KURDISH women and girls in the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin, northern Syria, continue to be forced into marrying jihadists against their will, it was reported yesterday.

According to the ANHA news agency, Mustafa al-Zawhari, a leading figure from a Turkish-backed Islamist group, threatened widow Shirin Fawzi Aliko, a Kurdish villager, with kidnapping and jail unless she married him. 

Sources on the ground told the Morning Star that the practice remains commonplace, with the jihadist groups subjecting those who refuse to severe torture and rape. 

Afrin has been under Turkish occupation since the 2018 Operation Olive Branch invasion, which was carried out alongside a myriad of Islamist groups. 

A 2020 UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria found vast evidence of daily rape, sexual violence and torture in the Turkish-occupied region, along with targeted kidnappings. 

It described the situation for Kurdish women in Afrin as “precarious.”

Last year the Morning Star reported that thousands of women have been abducted from Afrin and transferred to Libya via Turkey, where they are sold as sex slaves. 

In May 2020 a a “torture camp” was discovered in the north Syrian canton, where mainly Kurdish and Yazidi women were held by militia from the Hamza Division.

A network of similar camps is believed to have been established across the region. 

Local rights organisations have compared the situation to that in Shengal, where more than 3,000 Yazdi women and girls were abducted by Isis in 2014, many of whom remain missing. 

Despite appeals to the UN and other international bodies to ensure the safety of women and the return of those that have been kidnapped, little action has been taken against Turkey.