Proliferation of Weapons in Qamishli Leads to Accidental Killings

By Vyan Mohammad

(Qamishli, Syria) – In early June, 16-year-old-Ahmad was killed when his five-year-old brother fired their father’s nine millimetre Star handgun. Ahmad used to live with his family in the Muwathafin neighbourhood in the city of Qamishli in the northeast of Syria. With his father at work, his mother had asked him to keep an eye on his younger brother until she returned from the market.

“We heard a gunshot from Abu Ahmad’s house,” said Suleiman, Ahmad’s friend and neighbour. “When we went to see what had happened, we found Ahmad on the floor in a pool of blood with his younger brother next to him holding his father’s gun.”

This is not an exceptional event in Qamishli. There are no official statistics of the numbers of unintentional killings in Qamishli due to the misuse of weapons stored in homes. According to the head of one of the headquarters of Asayish, which is the police arm of the Kurdish Supreme Council, who spoke on condition of anonymity, most cases of killing by members of the family are kept quiet so that the perpetrator avoids punishment.

In another incident, Abu Mohammad, a resident of the Halko neighbourhood, accidentally killed his wife as he was teaching her how to shoot his pump action shotgun.

“I killed her with my own hands,” said Abu Mohammad, tears streaming down his face as he hit his forehead and looked at his two small children.

Abu Mohammad, a night security guard, said he was teaching his wife how to use the weapon so she could defend herself and their children while he was away. After he instructed her, he sat in front of his bedroom and began disassembling the weapon to clean it while his wife was in the kitchen washing dishes. Suddenly the gun went off. The bullet hit his wife, killing her instantly.

No one from Abu Mohammad’s wife’s family reported him to the authorities, so the police did not arrest him.

Over the last two years, weapons have been sold openly in the markets of the Kurdish-majority city without any oversight. Anyone looking for a weapon could simply head to Qamishli’s main market in the middle of the city and choose from whatever is on display at what is known as the Turkish Souq. Stalls there sell both light and heavy weapons for prices that range between 20,000 Syrian Liras (about $111 US Dollars) to 180,000 Liras ($1000) for heavier weapons. Handguns sell for 5,000 Liras ($27), and those with locally altered barrels sell for between 15,000 and 25,000 Liras ($83 US dollars to $140) according to one seller.

Another seller says that there are several sources for weapons in the market, the most important of which are weapons smuggled from Iraq and Turkey. Additionally, some regime-affiliated security forces sell their weapons before defecting.

In the past two years, many Qamishli residents have secured weapons to defend themselves from armed robberies.

“In Syria we are now living in a jungle with no security. We must have weapons in the house to protect ourselves from wild jungle animals,” said Akhteen, a shoe storeowner.

Abdel Aziz Ali, a resident of the Khaleej neighbourhood, says he bought arms for fear of the thieves that are increasingly present in Qamishli. However, due to the number of accidental shootings, Abdel Aziz changed his mind about keeping a weapon in the house and decided to sell it. He saw it as a bad omen.

Security in the Qamishli is almost completely absent because of the paralysis of government institutions. The number of police officers has shrunk, and those that remain deal primarily with administrative tasks such as recording births and deaths. There are no police on the streets. The Kurdish parts of Qamishli, which form the largest part of the city, fall under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Kurdish Authority and its Asayish Forces. However, a lack of experience prevents these forces from being able to effectively impose security, according to a leader of the Asayish Forces, who preferred to remain anonymous.

The proliferation of weapons has also spread to Qamishli’s children. Some of them head to the market to buy personal handguns for 5,000 Liras.

“Teenagers are now using weapons to assert themselves, overtaking the usual modes of teenage rebellion, such as stubbornness and smoking, particularly in this environment where arms are so widespread,” said psychologist and counsellor Mohammad Ali Othman. Othman warns parents about the dangers of this phenomenon and to educate their children about the threat that weapons pose.

The Supreme Kurdish Authority, the body that manages the affairs of Kurds in the city, issued a decision last April to regulate the carrying and sale of arms. Additionally, it asked citizens to register their weapons with the Authority. Based on this decision, the Asayish Forces have prohibited the sale of weapons in the market and confiscated them, although it does not punish or fine offenders.

Abdel Majid Ibrahim, director of the Asayish police station in the Corniche neighbourhood claims that 4000 weapons have been registered in the area alone. He goes on to say that the process of registration is a simple one, requiring only that a person come to the centre with their weapon so that its serial number may be recorded. The owner is then given a registration card. There are no estimates on the number of weapons in people’s homes in Qamishli.

However, according to Abdel Majid Ibrahim, licensing has not been effective in minimizing arbitrary weapon use. He is aware of many cases of accidental killings that happen without being reported.