Wrath of the Olives: Tracking the Afrin Insurgency Through Social Media - bellingcat

"Before Operation Olive Branch, Afrin mostly avoided the brutality and destruction large swaths of Syria have suffered in the past eight years. Regime forces withdrew soon after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, leaving the region to the Kurdish ‘Democratic Union Party’ (PYD) and its affiliated YPG and YPJ militias. Since then, a de facto non­aggression pact with the regime allowed the district to avoid indiscriminate bombardment that has ravaged rebel-controlled Syria.

This relative calm attracted internally displaced persons (IDPs), with some estimates numbering as high as 100,000. However, the lack of recently constructed housing infrastructure visible on satellite imagery points to sizeable numbers of original inhabitants and IDPs leaving for Turkey and beyond during this period. The population of pre-war Afrin, home to 172,000 people according to the 2004 census, was overwhelmingly Sunni Kurdish, with small geographically-confined Yezidi, Protestant Christian, and Sunni Arab populations."