News from the Ground

Kurdish Civilians in Aleppo Under Massacre and Mass Displacement Threat

The Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud (Şêx Meqsûd) and Ashrafiye (Eşrefiye) in Aleppo have been under heavy bombardment in recent days. Turkey-backed Islamist militias wearing Syrian army uniforms have besieged these two densely populated areas, targeting civilian neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and infrastructure. Civilians, including children, are being killed, and tens of thousands are being forcibly displaced.

The groups participating in the attacks – Sultan Murad, Suleiman Shah (Amshat), Hamzat, and Nureddin Zengi brigades – are the same factions that previously carried out ethnic cleansing, abductions, torture, and forced displacement of the Kurdish population in the Turkish-occupied regions of Afrin, Serêkaniyê, and Girê Spî. Today, the Kurdish population in Serêkaniyê has fallen from 85% to less than 1% as a result of these policies.

Approximately 400,000 Kurdish civilians live in these two neighborhoods under bombardment. The majority of them are internally displaced people who had previously fled Islamist violence backed by Turkey and sought refuge in Aleppo. They are now being targeted again by the same forces.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has confirmed that the forces attacking these areas are the same ones that assaulted Kurds in Afrin. Using tanks, heavy weapons, and armed drones supplied by Turkey, this operation aims to forcibly eliminate the Kurdish population from Aleppo.

This military assault is also an ecological catastrophe. The bombardment is destroying Aleppo’s water network, sewage systems, food supply chains, and agricultural areas. Tens of thousands of people are being deprived of access to clean water, food, electricity, and healthcare. This situation represents a slow-moving environmental collapse and a mass humanitarian crisis for the Kurdish community.

More than 46,000 people have already been displaced. Airports are closed, safe routes are unavailable, and civilians are trapped in active conflict zones.

The Kurdish Red Crescent (Heyva Sor a Kurd) has issued an urgent appeal to the international community to open humanitarian corridors and protect civilians.

We strongly echo this appeal and call upon the United Nations (OCHA, UNHCR, UNICEF), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the European Union and its member states, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all humanitarian mechanisms operating in Syria to take immediate action.

In this context, we demand:

1- The establishment of UN-supervised humanitarian corridors for Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiye.

2- The immediate activation of international protection mechanisms for civilians.

3- The cessation of attacks by Turkey-backed armed groups and the withdrawal of heavy weapons.

4- The urgent delivery of humanitarian aid — water, food, health, and shelter assistance — to the affected population.

What is happening in Aleppo is not merely a military conflict, but a systematic attempt to annihilate a people, displace them, and destroy their living environment. The silence of the international community equates to complicity in these crimes.

We therefore extend a call to all defenders of life, ecological organizations, and movements: stand in solidarity with the neighborhoods defending their self-governance, freedom, and living spaces against genocidal aggression and international silence.

Time is running out. Civilian lives, ecological habitats, and a community’s very existence are under threat of extinction.

TEV-EKO — European Ecology Movement For Kurdistan

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Stop the Turkish bombardment on the Tişrin Dam in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria

12 January 2025

Statement of the European Ecology Movement for Kurdistan (Tev-Eko)

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, that includes the Kurdish populated areas of Rojava, has stated that the Tişrin Dam at the Euphrates River is on the verge of collapse due to the intense attacks by Turkish military and affiliated jihadist-terorist groups. The administration emphasized that the destruction of this massive water resource in its region, with a capacity of 1.9 billion cubic meters, threatens the biological life in a long strecht of the Euphrates valley that is ecologically the most diverse landscape in that region. It has called on the international community to stand in solidarity before this major destruction takes place.

For several years, the Turkish State and its affiliated jihadist groups are destroying grain silos, electrical and water infrastructures, and civilian residential areas belonging to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria using war machinery. Attacks on food, water and electricity infrastructures create devastation that will impact future generations as well. While the Middle East is under the threat of severe drought, these attacks targeting water resources and infrastructure are not only targeting the people of the autonomous administration but all living beings in the region.

The « flying rivers » essential factor of the global climate

Translation in English of an article from Reporterre

Les rivières aériennes de vapeur issues de la forêt amazonienne jouent un rôle capital pour le climat. CC BY-NC-ND@Neil Palmer/Ciat/Cifor

To avoid climate collapse, it will not be enough to reduce the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It will also be necessary to protect forests and soils from deforestation and intensive agriculture, because the water cycle is also very important for climate regulation. We are just beginning to understand that.

Shortly after the New York Convention (1992), which launched the process of conferences on global warming, scientific publications drew attention to the “air rivers” which are steam or water vapour currents very active for rainfall. Initially called tropospheric rivers, these «aerial rivers» are created by the evaporation of the oceans and by the evapotranspiration of the great forests of Amazonia, Congo, Siberia.

The Popayán Declaration

The Platform for Public and Community Partnerships of the Americas (PAPC) held the Horizons of Public and Community Water Management Meeting on September 25, 26, 27, 2023 in the city of Popayán, Cauca, Colombia, to share knowledge and experiences and allow us to renew our understandings of new and old strategies of water dispossession and privatization and to confront, organize and fight against them.

People, organizations and movements from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia met over three days in the capital of the Department of Cauca, paying homage to this Territory which sits at the confluence of centuries of struggles by Indigenous Peoples and Black and peasant communities in defense of land, cultures and water. But we regret to note that some of our comrades from Africa and Asia could not be here because of the injustice and racism that characterizes international mobility through the arbitrary and inequitable granting of visas and travel permits. We deplore the barriers to entry into Colombia for our compañerxs from the global South which demonstrate that international mobility is controlled by racist and colonial forces that limit the possibilities of face-to-face solidarity between formerly colonized peoples. We will insist on breaking down barriers, meeting and strengthening the exchanges of the peoples of the South.

Report of the "EU water policy" workshop by the EWM during the ESU 2022

The European Water Movement (EWM) was at the 2022 European Summer University of Social Movements (ESU) in Mönchengladbach forging ties with European organisations.

The ESU held in Germany, Mönchengladbach, from 17th to 21st of August, 2022, was a very engaging event where hundreds of activists from social movements in Europe and other parts of the world shared experiences, ideas, initiatives for a different world. In this context we as the EWM presented and discussed two workshops on water, a commons presently under threat of liberistic policies of commodification, privatization and appropriation.

ESU plenary picture @ Sigi MF

More Articles...