The Reality of Security in the Syrian North

Introduction:

The matter of security is considered to be one of the most crucial issues discussed when talking about the process of stabilisation and early recovery in any region. Security is one of the main pointers that reaffirm the end or near end of the struggle, and the beginning of the process of economic and social growth, processes that coincide with the launch of reconstruction.

The talk about regions in Northern Syrian that are under Turkish supervision continues, regions that were liberated in order to encourage Syrians to settle there as they are “safe regions”. Especially given that it allowed displaced and migrant populations from all regions in Syria to settle after their forced displacement. However there are a lot of opinions criticising the state of security that was not improved even though these regions have been liberated for years.

Given these claims and the counter claims some questions had to be asked, namely:

How is the reality of these “safe regions” years after they were liberated and administered by civilians?

Does the region witness an improvement or stability with regards to security that make it ready to start early recovery projects, especially economic ones?

To answer these questions, a comprehensive study and survey of the reality of these regions had to be conducted, years after they were recaptured. We look at areas liberated from both “ISIS” and “SDF” due to knowledge of their potential and challenges.

This report depends on the study of the main events in 4 towns, Afrin, Azaz, Al-Bab, and Jarabulus as well as the region of “Nab’ Assalam” (spring of peace). These regions were used as models for the study to generalise over the entire area, the events tracked occurred between 1/1/2021 and 30/4/2022. The towns were chosen as they are geographically distributed in an ordered way across the entire studied area, as well as the fact that the majority of the population studied resides in these towns, which is around half the population of the studied area. Not to mention that they are administered by local central committees, that are independent of each other and are under  supervision of Turkish provinces.

The events in these towns (without their countryside) as well as the area of “Nab’ Assalam” were tracked by studying the news coming through websites and media outlets of these regions, where daily and local news are usually transmitted. Due to the lack of official statistics about the state of security, a bundle of media pages were relied on after verifying their methodological standards with regards to constructing the narrative and reliability in mentioning events without exaggeration. Not to mention using pictures and videos and verify such events. Finally the news from different papers were compared to each other to verify their reliability and full reporting.

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