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Turkey-backed Syrian factions that once fought against the government of Bashar al-Assad continue to detain, abuse and extort civilians in northern Syria, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.
The groups, which are being integrated into Syria’s armed forces following the ouster of the Assad regime by an alliance of rebel groups in December, have seen their commanders appointed to high-level government and military roles despite past involvement in serious human rights violations. HRW called on Syria’s transitional government led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa to end and investigate the ongoing abuses and to bar those implicated in past violations from serving in the security forces.
HRW said Syrian authorities are responsible for abuses committed by forces under their command and for preventing future violations. Turkey, which continues to oversee and support former Syrian National Army (SNA) factions with weapons, salaries, training and logistical aid, also shares responsibility for abuses and potential war crimes, the organization said.
Since 2016 Turkey has carried out successive ground operations to expel the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from Syria’s north, with its proxies now controlling two large border strips. Turkey sees the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which announced its dissolution in a historic move on May 12.
HRW urged the transitional government to unify its military under a single, accountable command with civilian oversight and to comply with international human rights standards. It called for the release of arbitrarily detained individuals, investigations into past abuses and the exclusion of abusive actors from the security forces. HRW also called on Turkey to end its support for implicated commanders and provide reparations to victims.
The transitional government should create conditions for the safe, voluntary and dignified return of displaced people, and allow independent monitors unrestricted access to all detention sites, including those run by Turkish forces and former SNA factions, HRW said.
“The fall of Assad’s abusive government has meant decades of atrocities by that government have come to an end,” said Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at HRW. “But Syrian National Army factions are continuing to detain, extort and torture residents with impunity.”
Among the commanders involved in past abuses and who now hold influential posts in the new Syrian military are Mohammad al-Jassem (Abu Amsha) leading the 62nd Division; Saif Boulad (Saif Abu Bakr) leading the 76th Division; Fehim Isa as the defense minister’s assistant for northern affairs; and most recently, Ahmed al-Hais (Abu Hatem Shaqra) leading the 86th Division in the eastern region.
A February 2024 report by HRW documented abuses committed by SNA factions between 2018 and 2023, primarily targeting Kurds and individuals affiliated with the SDF.
Researchers interviewed two Kurdish civilians detained by Turkish-backed factions as well as three people whose relatives or neighbors were detained around the fall of the Assad government in December. Additional sources included a Syrian human rights researcher, a journalist and an aid worker in northern Aleppo.
On December 1, the SNA, bolstered by military operations conducted by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist coalition now leading the transitional government, launched an offensive to seize territory in northern Aleppo, including the Shahba region, a longtime refuge for Kurds displaced by Turkey’s 2018 takeover of Afrin.
On December 3, SNA fighters raided the home of a Shahba woman, her husband and their three children. The woman told HRW that her 42-year-old husband, a construction worker, was arrested without explanation. Forty days later, a relative found him in a hospital in Afrin.
“They had forcibly removed his fingernails, toenails and teeth, and he had burn marks on his feet. … He told me Turkish intelligence forces and the SNA’s Military Police tortured him in Maarata Prison and forced him to confess that he was building tunnels for the SDF. Then they took him to the hospital and left him there. A few days after he came home, he suffered a stroke and can no longer speak at all,” she said.
In Afrin, residents said the Sultan Suleiman Shah Division, commanded by al-Jassem, has continued to extort civilians. Fighters reportedly imposed taxes on olive farmers and fined returnees between $2,000 and $5,000. From December 2024 to January 2025, the division detained nine people, accusing them of not paying taxes and demanding up to $3,800 for their release.
On January 10, four masked gunmen abducted a woman from her home and demanded $850 under the threat of violence, she told HRW. After her release, she fled the area. The next day, she said, fighters returned to her home three times, threatened guests at a family funeral, beat her niece and detained the niece’s husband, who was released after the family paid $450.
A 61-year-old man who returned to his village in Afrin in November 2024 after an eight-year absence was abducted on December 2 by members of the Hamzat Division, led by Saif Abu Bakr. He said fighters beat him with sticks and whips, confiscated his belongings, accused him of ties to the SDF and transported him to Afrin city while continuing to beat him. He was released after two days when a cousin paid $1,500.
A week later, while seeking a security clearance from the SNA’s military police to avoid further detention, he said he was instead detained and interrogated by Turkish intelligence and military police officers for six days and was released only after paying another $1,500.
A separate report by Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ), a human rights group, documented 41 arrests by SNA factions and affiliated military police in January and February. Ten arrests came after February 6, when Syria’s caretaker government deployed newly formed General Security forces to northern Aleppo as part of an apparent deal to assume control from the SNA.
Although many SNA checkpoints have been removed, residents said factions continue to operate from former bases. Qussai Jukhadar, an STJ researcher, said arrests declined in March but that hundreds remain held in SNA-run, Turkish-supervised prisons.
“As Syria’s transitional government is integrating into its ranks SNA factions and other armed groups, it must exclude those in the SNA that are responsible for abuses and hold them accountable,” Coogle said. “If it doesn’t do so, the Syrian people will not be able to trust their armed forces and will be vulnerable to yet more abuse.”
Syria’s war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions since it erupted in 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.