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Conflict Incident Report

Lebanon protests Turkey's Syria offensive

Date of incident: 
February 5, 2018
Death toll: 
0persons
Number of Injured: 
0persons
Actors/Parties Involved: 
Lebanese Civilians
Lebanese Kurds

Hundreds protested in Lebanon against Turkey's military offensive in Syria's Kurdish enclave of Afrin.

Several demonstrations in support of Syria's Kurds have taken place in the Lebanese capital and across the world since Ankara launched its operation last month.

The demonstrators, some of them refugees and others members of Lebanon's long-established Kurdish community, held their protest near the U.S. embassy on the outskirts of Beirut.

They described feeling abandoned by Washington.

"We brought an end to the Islamic State group [Daesh] in the world and now the entire world is against us," said one demonstrator, who gave his name as Rida and who was originally from Afrin.

The Kurds in Syria were the main partner on the ground for the U.S.-led coalition that has carried out thousands of air strikes against the jihadists since 2014.

They spearheaded a massive offensive that last year expelled Daesh from Raqa, the city that was the inner sanctum of its now-defunct "caliphate".

Now many feel the United States and its allies in the coalition are doing little to protect them from neighbouring Turkey, which is alarmed by the consolidation of Kurdish-held territory along its border with Syria.

Turkey has carried out air strikes and used its Syrian rebel allies to attack the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), a group Ankara considers a terrorist organisation linked to the Kurdish insurgency active on its own soil.

Several of the protesters at the demonstration, which passed without any incident, were carrying olive branches and waving YPG posters.

Some of them also held portraits of a Kurdish female combattant, Barin Kobani, whose corpse appeared in a shocking video last week.

Her family and Kurdish officials have accused Turkish-backed rebels of "defiling" her body.

This security incident was mapped according to the closest possible location.
Primary category: 
Collective Action [inc. protests, solidarity movements...]
Classification of conflict (primary): 
Conflicts of social discrimination
Violent and unjust treatment of different categories of people and individuals based on race, age, gender or sexuality, committed by the State, groups and individuals, related to a lack of protection and rights, inefficiency of the Justice system and persisting social and economic vulnerabilities.