After Assad – Turkey and SNA crimes against civilians in NES
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Open in new tab In December 2024, while the world’s eyes were on the victorious HTS-led campaign that swept Damascus, Turkey and its proxy Syrian National Army (SNA) forces launched a separate offensive. Except rather than targeting Assad’s forces, the Turkish-backed factions turned on the North and East Syria (NES) region, in a blatant display of aggression that expanded Turkey’s occupation in Syria. On December 1st, the SNA attacked Shehba, which had been home to around 100,000 people – two thirds of whom were internally displaced people who had fled Afrin when Turkey invaded in 2018. Almost the entire population living in Shehba fled upon the SNA’s advance, creating a mass IDP crisis in NES. Rather than motivated from fear of fighting per se, those civilians who fled did so primarily due to knowing the nature of the groups attacking them. Indeed, this military advance by the SNA and Turkey once again brought in its wake a large number of human rights violations.
One week later, the SNA, backed by Turkish airpower, launched a fresh attack to seize Manbij from NES’ Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Within days, widespread reports of SNA murders, stealing, looting, gender-based violence and other crimes emerged. From the Turkish side, airstrikes targeted civilian electricity and water facilities, severing communities from essential services.
This report presents the information RIC has gathered and documented regarding Turkish/SNA violations in the weeks and months following the fall of Assad – some of which potentially amount to war crimes. RIC has recorded purposeful targeting of civilians, attacking essential civilian infrastructure, the targeting of medical workers and ambulances, looting and property crimes and forced displacement carried out at the hands of Turkey and its Syrian proxy forces. These crimes are not isolated incidents. They follow what is now a well-established pattern of systematic crimes against civilians. RIC has interviewed family members of civilians killed in Turkish and SNA attacks, those living without electricity and drinking water due to strikes on the Tishreen Dam, paramedic survivors of Turkish strikes targeting an ambulance that killed two medical workers, children who were injured in airstrikes on their family houses, civilians forced to flee Shehba leaving behind their homes and livelihoods, being harassed and abused as they left, and journalists injured in Turkish strikes.
The information RIC has gathered presents a clear picture of intentional targeting of civilians and civil life by Turkey and the SNA, in NES in the period after the fall of Assad. At the same time, the SNA’s factions in theory dissolved themselves in January, folding under the new Syrian Ministry of Defence. Hence, Ahmed al-Sharaa and the interim Syrian government are formally responsible for their activity.
