Operation Olive Branch deals $2 bln blow to PKK

Syria’s ruling Baath party, led by Bashar al-Assad, offered an annual income of two billion dollars to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) by withdrawing from Afrin in 2012. The Syrian Economic Forum President Tammam Baroudi said that the PKK earned this figure annually through drugs, fuel, extortion, human smuggling, deliveries to Aleppo and from civilians who fled to regime territory.

“In Afrin, the terrorist organization, which has lost one third of its members, is also experiencing an economic blow. I hope that these losses will continue in Manbij, Tel Abayd and al-Hasakah,” Baroudi said.

Baroudi, who heads the Syrian Economic Forum, which was established in 2013 with the participation 1260 entrepreneurs, said that the PKK had seized hundreds of businesses in Afrin. The PKK made shop owners work as employees and seized all production facilities from bakeries to olive oil factories.

“There are 67 million olive trees throughout Syria, and 18 million of these trees are in Afrin. The PKK sent 40 percent of the income it received from the 250 olive oil factories and other facilities that it confiscated to Qandil. In Afrin, 270,000 tons of olive oil are produced annually. The PKK also seized marble quarries, 10 soap factories, 35 apparel workshops, and 22 flour factories, as well as coal, alcohol, dairy products, sesame seeds, oil refineries and spring water bottling facilities,” Baroudi said.

“The PKK has turned Afrin into a drug capital. More than 60 percent of their income comes from drug and human smuggling. The terrorist organization has established a huge network from Afrin to South Africa, reaching the European and the Gulf drug market. The profits from human and drug smuggling have exceeded one billion dollars per year in the last two years. With the fall of Aleppo, Afrin remained as the only transit point between Syria's eastern and western regions. During the last three years, Afrin served as a bridge between the Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, al-Hasakat, Idlib, Lattakia, Hama, Derra, Humus and Damascus regions,” Baroudi added.

“For the last year, the workshops in the Euphrates Shield region could send their products for export via Aleppo or Damascus. They had to use the Afrin line for this. The terrorist organization was taking $1.50 per box for the products sent. The PKK has amassed great deals of money in this way. The clearing of terror elements from Afrin will affect trade balances on a regional scale. There will no longer be the PKK and extortion gangs in the corridor that stretches from Idlib to the Euphrates Shield region and Aleppo,” Baroudi said.

Turkey initiated Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20 in Afrin to establish security and stability, PKK/KCK/PYD-YPG and Daesh eliminate terrorists, and save locals from their oppression and cruelty. The military said it is putting the "utmost importance" on not harming any civilians.

Afrin has been a major hideout for the PYD/PKK since July 2012, when the Assad regime in Syria left the city to the terror group without putting up a fight.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the United States. The PKK has been conducting armed violence in the southeastern part of Turkey since 1984. More than 40,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the three-decade long conflict.