Drugs, Killings, and Stolen Homes: The U.S. Allies Ignored by the Media

In the last few days, two events of massive significance took place in the same spot. They involve the “jihadi drug” rapidly making its way across the world, the killing of an elderly man who was trying to return home, and crucial U.S. allies who were forced to become refugees as Palestinian settlers overtook their homes.

None of this made the news. While media giants fixate on their favorite targets, they ignore just about everything else. But the world needs to know about Afrin, a region in Syria of massive geopolitical significance.

In fact, in a new legal analysis, two scholars call it “perhaps the most aggressive movement of settler populations into occupied territory in current times.”1 Where are the massive crowds of protesters screaming about this actual occupation? Cue the crickets. In Episode 118, I answered a listener’s question about it, and laid out the basics.

The Kurds have fought alongside the United States in the war against ISIS and other Islamist terrorist groups. Kurds are predominantly Sunni Muslims who support secular government and democracy.

Afrin, in northwestern Syria, has long been a Kurdish home. In 2018, Turkey and Syrian rebel groups launched a military takeover, which they tragicomically called “Operation Olive Branch.”

Hundreds of thousands of Kurds had to flee. Turkey and its proxies looted their homes and moved many people into them, including large numbers of Arabs whom the media call Palestinians.

If the news was doing its job, it would have told you the facts: Palestinians overtook stolen homes as part of a military occupation. Hamas and other Palestinian groups supported this occupation.

In typical style, Palestinian NGOs even paid for construction in the stolen areas, while simultaneously insisting that they were somehow not taking a position on the land theft. No major U.S. news agency has called out this hypocrisy.

More recently, Syria’s new leadership has been trying to warm up relations with parts of the West. These leaders claimed that they would dismantle at least some of the settlements. And some Palestinian leaders, seeing the writing on the wall, are claiming that they never really supported this occupation and land theft in the first place.

But many remain in the stolen homes. And when Kurds try to return, they face peril. “The killing of an elderly Kurdish man who had recently returned to Afrin has provoked widespread anger and renewed concern over the safety of displaced civilians attempting to resettle,” the Syrian Observer reports. It was the second killing of a Kurd in the area in less than a week.

Meanwhile, Afrin has become a hotbed of Captagon, known as the “jihadi drug.” Some Gazan terrorists who took part in the October 7 massacres are believed to have been on the drug, allowing them to avoid getting tired from all the murdering, raping and butchering. Last week, Syrian authorities seized 186,000 pills in Afrin, according to news reports.

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