Human rights activists have documented two incidents of arbitrary arrest targeting a Kurdish young woman and a Kurdish young man in the countryside of Afrin in northern Syria, carried out by security bodies and armed groups, within a continuing context of violations affecting the Kurdish population in the region.
On, 30 December 2025, members of the “General Security” affiliated with the Interim Authority raided the village of Darwish, affiliated with Sharran in the countryside of Afrin, and arrested the Kurdish young woman Hiba Amin Suleiman (23 years old), on the pretext of “dealing with the Autonomous Administration.”
According to available information, Hiba works as a secretary in a doctor’s clinic and had come from the city of Aleppo – Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, as a result of the fighting that the neighborhood had witnessed earlier. As of the date of preparing this report, her fate remains unknown, with no information regarding her place of detention or her legal status.
In a separate incident, about a week ago, an armed group affiliated with the Ahrar al-Sharqiya faction, one of the factions of what was previously known as the “Syrian National Army” supported by Turkey, arrested the Kurdish young man Mohammad Khaled Blenk (33 years old).
Mohammad is originally from the village of Qarah Baba, affiliated with the Rajo subdistrict in the countryside of Afrin, and resides in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in the city of Aleppo. According to the data, he was arrested in the city of Jindires while working on a taxi to secure his livelihood, where he was detained and his car was seized. Mohammad had returned to the Jindires area (the village of Yalatqoz) to stay in the home of one of his relatives following the recent events that the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo had witnessed.
It is noted that Mohammad is married and the father of a child, has no connection to political activity, and remains under arbitrary detention to this day, amid the absence of any information about his fate.
These two incidents come within the framework of a continuous series of violations targeting the Kurdish population in the Afrin region, in light of the deterioration of the security situation and the continuation of violence since Turkey and armed factions loyal to it took control of the predominantly Kurdish city on 18 March 2018. This was accompanied by large-scale displacement affecting approximately 400,000 of the original residents, in addition to the documentation of cases of killing, kidnapping, torture, and the imposition of levies, amid the absence of accountability mechanisms and the continued impunity.
