This isn’t the first time the Kurdish group has been accused of serious human rights violations, and fears have been mounting since mid-2014 that it is determined to alter the demographic map to further its aim to enlarge its territory and create an autonomous state in northern Syria.
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The United States last week announced a shake-up of its support to Syrian rebels fighting IS, effectively ending its program to train fighters outside Syria and focusing instead on providing weapons to groups whose commanders have been U.S.-vetted.
“It is critical that the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and all other states supporting the Autonomous Administration, or co-ordinating with it militarily, do not turn a blind eye to such abuses”.
“By deliberately demolishing civilian homes, in a few cases razing and burning entire villages, displacing their inhabitants with no justifiable military grounds, the Autonomous Administration is abusing its authority and brazenly flouting global humanitarian law, in attacks that amount to war crimes”, said Lama Fakih, Senior Crisis Advisor at Amnesty worldwide.
The new alliance includes the YPG, various Arab groups including Jaysh al-Thuwwar (Army of Rebels), and an Assyrian Christian group. The YPG, which has made gains with the help of USA air power, forms the largest part of the alliance, with the other groups referring to themselves as the Syrian Arab Coalition.
The Pentagon is air dropping ammunition into Syria to assist fighters who are battling the Islamic State.
Turkey, a U.S. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally and a major player in the region and which views the YPG as a terrorist organization, objected bitterly.
The peshmerga have received heavily-armored American MRAPs along with Humvees, radios, and thousands of small arms, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition from the United States.
Turkey views the YPG’s stated ambition of creating a contiguous Kurdish-run entity in northern Syria as a threat to its own security.
The group said that destruction was not consistent with shelling, but rather demolition. That would mean clearing the Islamic State from villages along 60 miles of the Turkey-Syria border, in particular the border town of Jarablus.
There was no immediate Turkish reaction to the airdrops.
But according to Amnesty, they have targeted civilians too, mounting a “deliberate, coordinated campaign of collective punishment” in areas across the provinces of Hasakah and Raqqa that had previously been captured by Isil.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said those talks, along with discussions with the United States, had yielded progress on the conflict, although Moscow, Washington and Riyadh did not agree in full “as yet”.
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James Rosen in Washington and special correspondents John Zarocostas in Geneva and Zakaria Zakaria in Sulaymaniyah contributed.
