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Syrian Kurds fleeing the Turkish incursion in northeast Syria at a refugee camp in Northern Iraq, on Oct. 23, 2019.Andrea DiCenzo/The Globe and Mail

The scene, looking west across the Tigris River, is unexpectedly peaceful. The tiny village of Khanik, on the Syrian side, is quiet, but for the occasional car. The river is narrow and slow-moving – it almost looks as though someone could wade or swim across it.

But no one is trying to cross the Tigris here. Nor is there a line of people trying to get out through the official border crossing nearby at Faysh Khabur, the main overland connection between the part of northeast Syria still under the control of the Kurdish YPG militia and the adjacent Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq.

Aid workers in Northern Iraq say the closing of the Syrian side of Faysh Khabur is an apparent attempt to stem the tide of Kurds fleeing the region amid accusations that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking to change the demographics of the region by replacing Kurds with Arabs.

TURKEY'S INCURSION IN NORTHEASTERN SYRIA

Turkey aims to establish a “safe zone” along most of its southern border that runs roughly 30 kilometres into Syria so that it can settle millions of Syrian refugees there. Under its Operation Peace Spring, Turkey struck a deal with Moscow to clear the area of Kurdish YPG militia, who were allies of the U.S. but are considered a "terrorist" group by Ankara.

Areas of control

As of Oct. 17

Kurdish forces and allies

Turkish forces

Pro-government forces

Opposition forces

Turkey’s plans

Planned 10 km patrol zone for Turkish and Russian forces beginning Oct. 28

Planned “safe zone”

Faysh

Khabur

TURKEY

Ras al-Ain

Kobani

Khanik

Amuda

Manbij

Tel Abyad

al-Walid

al-Hasakah

Mosul

Aleppo

Raqqa

Deir

al-Zor

Bardarash

refugee

camp

Latakia

Hama

SYRIA

Homs

LEBANON

Damascus

IRAQ

JORDAN

0

100

Golan Heights

KM

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS

TURKEY'S INCURSION IN NORTHEASTERN SYRIA

Turkey aims to establish a “safe zone” along most of its southern border that runs roughly 30 kilometres into Syria so that it can settle millions of Syrian refugees there. Under its Operation Peace Spring, Turkey struck a deal with Moscow to clear the area of Kurdish YPG militia, who were allies of the U.S. but are considered a "terrorist" group by Ankara.

Areas of control

As of Oct. 17

Kurdish forces and allies

Turkish forces

Pro-government forces

Opposition forces

Turkey’s plans

Planned 10 km patrol zone for Turkish and Russian forces beginning Oct. 28

Planned “safe zone”

Faysh

Khabur

TURKEY

Ras al-Ain

Khanik

Kobani

Amuda

Manbij

Tel Abyad

al-Walid

al-Hasakah

Mosul

Aleppo

Raqqa

Deir

al-Zor

Bardarash

refugee

camp

Latakia

Hama

SYRIA

Homs

LEBANON

Damascus

IRAQ

JORDAN

0

100

Golan Heights

KM

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS

TURKEY'S INCURSION IN NORTHEASTERN SYRIA

Turkey aims to establish a “safe zone” along most of its southern border that runs roughly 30 kilometres into Syria so that it can settle millions of Syrian refugees there. Under its Operation Peace Spring, Turkey struck a deal with Moscow to clear the area of Kurdish YPG militia, who were allies of the U.S. but are considered a "terrorist" group by Ankara.

Areas of control (as of Oct. 17)

Turkey’s plans

Planned 10 km patrol zone for Turkish and Russian forces beginning Oct. 28

Kurdish forces and allies

Turkish forces

Pro-government forces

Opposition forces

Planned “safe zone”

Faysh

Khabur

Khanik

TURKEY

Ras al-Ain

Kobani

Amuda

Manbij

Tel Abyad

al-Walid

Mosul

al-Hasakah

Aleppo

Bardarash

refugee

camp

Raqqa

Deir

al-Zor

Latakia

Hama

SYRIA

Homs

LEBANON

IRAQ

Damascus

JORDAN

Golan Heights

0

100

KM

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS

In fact, the closing explains why an expected mass exodus has yet to materialize. While more than 10,000 Syrian Kurds have arrived in Northern Iraq since Oct. 9, when Turkey launched an offensive aimed at driving the YPG out of the Syrian border region, that’s only a fraction of the 180,000 people the United Nations says have been displaced by the fighting.

