By Shella Abdulhalim
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Helpless and filled with pain, Khalil Hannan freezes in his land watching militants of the Turkish-backed armed opposition factions, aka the Syrian National Army (SNA), uprooting dozens of his 50-year-old olive trees over ambiguous charges.
Hannan, a pseudonym for a 65-year-old resident from the town of Bulbul, north of Afrin in northwest Syria, said that militants of Sultan Murad faction, affiliated with the SNA, cut down 40 olive trees from his land, accusing him of dealing with the Kurdish Autonomous Administration in Afrin despite being illiterate.
“I spent most of my life among my olive trees, that is all what I know to do; they accused me of collaborating with the Kurdish forces to uproot my only source of living,” Hannan said.
When Turkey, along with the Turkish-backed SNA factions, launched a military operation in Afrin in 2018, naming it Olive Branch Operation. Critics viewed the name as a part of a propaganda campaign. However, six years later, the name has seemingly acquired a more literal meaning.
Since the occupation of Afrin, the SNA factions have been logging trees, clearing vast lands, and turning them from amazing green nature into barren lands.
For many forcibly displaced residents of Afrin, footages of tree cutting and deforested areas are a painful reminder of the ongoing destruction of their lost land and an indication of the continued crimes against nature in Afrin.
There are several reasons for cutting down trees by the SNA factions, including converting lands into settlements to accommodate the SNA militants’ families and other displaced families coming from different Syrian areas, selling firewood as a source of fund for the SNA factions in collaboration with settlers, or using the land for agricultural crop cultivation.
Clearing forests to build settlements
After the occupation of Afrin, tens of thousands of families of the SNA militants, in addition to other anti-government opposition families, arrived in Afrin. Part of them were settled in the houses of the forcibly displaced Kurdish inhabitants, as for the rest, the SNA factions cleared the forests to build multiple camps and settlement to house them.
Since the beginning of 2023, Turkey has initiated the construction of 21 settlements in Afrin, with the support of Kuwaiti, Qatari, Saudi, Palestinian, and Turkish organizations, according to the Monitoring and Documentation Department of North Press.
Families from the governorates of Idlib, Hama, and Aleppo have been settled there. The construction is supervised by a contractor from Rif Dimashq Governorate, in coordination with the Sultan Suleiman Shah Division (al-Amshat), affiliated with the SNA.
A report published by PAX, a Dutch peace initiative, said that the forest that cover parts of the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin have decreased by about 57 percent since 2018.
SNA factions’ source of funding
In Afrin, logging for fuel and trade continued unabated as a source of livelihood and funding for both settlers and the armed factions.
Renas Ahmad, a resident of the village of Kafr Shil in Afrin northern countryside told North Press that armed individuals cut down 50 olive trees, aged more than 70 years old, from his lands.
“I rushed to the checkpoint [belonging to the SNA] at the village entrance because I was unable to confront the too many tree armed woodcutters,” Ahmad told North Press.
Ahmad indicated that the “thieves” and the checkpoints’ personnel were on an agreement because the latter did not arrest the “thieves”, instead they only seized the logged trees.
“As the checkpoint militants arrived, the thieves got out from the land. However, the militants seized all the logged trees. While those who cut down the trees were not even arrested,” Ahmad concluded.
According to local residents, the SNA factions coordinate with the settlers to cut down trees and facilitate their transfer to other SNA-held areas to be sold to timber merchants.
In a leaked WhatsApp audio record of a merchant from the city of al-Bab, northeast Aleppo, he confirms the cooperation between the merchants and some SNA factions, such as the Sultan Murad faction, the Sham Legion, and the al-Amshat Division.
He said that the factions regularly provide the market with wood shipments as they receive a share from each shipment based on the sales.
The prices of olive trees wood range between $150 and $200 per ton, depending on quality. As for cedar and pine, they are sold for $90 to $110 per ton, and the prices rise as the weather gets colder, according to the leaked audio record.
He said in the record that the demand for trees has increased during winter and noted that the quantities of wood coming from the village of Maydanki, north of Afrin, have decreased significantly due to severe logging.
Violations under Turkish protection
Fayez al-Doghim, a journalist from the city of Tel Abyad, north of Raqqa, posted a video on his Facebook account, documenting cutting thousands of trees within hours in a forest surrounding Maydanki Lake in Afrin countryside.
Al-Doghim said cutting down of trees close to the lake was not a single act. Rather, it was carried out by bulldozers, and this is not the first time, indicating that the few remaining trees, which are almost seen, may be the next target of a new cutting process.
The Monitoring and Documentation Department recorded the logging of 8,429 trees in Afrin by the SNA factions since the beginning of 2023.
Around 5,030 olive trees, 2,060 pomegranate trees, and other fruit and forest trees were cut down to be sold on markets, according to the Monitoring and Documentation Department.
Hamza Division logged 2,632 trees, Ahrar al-Sharqiyah faction logged 680, Sham Legion logged 554, Sultan Murad 272, and the al-Amshat 253.
Turkey grants the SNA leaders and militants facilitations, allowing them to impose royalties on land owners, as well as, it turns a blind eye on the severely decreased green areas, and facilitates the crossing of wood shipment into Turkish territories, according to local residents.
Afrin’s forests, which include centuries-old trees, are considered public property. According to the Environment and International Humanitarian Law, these practices of destruction or appropriation of public property are considered illegal and amount to a war crime unless they are justified by military necessity.
Green space pre-war
Although there are no official statics regarding the number of trees cut since 2018, some local watchdogs, including Syrians for Truth and Justice, documented and addressed the tree-cutting activities and their impact on the local community, as an effort to show the international community the ongoing great environmental distraction practices by Turkey and its SNA factions.
Mamdouh Tobal, an agricultural engineer from Afrin residing in the city of Tabqa, northern Syria, revealed to North Press that statistics made in 2011 by the Agriculture Department in Afrin indicate that forest spaces were about 18,500 hectares, spaces of cultivated forests were 21,000 hectares, and the spaces cultivated with olive trees reached about 130,000 hectares.
Tobal added that more than 60 percent of spaces in Afrin were cultivated with olive trees, as residents relied on olive, which is of major agricultural importance, for their living in term of domestic consumption, firewood for winter, fodder for animals, and also for the exportation of the redundant production.
