“Under the pretext of Fighting ISIS”/By Ibrahim Mohammad

Photo Credit: Ibrahim Mohammad

During the last years, many reports stated that #Kurdish separatist factions in eastern Syria were trying to recruit young men who reached the age of 18, and that was under the pretext of fighting #ISIS, while the main goal was to blackmail the families of detainees in order to gain money in exchange for their release.
On Monday, June 29, 2020, militants of #Qasd (#SDF) arrested 22 young men from several villages in the northern countryside of Raqqa, under the pretext of “Mandatory conscription” and included them to fight in their ranks through a campaign of arrests in the villages of Al-Jarbou, M’aizylah and Al-Qalta in the northern countryside of #Raqqa.
It is noteworthy that most of the young men were born between 1990 and 2001, and some of them were arrested inside their houses, while others were arrested by temporary checkpoints and patrols that raid the mentioned villages, these young men were transported to Ain Issa camp. Similar incidents of arrests have also took place two days, and it’s still continuing.
Today, it has become even more worse, as these #US-backed factions kidnap children to recruit them.
Some people here may think that we are exaggerating, because they are not aware of the lives of the #Kurds who exist between northern #Iraq to northern #Syria and southern #Turkey, where they send their children at an early age, like 10 for example, to the #Qandil Mountains to receive intensive military training on using light and medium weapons, mountain warfare, close clashes, sniping, planting and dismantling mines, which is an ordinary thing for them.
Local sources said that the members of the so-called “People’s Protection Units” have kidnapped the 11-year-old, “Ronida Dari”, and took her to a mandatory conscription camp in #Amouda, north of #Hasaka, and threatened her mother to prevent her from talking to the media and claim her daughter, but the mother refused their threats and promised to expose their crimes.
The sources also said that a person called “Ibo” (A Kurdish mercenary) is supervising the abduction and transportation of the children to the Protection Units, which in their turn send them to the mandatory conscription camps, and force them to fight in their ranks.
It is also noteworthy that the incident is not the first of its kind, as a wide range of incidents of kidnapping and forced recruitment of minors have spread among “protection units” in the areas of the Syrian Al-Jazeera, despite the pledges by the “Self-Management” to which the units belong, that they will stop the recruitment of minors, and it has already signed agreements with international organizations to prevent these violations.