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Northwest Syria: 70,000 Kurds have returned to Afrin since fall of Assad regime
Around 70,000 Kurds have returned to their homes in the city of Afrin, northwest Syria, following the ouster of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December, local council members confirmed earlier this week.
The return of Syria's Kurdish minority comes as the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) evacuated a number of checkpoints in the region, while thousands of Arab residents who previously settled around Afrin also left.
Returnees aren't expected to face any obstacles, except for individuals who have connections to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which is considered the political umbrella for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The latter has been engaged in clashes with the SNA, fighting that has rapidly since Assad's fall and resulted in hundreds killed. Areas of northern and eastern Syria controlled by the SDF still maintain a Arab-majority population leading to some clashes with the Kurdish-dominated group.
Some returnees have been arrested, however, according to local council man Azad Osman, who said that young people returning have been detained by armed groups on charges of links to the Kurdish-led administration in the area.
Osman told Rudaw that some "armed groups have occupied Kurdish houses," and have demanded "money as ransom for returning the properties".
"They continue to take money from the Kurds who are returning," he said. "Some groups either take no money or very little, but the al-Amshat group requires a lot of money and they now charge $1,000 to $1,500 for any family that wants to return to the area they control."
The majority of the returnees came from the adjacent city of Tal Rifaat, as well as the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh in Aleppo, which have sizable Kurdish populations.
An administrative decision has been made to replace armed groups in Afrin with a local police force, Osman added.
In 2018, around 300,000 people were displaced from Afrin, most of them Kurds, following the invasion of the Turkish armed forces and the SNA in an operation dubbed 'Olive Branch'.
Hundreds were killed in the operation, amid accusations that the Turkey-backed factions had carried out human rights abuses against Afrin's Kurds.
Turkey has launched multiple military offensives in Syria since 2016, most of them targeting Kurdish militant groups that Ankara links to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Ankara accuses the People's Defence Units (YPG), a key component in the SDF, of being the Syrian branch of the PKK.
Such groups are seeking greater autonomy and cultural rights for the Kurdish minority, and have been embroiled in a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state, as well as during the Syrian Civil War.
Afrin remains under Turkish control, and has often battled with the SDF who seek to regain the area. There has been heavy fighting between the SNA and SDF over the past month, while the Syrian administration in Damascus seeks a compromise.