Ibrahim Shekho, a legal activist from Afrin, told Rudaw that clashes broke out between Damascus’s General Security forces and the Turkish-backed militia group in the center of Afrin’s Shiye subdistrict.
The Suleiman Shah Brigade is a Turkish-backed armed group led by Mohammad Hussein al-Jassim (Abu Amsha). The US Treasury has sanctioned it for grave human rights violations in Afrin, including “abductions and extortion,” primarily against Kurdish residents.
According to Shekho, more than 200 General Security military vehicles from Afrin, Idlib, and Azaz - equipped with medium weapons - entered Shiye, an area under Amshat’s control.
“When the security forces entered the town, they demanded that Amshat gunmen hand over their bases, but Saif Jassim, Abu Amsha’s brother, refused and confronted them, which led to the outbreak of fighting,” he said.
The clashes intensified throughout the evening before calming by around midnight after negotiations between the two sides. A temporary deal was reached, giving Amshat one week to leave the area.
“It was decided that the Amshat group would leave … and they were given a one-week deadline to evacuate Shiye,” Shekho noted.
After Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) overthrew the Bashar al-Assad regime and dissolved to form the new Syrian government, the group moved to consolidate full control over Syrian territory. In January, the Amshat faction demanded large sums of money from Kurds returning to Afrin in order to allow them back to their areas, as Arab settlers were leaving.
Syria’s new authorities have also faced backlash, primarily from the Kurds, for granting military positions to militia leaders complicit in serious human rights abuses, such as Abu Amsha.
Mustafa Shekho, a civil activist and Shiye resident, told Rudaw that there was information that Abu Amsha himself had come to the town and that his brother Saif Jassim was to be arrested, “but the arrest has not been confirmed.”
“Within a week to ten days, no gunman except [General] Security forces will remain in Shiye,” he added.
However, Ahmed Hassan, head of the Kurdish National Council (ENKS/KNC) in Afrin, said that a large security convoy entered Shiye on Sunday but that “those new forces … have withdrawn and returned. Now only those [state] security forces that were previously stationed in Shiye remain.”
“The Amshat group is still in the Shiye area and has not withdrawn,” Hassan explained, adding that a meeting between the two sides was held, but the outcomes remain unclear.
Turkey seized the area in 2018 during Operation Olive Branch, ousting the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG), the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Afrin was then handed over to Turkish-backed factions, including the Suleiman Shah Brigade, which rights groups say have since acted with impunity.
In 2023, the US Treasury accused the Suleiman Shah Brigade of systematically targeting Kurds in Afrin through harassment, abduction, and extortion, forcing residents to abandon homes or pay ransoms to recover family members or property.
International watchdogs such as Amnesty International and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) documented similar abuses as early as 2018, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, kidnappings, looting of agricultural crops, and other violations.
