By Maher Mustafa
DEIR EZ-ZOR, Syria (North Press) – Abdulqader al-Hudhud complained of harassment by the National Defense Forces (NDF), and their imposition of royalties on what he earns, which he relied on to secure his family’s livelihood.
Al-Hudhud, 45, a resident of the town of al-Mayadin in Deir ez-Zor Governorate, eastern Syria, works with his sons to collect metal scraps for sale and secures his livelihood with their price, due to the difficult living conditions and lack of job opportunities.
The NDF is a military formation that was founded by the Syrian government and fought along with it during the years of war.
He told North Press that NDF shares his profits, where they force him to pay 50,000 Syrian pounds (SYP) for each load he sells to waste recycling plants, in addition to harassment and extortion against the man and his sons, by directing charges to them for extracting iron from sites and government buildings that were demolished as a result of previous shelling.
The iron extraction from the demolished sites and government buildings is carried out by groups affiliated with the NDF. These groups engage in selling the extracted iron from the destroyed buildings and houses of the IDPs. In addition to that, they allegedly employ methods of extortion and harassment against the local population.
Despite the kinship of the forces with al-Hudhud who preferred to name himself by a pseudonym for security reasons, they forced him to pay the royalties. The man said that most of them are forced to give an amount of money to the groups’ leaders.
The NDF are present in Deir ez-Zor in the form of battalions and regiments, led by Firas al-Jaham, and their headquarters are concentrated in the neighborhoods of the city of Deir ez-Zor, and the towns of al-Mayadin and Abu Kamal in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor.
The NDF includes members of Deir ez-Zor’s tribes, and members from the city of Tadmur and the eastern countryside of Homs, central Syria.
The NDF relies on covering expenses on fees imposed on civilians, goods and shops. It deploys checkpoints in cities to extort and harass residents to force them to pay money.
Luring and Extortion
“The issue of sexual extortion has spread recently, and it is mostly related to prostitution networks that belong to the NDF,” according to Omar al-Jamal, a pseudonym of a resident of al-Hamidiya neighborhood in Deir ez-Zor.
Al-Jamal was lured by those networks, where a girl called him to her house, which she uses as a brothel. When he arrived, he was surprised by the presence of the NDF from the same neighborhood. They forced al-Jamal to take off his clothes and filmed him.
“After returning home, one of the NDF, nicknamed Jarada, started sending me photos on Whatsapp, asking for a sum of money amounting to one million SYP in exchange for deleting each photo”, al-Jamal told North Press.
Al-Jamal was forced to pay 10 million SYP to the NDF member and the girl who was with him, fearing the “scandal”. Another member also extorted him in exchange for deleting the photos so he also paid for him.
The process continued by a third party, but the man refused to pay any more money. Therefore, they published the photos on Facebook. He went to the military court in Damascus to file a complaint, but it remained neglected.
“After publishing my photo, I published an explanation through my personal account on social media about what happened to me such as a harassment and forcing me to undress, and then a patrol of the NDF raided my house”, he said.
The groups receive their instructions from their leader who is a main leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Deir ez-Zor. The leader receives most of his support by extortion and thefts in addition to drug trafficking.
Green Light
“Our salaries are often delayed by the leadership of the NDF”, Wahid Talal, a pseudonym for a member of the NDF in Deir ez-Zor, said.
“Due to many complaints by the members about not being satisfied about their monthly salary, we received instructions to impose royalties and harass residents for money, so the members began using these instructions and soon began harassing residents and merchants”.
The practices of groups affiliated with the NDF in Deir ez-Zor raise discontent of the residents, which prompted some of them to flee and escape outside the areas controlled by the NDF, while others were forced to stay under those practices.
Talal pointed out that these practices are almost individual, as some members joined the NDF not for a material purpose, but to protect themselves from security pursuits.
Residents of Deir ez-Zor say that the NDF’s checkpoints impose royalties on commuters between towns, ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 SYP, and the amount rises to 100,000 SYP if the person is an expatriate in Gulf countries.
Those groups also resort to impose royalties on the residents under the pretext of rehabilitating water plants, bringing services to the area, paying money to the affected families, or to the families of their killed members.