Turkish-backed SNA faction cuts down forest trees in Syria’s Afrin
AFRIN, Syria (North Press) – A faction of the Turkish-backed armed opposition, aka the Syrian National Army (SNA), cut down dozens of forest trees in the countryside of Afrin in northwestern Syria, a source said on Sunday.
A local source told North Press that militants of the Samarkand faction, cut down hundreds of pine trees near Haj Hassane village in the west of Afrin, loading the trees onto trucks bound for Idlib, where they would be sold.
Meanwhile, militants of the Hamzat Division recently raided a home in Sahra village, seizing an olive harvest belonging to Ra’fat Hussein. Hussein had returned from harvesting olives from his grove in the nearby village of Alikaro.
According to the source, the faction confiscated the harvest, claiming unpaid taxes on his 230 trees in Alikaro, with a fee of $2 per tree imposed on villagers. The seized olives were taken to the faction’s headquarters in Shengeleh village.
Recently, the Turkish-backed Sultan Suleiman Shah faction, locally known as al-Amshat, had cleared more than a thousand pine trees in a forest south of the town of Mabata in Afrin’s countryside, according to a local source.
The city of Afrin, along with 366 towns and villages, has been occupied by Turkey and controlled by the SNA factions since 2018. This occupation followed a military operation known as “Olive Branch,” which aimed to remove the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) from the area, under the pretext of protecting the “Turkish national security.”