[6] During the late days of the Ottoman Empire, large Kurdish-speaking tribal groups both settled in and were deported to areas of northern Syria from Anatolia.[10] The demographics of northern Syria saw a huge shift in the early part of the 20th century when the Ottoman Empire (Turks and Kurds) conducted ethnic cleansing of its Armenian and Assyrian Christian populations and some Kurdish tribes joined in the atrocities committed against them.This has encouraged the non-Turkish minorities that were under Turkish pressure to leave their ancestral homes and property, they could find refuge and rebuild their lives in relative safety in neighboring Syria.[24] In 1953, French geographers Fevret and Gibert estimated that out of the total 146,000 inhabitants of Jazira, agriculturalist Kurds made up 60,000 (41%), semi-sedentary and nomad Arabs 50,000 (34%), and a quarter of the population were Christians.Syrian government documents indicate the immigrants "came singly and in groups from neighboring countries, especially Turkey, crossing illegally along the border from Ras al'Ain to al-Malikiyya.From being lawless and virtually empty prior to 1914, the Jazira had proved to be astonishingly fertile once order was imposed by the French mandate and farming undertaken by the largely Kurdish population.... A strong suspicion that many migrants were entering Syria was inevitable.While the proposals in the Hilal report had officially been accepted by the Ba'athist government as early as 1965, it was Hafez al-Assad who ordered the implementation of the Arab Belt programme in 1973.[37][38] By the end of the programme, around 140,000 Kurds living in 332 villages were displaced from their homes by the Syrian government; and tens of thousands of Arabs - mostly from the Raqqa region- established settlements in the confiscated lands.[2][5] Fifteen state farms of the Pilot Project were built on lands expropriated by the in the barriya (which means wild area in Arabic ); a zone of pasture and dry culture.[39] Villages were built into which were to be settled 4,000 Arab families coming from the land which was to be submerged following the completion of the Tabqa dam and the filling of Lake Assad.