It has emerged that ISIS gangs that are beginning to flee from YPG attacks have sold the Kurdish villages they have occupied for between 5 and 10 thousand US dollars. The people of Ziravik said their village had been looted and sold to their Arab neighbours, adding that the aim of the gangs was to create internecine strife.

ISIS gangs that launched attacks on the Kobanê Canton of Rojava on 15 September with tanks and heavy weaponry, occupied 362 villages and hamlets. As the Kobanê resistance led by the YPG and YPL begins to inflict heavy losses on the ISIS gangs, it has emerged that Kurdish villages have been sold.

The residents of the village of Ziravik to the south of Kobanê who took refuge in the village of Boydê in Suruç district say their village has been sold to Arabs living in places such as Mambij, Al Bab, Jarablus, Girê Spî (Tel Abyad) and Raqqa. The Kurds said their villages were being sold for between 5 and ten thousand dollars and had also been looted. They added that the aim of the ISIS gangs was to create animosity between the Arab and Kurdish peoples who had previously lived in harmony.

They've sold the villages

Fevaz Ibrahim from Ziravik said that before the ISIS attacks Arabs had lived together in harmony with the Kurds in Kobanê. Ibrahim added that 12,000 gang members had attacked Kobanê, and that most of them were Arab neighbours of theirs. “We have learned that they looted our villages. They bought them from the gangs and took away barley, wheat and anything else they could carry. They even took cheese from our houses and the electric cables. They buy 3 or 4 villages at a time from ISIS. They even pick our olives. We used to be neighbours. Now they have betrayed us. I don't know how we'll be neighbours in the future,” he said.
Ibrahim added that they were waiting for the day they could return to their village.

‘They want to tun us into enemies'

Hesen Mihemed, whose husband is in the YPG and Helim Seydo from Ziravik, who said he had been held as a captive by ISIS for 5 months, said they had previously lived together with their Arab neighbours. Seydo said three people had been decapitated by the gangs in front of his house, adding: “We have heard that they have sold our village to Arabs in the surrounding area. They came and looted the village so that now there are only walls and empty fields. Kobanê belongs to the Kurds. We can't wait to go back. ISIS claims it is Moslem, but the Kurds are the real Moslems. They want to make us enemies, but we know that there are good Arabs. We won't be hostile to anyone.”