered the sumac crop to her for sale.

Radical change in Afrin

Citizen Fidan emphasizes that life in Afrin is no longer the same and said: “No one can live in the midst of these violations".

While she was in Sharan, Fidan heard about the murder of a man without knowing his name but she did not see the crime with her own eyes. Because the mercenaries did not allow the people to move around freely, that is why they were able to commit many crimes.

Citizen Fidan described the mercenaries as monsters, saying: “Beasts in human form, with filth covering their faces and beards, and they spend most of their time committing crimes and fighting among themselves over stolen goods.”

The citizen Fidan added, “For two years I stayed there, I hated something called life. Even when I wanted to just look at my house, they did not open the door for me, and when I insisted on that, they attacked me and insulted me.”

Fidan was trying to find a way out of Afrin as quickly as possible, and at the beginning of 2024 she found a smuggler who was able to get them out secretly with an amount of $200. She explains how she got out by saying: “ We headed towards Hanan Shrine, located in the Sharan district, in the dawn hours, to go out without their knowledge.”

Don't come back before it's freed

After everything that citizen Fidan witnessed, she swore that she would not dare to take another step towards Afrin, unless the Afrin Liberation Forces liberated it, and she advised the displaced Afrin people not to return, saying: “Until now, I suffer from heartburn as a result of the oppression, don't make my mistake."

706 were killed, in addition to the kidnapping of more than 9,008 civilians, including 1,200 women and 600 children, in addition to hundreds of kidnapped women being subjected to cases of rape and sexual assault since the beginning of the Turkish occupation and its mercenaries of Afrin.

The last violation that the Afrin region witnessed during this year was the killing of the minor Kurdish child, Ahmed Khaled Mamou, 15 years old, in the Janders district of the occupied Afrin canton, by the Turkish occupation mercenaries, in addition to the stabbing of the child, Rudy Muhammad, yesterday.

 Sh-S/A.K