The top of the exiled Syrian opposition acknowledges human rights violations dedicated by Turkish-backed fighters in northern Syria however says latest US sanctions have helped rein within the lawless proxy teams.
Salem al-Meslet, president of the Nationwide Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (generally often called the Syrian Nationwide Coalition), mentioned he would help additional investigation of the well-documented abuses carried out by Syrian insurgent factions affiliated together with his coalition.
“The coalition and the interim authorities actually help any effort to get rid of any violations, to return and examine,” Meslet instructed Al-Monitor in an interview in Washington.
He and a delegation of opposition figures met with US policymakers final week in hopes of persuading the Biden administration they nonetheless have a job to play in figuring out Syria’s future, after a decade of ruinous civil warfare between President Bashar al-Assad and the forces in search of his elimination.
Complicating that message, nonetheless, are the numerous human rights violations carried out by a coalition of Turkey-backed hard-line and average insurgent factions which can be working beneath the banner of the Syrian Nationwide Military. The SNA, which nominally studies to the coalition-affiliated Syrian Interim Authorities, participated within the October 2019 Turkish offensive in opposition to the US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters that Ankara views as terrorists linked to a Turkey-based Kurdish guerrilla motion.
The United Nations Fee of Inquiry on Syria has documented a slew of rights violations dedicated by the SNA in opposition to Kurdish, Yazidi and different civilians dwelling in a swath of the nation successfully managed by Turkey. The UN has described a pattern of arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, seizure of personal property, the destruction of archaeological websites and different violence by the hands of some SNA factions. Al-Monitor’s own reporting confirmed ongoing abuses within the Kurdish-majority enclave of Afrin.
The UN fee has additionally documented abuses, although far fewer, carried out by US-backed, Kurdish-led militias within the area. The Syrian authorities stands accused of a bunch of warfare crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity.
Washington has pressed Ankara, the Syrian Interim Authorities and the insurgent teams themselves to supply accountability for “gross violations of human rights abuses and violations beneath the legislation of armed battle,” the US authorities’s newest inspector general report for the American-led marketing campaign in opposition to the Islamic State mentioned. A senior administration official told Al-Monitor in July the USA has raised its “persistent considerations” with each the Syrian Interim Authorities and its army wing.
As a part of that effort, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on SNA faction Ahrar al-Sharqiya and two of its leaders, citing the group’s 2019 roadside execution of feminine Kurdish politician Hevrin Khalaf and its alleged recruitment of former IS members. The designation marked the primary time the USA had sanctioned considered one of Turkey’s proxies in Syria.
“The sanctions that have been imposed on Ahrar al-Sharqiya truly created a mannequin for different teams to remain in line,” Meslet mentioned, including he helps “any sanctions for any violation” that happens in Syria.
Almost two years after Turkey’s incursion into northeast Syria drew widespread backlash on either side of the US political aisle, Meslet says the SNA factions deployed by Ankara are listening to the Syrian Interim Authorities’s requires restraint.
“They’re listening as a result of earlier than there have been some violations there. Now the scenario is totally different,” Meslet mentioned.
In a optimistic growth, the UN reported final 12 months {that a} army court docket affiliated with the Syrian Interim Authorities had quietly sentenced a member of Ahrar al-Sharqiya for killing Khalaf and others. The fighter’s life sentence, nonetheless, was reportedly lowered to 10 years.
Roger Lu Phillips, authorized director on the Syria Justice and Accountability Middle, mentioned there’s no proof the insurgent teams have scaled again their abuses or have been held to account for them in any significant means.
“Their human rights violations are persevering with with out significant makes an attempt to make modifications, other than superficial human rights workshops,” mentioned Phillips, whose Washington-based group catalogs and analyzes rights abuses inside Syria.
Of the Syrian opposition authorities in exile, Phillips added, “They should take extra concerted efforts to discourage the human rights violations, specifically abductions and confiscation of property inside northern Syria.”
The Syrian Nationwide Coalition’s visit to Washington last week got here as a delegation from the Kurdish-run Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria additionally visited the nation’s capital for their very own conferences with US policymakers. The US army advises the self-administration’s army arm, the Syrian Democratic Forces, to counter the remnants of the Islamic State.
If the Syrian Kurds and the opposition agree on one factor, it’s the need of the American army presence in northern Syria. Unnerved by the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, each delegations sought assurances from the Biden administration final week that the 900 US troops in Syria would stay.
“In the event that they pull out, who shall be there? Iran, Russia and the regime,” Meslet mentioned. “The US withdrawal from Syria right this moment or within the close to future would imply we’re again to sq. one.”