Refugees have been forced to either seek refuge elsewhere in Syria or turn to smugglers to get them out of the country. Another 1,700 Syrian Kurdish refugees arrived Thursday in the Bardarash refugee camp in Northern Iraq, about 140 kilometres east of the border, and a similar number was expected to reach the camp by Friday morning.

Mohammed Hussein, a 34-year-old agricultural engineer from the town of Amuda, which is flush against Syria’s border with Turkey, fled his home a week ago after seeing grisly videos on Facebook of Kurds being mutilated by Arab militias allied with the Turkish military. While the Syrian side of the border at Faysh Khabur was already closed by then, word spread of a smuggling network that could take Kurds to the relative safety of Iraq through other routes. The cost then was US$500 a person – a massive amount of cash in a region that has known little but war for the past eight years – and has risen since to US$1,000 in some cases, according to refugees interviewed by The Globe and Mail.

“There were people in Amuda who knew how to reach the smugglers. They just needed to know how many people to pick up in which village on what day,” Mr. Hussein recalled. “When we got to the border, the smugglers erased their numbers from our phones. Then we had to walk across.”

Smugglers have taken most of the refugees to the smaller al-Walid crossing into Iraq, 25 kilometres south of Faysh Khabur – and outside the YPG’s area of control. Others were taken by boat across the Tigris under the cover of night.

Aid workers said the closing of the Syrian side of Faysh Khabur has meant that only those with enough money to pay the smugglers are able to escape.

“All of the refugees now are going to informal crossings – so it’s obviously only the ones who have the means to cross,” said Tom Peyre-Costa, spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which is among the aid organizations working in Bardarash.

Mr. Peyre-Costa said the route by way of al-Walid is longer and more arduous for the refugees, who have to walk the last stretch to the Iraqi border through hilly terrain after being dropped off by the smugglers. Hamdiyeh Ahmad Salam – a 54-year-old with bandages on both her ankles – said she’d been charged an extra US$100 because she needed help to walk the final distance.

Mr. Peyre-Costa said international pressure was required to reopen the Faysh Khabur crossing to anyone wishing to escape the fighting. “There needs to be more outcry about this. Someone needs to take the lead.”

Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the YPG, did not respond to questions sent to his Twitter account about why refugees were being prevented from leaving via Faysh Khabur.

Aid workers say additional camps will need to be opened if refugees continue to arrive in Northern Iraq. The Bardarash camp will likely hit its maximum capacity of 12,000 people some time Friday. “It’s putting pressure on resources, on every agency’s efforts,” said Firas al-Khateeb, Iraq spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Turkish offensive was largely halted Thursday – although the Turkish army and the YPG reported several skirmishes – as Russian troops arrived in the region to begin implementing a deal struck between Mr. Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Under the terms of the agreement, Russian and Syrian forces have until Oct. 29 to convince the YPG to leave a 30-kilometre zone south of Turkey’s border. If they don’t, Turkey says, it will resume an assault that has killed an estimated 500 people to date.

Turkey views the YPG as “terrorists” because of their affiliation with the PKK, a Kurdish movement in Turkey that has waged a decades-long and often violent struggle for independence.

Kurdish analysts see the deal between Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Putin is preparing the ground for de facto ethnic cleansing in the region, with Kurds being forced to leave and Turkey planning to resettle some of the 3.7 million Syrian refugees on its soil – the vast majority of whom are Arabs – in the 30-kilometre zone.

The YPG, part of a larger group known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, fought alongside the United States this year in the battle to defeat the so-called Islamic State. That alliance effectively ended after an Oct. 6 phone call between Mr. Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump, after which Mr. Trump ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region, making way for the Turkish invasion.

Mr. Trump has signalled that some U.S. soldiers will remain in Eastern Syria to guard the region’s oilfields. On Thursday, he tweeted that “perhaps it is time for the Kurds to start heading to the Oil Region!" – a suggestion that would see Kurds deserting their homes near the Turkish border and moving hundreds of kilometres south.

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