On October 26, 2025, Kurdish citizen Nihad Madour Omar, a resident of Bilan village in the Sharran subdistrict of the Afrin region in northern Syria, was subjected to the looting of his olive harvest, amounting to approximately 250 sacks, collected from his orchard of 900 olive trees located near Darwish village.
The looting was carried out by armed groups affiliated with the “Elite Army” faction, which operates under the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army. A published video indicated the direct involvement of two commanders, Abu Bakr and Abu Khaled, in the incident.
Despite the victim filing multiple complaints with both the Sharran subdistrict administration and the Afrin regional administration, no action was taken to hold those responsible accountable or to compensate the victim.
This incident forms part of a systematic pattern of ongoing violations since Turkey’s de facto occupation of the region on March 18, 2018, which resulted in the displacement of more than 400,000 of its original Kurdish inhabitants.
It also represents one in a series of similar looting operations targeting Kurdish farmers, depriving them of their primary sources of livelihood. Such practices of seizing crops and lands are frequently carried out by armed factions and settlers brought in by Turkey from various Syrian regions, sometimes reinforced by ambiguous administrative measures imposed by the Economic Committee of Afrin’s administration, which operates under the Syrian Interim Government (affiliated with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham).
These measures often require property owners to submit ownership documents under threat of confiscation, thereby endangering the private property rights of indigenous residents and reflecting a complete absence of effective oversight and rule of law.
