Qatar’s funds finance the construction of settlements in Syria’s Afrin

Qamishli – Ali Omar
The human rights violations of the Turkish occupation factions in Northern Syria and their demographic change scheme, perpetrated in service of the occupational forces’ agenda are indeed not new, but their pace has increased even more after the devastating earthquake that struck the region more than two weeks ago. This development has opened the door for funding of Turkey’s allied countries, spearheaded by Qatar, to build more settlements, especially in the Afrin region in the Northwestern part of the country to settle thousands of settlers, from other Syrian regions since 2018 on the soil of the inherent residents, who are subjected to harassment and are being systematically displaced.
The last chapters of the demographic change policy in the region of Afrin constitute a Qatari settlement project that includes hundreds of homes in the „Shih“ district, situated in the city’s countryside. These settlements were built in the presence of an official Qatari delegation, in concomitance with the inauguration of the “Model Qatari Settlement Village“ in the village of „Jaqla Tahati“, in the Sheikh Al-Hadid district in the countryside of Afrin to settle two hundred families of recruits from other regions within the framework of an agreed plan between the Turkish occupational forces and Qatar, whereby the „Settlement village“ was inaugurated within the presence of the leader of the Qatari International Group of the Search and Rescue group of the Qatari Security Forces, Mubarak Sherida Al-Kaabi, and the leader of the “Al-Amshat” faction of the Turkish occupation, known under the name Muhammad Al-Jassem “Abu Amsha“.
Qatar assigned a Brotherhood broker to supervise the construction of the settlements
Private sources from within the Afrin region confirmed to the Target platform that Qatar assigned a Brotherhood broker called “Muhammad Nazir al-Hakim” to supervise the so-called „reconstruction operations” in Jinderis, and build settlements there as well as to proceed with plans for demographic changes in the region. Meanwhile, the “Afrin Post” agency quoted private sources and stated that the factions set up several camps on both sides of the road between the city of Afrin and the Jinderis district, at a distance of ten kilometers, and demanded that the Kurdish residents of the district move to it, however, they refused to do so for fear of violations by the factions and settlers.
The director of the Kurdish Center for Studies, Nawaf Khalil, said in an interview with the Target platform, that what is happening in Afrin occurs within the framework of the “East Reform Project” that was approved in the Turkish parliament in 1925. This decision aimed to bring about a complete demographic change in northern Kurdistan and with no one remaining anymore in Diyarbakir until 1925 and no one saying there that „I am a Kurd“.
Khalil further added that the project was targeting the West of the Euphrates, pointing out that the Turkish authorities were unable to complete the project due to the economic situation at that time and the outbreak of the world war. It was therefore not fully implemented but affected the areas in the West of the Euphrates inside Turkey and also reached Afrin in the form of occupation through the settlement of approximately 400 hundred thousand people in the region in exchange for the displacement of more than 300 thousand people from the inherent inhabitants of Afrin.
For its part, the Afrin Human Rights Organization said, in the first days after the devastating earthquake, that the CEO of the Qatar Charity Foundation, Youssef Al-Kuwari, announced, through a video clip, posted on the Foundation’s Twitter page, the launching of the first phase of what is called the “City of Dignity” on the outskirts of the Jinderis district in the countryside of Afrin. This project seeks to establish a settlement complex where about 600 families of the factions and settlers are planned to be settled too, under the pretext of the district’s reconstruction.
The organization confirmed in a report that the Turkish occupation demanded the inherent residents of the Jindires district to leave their homes and reside in collective camps, as a precondition for receiving aid materials, provided by humanitarian organizations. This approach serves the purpose of the area’s residents to leave their property and make way for its affiliated factions to steal and seize it. This further constitutes a systematic plan to empty the district of its original inhabitants and make way for the construction of a new settlement to house settlers from outside the area.
The settlement project in Afrin and its countryside constitutes a series whose episodes are continuing since the occupation of the region by Turkey and its affiliated factions on March 18, 2018, whereby many human rights organizations documented the construction of dozens of settlement units with Qatari funds and under the name of Palestinian and Kuwaiti charity associations, aiming to settle families of militia members in them in the first place. This led to a big demographic change in the area after the displacement of the Kurdish inherent population whose percentage has significantly decreased from more than 75 percent before the occupation to less than 30 percent after the region’s incursion.
The director of the Kurdish Center for Studies Nawaf Khalil additionally explained during talks with our Platform that the most perilous stage for the change of Afrin’s demographic composition is the current phase, where the world’s preoccupation with the earthquake that affected the region, especially in Jinderis district, is being exploited, and where all activities are perpetrated under the guise of humanitarian work to bring about a demographic change in a sustainable manner, pointing out that A UN official met with the head of the so-called “interim government,” Abd al-Rahman Mustafa.
Moreover, the contribution of Qatar and “Islamic associations” from Kuwait and Israel represents a real danger in the field of demographic change, which he said takes two forms: the expulsion of the Kurds from Afrin and the settlement of hundreds of thousands from Deir Alzzor, Damascus the countryside and other Syrian regions in their place, stressing that these policies contradict what those who call themselves the opposition are calling for, that they are against the demographic change implemented by the “dictatorial regime” in Syria, as he put it.
It is noteworthy that the “Syrians for Truth and Justice” organization had confirmed in a report issued last June, based on information collected from local sources in the region through a research team that was sent there, along with satellite images, that the Turkish occupation and the factions and his so-called “local councils” have built settlement blocs in a mountainous area in the city of Afrin, to house members of the so-called “National Army“. The organization’s executive director, Bassam Al-Ahmad, accused Turkey of being responsible for a profound change in the population structure in Afrin, through the establishment of settlement projects for members of the factions and their families, and the displacement of the Kurds and other unwanted segments of the population. Meanwhile, the head of the press and human rights department of the organization, Heba Al-Dabbas, said in media statements that they obtained a copy of the engineering plan for the settlement project to be established in the mountainous area of Afrin, where twenty-five percent of the housing will be distributed to settlers and about seventy-five percent to the members of the ruling oppositional factions.