MESOP REPORT : Kurdish media activists intimidated by ISIL in Syria’s Tel Abyad

04-04-2014 – ARA News – Urfa, Turkey– Local activists in Tel Abyad city reported that the Qaeda splinter group of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) distributed on Wednesday pamphlets with a list of names of Kurdish media activists whom the ISIL seeks for retribution. A local activist (who preferred anonymity) told ARA News that the ISIL didn’t only publish names of Kurdish activists, “but also warned everyone not to communicate with them of provide them with any ISIL-linked news”.

Speaking to ARA News, Ibrahim Muslim, a Kurdish activist based in Tel Abyad city, said: “Apparently, the ISIL’s goal from distributing the names of Kurdish media activists is not meant to really capture these activists as the majority of Tel Abyad’s Kurdish residents left the city, but rather to send a message to the Arab residents of Tel Abyad so that they cut their contacts with those activists and avoid providing them (Kurdish activists) with ISIL-linked information. It is a clear intimidation to the Arab inhabitants of Tel Abyad who live under the suppressive rule of ISIL group.” 

Meanwhile, private sources revealed to ARA News that members of ISIL held meetings with Arab citizens in the villages of al-Badee and Rasim al-Faragh in the southern countryside of Tel Abyad city –mainly with al-Mashhor tribal figures– to recruit the youths of these villages after the ISIL suffered huge losses of members in the villages of Kendal and al-Rawi during clashes with the Kurdish forces of the Popular Protection Units (YPG). Another meeting was held with residents of Sakiro village, “but the residents refused any form of cooperation with ISIL”.

“After holding several meetings, the ISIL leaders visited villages in the vicinity of al-Badee village (5 km south of Tel Abyad city) with the company of Balikh Tahri and Salih Khalaf al-Mattar, two tribal leaders of al-Mashhor tribe, in an attempt to gain support,” the same sources said.  Notably, the ISIL ordered on the 17th of last March the Kurds who had chosen to remain in their villages in the countryside of Tel Abyad to leave. Following the ISIL order, about 500 Kurds left to Turkey on the 20th of March. http://aranews.org/en/home/kurdish-region/1215-kurdish-media-activists-intimidated-by-isil-in-syria-s-tel-abyad.html