Leaving Manbij in northeastern Syria as it was being bombed by the Syrian National Army (SNA), a rebel faction allied to Turkey, Mahmoud suppressed his feelings. "My only objective was to stay alive for my family," said this 45-year-old Kurd. When we met him on Friday, January 10, some 60 kilometers away in a village near Kobani where he now lives with his family, he chose to remain anonymous. "Bashar al-Assad may be gone, but we don't know what's going to happen," he explained.
Mahmoud left on December 9, 2024. Encouraged by the rapid advances made a few days earlier by the Islamist rebels of the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group against al-Assad's regime, Turkey had sent its SNA allies to assault several towns in northeastern Syria, which until then had been under the control of the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). On December 8, the SNA took control of the strategic town of Tell Rifaat and its surroundings, some 20 kilometers from the Turkish border. The same day, in Damascus, the Syrian dictator was overthrown. The following day, Manbij – Mahmoud's hometown, held for years by Kurdish forces – also fell.
Ankara, backed by air strikes, is currently seeking to dislodge the SDF, which is predominantly composed of the People's Defense Units (YPG), considered by Turkey to be a terrorist group linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The region of Tell Rifaat and Manbij lies within the 32-kilometer buffer zone that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seeks to create by expelling Kurdish fighters from the area. The threat of a ground offensive by Turkey in Rojava, the autonomous Kurdish region in northeastern Syria, home to an estimated 4.6 million people, is palpable and on everyone's minds. The fighting has already forced over 100,000 people to flee.
Predicting a rapid worsening of the situation, Mahmoud moved his wife and their four children out of Manbij on December 8. This elementary school teacher left the city himself the following day, "five minutes before the pro-Turkish forces arrived just outside my window," he said, his face weary and his gaze piercing. "I knew their arrival would be followed by violence against us Kurds." For Mahmoud, SNA conjures up terrifying tales of Kurdish massacres and looting in the towns of Afrin and Tell Abyad, which fell in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Other Manbij residents, who packed up and left after him, reported having been subjected to looting.
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