ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - About one thousand families on Thursday left Hasaka and headed back to their homes in Afrin after years of displacement, a Syrian lawmaker who accompanied the convoy said, emphasizing guarantees to return their occupied houses from settlers as the displacement crisis comes to an end.
"Some [occupied houses] were recently vacated while others were not,” Mustafa Abdi told Rudaw’s Vivyan Fatah.
He added, “They will be vacated too. Anyone who refuses to hand over the houses, court and state will resolve the matter. They can expel them and return the houses to their rightful owners.”
Kurdish residents in the northwestern Syrian city of Afrin were forced to flee their homes in 2018, when the Turkish forces and its aligned militias took over the city. Families, predominantly Arabs, were resettled in their homes.
In addition to occupying homes, international human rights monitors documented various human rights violations in the city, including arbitrary killings, kidnapping, looting of agricultural crops, cutting down olive trees, and imposing taxes on farmers.
Displaced families returning to their homes had been forced to pay fees, ranging from $1,000 to $1,500.
“If only we, as Kurds, had returned in strength. After nine years, we are not who we used to be. We do not know what our fate holds,” said one of the IDPs returning to Afrin on Thursday.
Additional families were also displaced after the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in late 2024 as well as in January when clashes broke out between Kurdish and Syrian interim government forces.
By the arrival of the one thousand families, a total of nearly 10 thousand families have returned to Afrin, thus concluding the displacement chapter in their lives.
When the eighth batch of the IDPs returned to their homes on June 10, a total of 8,720 families had returned.
However, some of them decided to stay until the end of the academic year, completion of seasonal harvesting, and other personal commitments.
Confirming that Thursday's batch was the last Afrin IDP convoy, Hasaka’s deputy governor Ahmed al-Hilali said in a statement shared by the province’s official media that “the conclusion of exams and the nearing end of the agricultural season have now allowed these families the opportunity to return.”
“This step comes in response to their desire to return to their original areas in Afrin,” he added.
