Social Protection Forces deployed on roads to protect crops from fires in Hasakah
Hasakah – North-Press Agency
Jindar Abdelqader
The Social Protection Forces, or what is known as the “core force", spread with the start of the harvest season on the road linking the cities of Hasakah and Qamishli, aiming to protect crops in the region from fire.
Most of the members of the Social Protection Forces, which was established as a civilian force to protect cities and villages in 2015, are members of the Komins Protection Committee (District and Village Councils).
Majid Khalil, an official in the Social Protection Forces in the city of Hasakah, told North-Press that they have set up dozens of checkpoints along the road between Hasakah and Qamishli in order to protect agricultural lands belonging to the people on the roads and villages near the road.
He added that with the beginning of the harvest, about 100 members of the Social Protection Forces, women and men, spread across about 20 points along the road, so that a monitoring point would be located in every three kilometers at a distance of about 100 km between Qamishli and Hasakah. In addition, those members have the power to turn away those who have no work in agricultural lands.
Citizen Saeed Saleh said that what the Social Protection Forces are doing – the deployment of security forces and the presence of road checkpoints – have helped to reduce the rate of fires during the current season.
He said that the sources of the outbreak of fires are different, whether the result of cigarette butts or flying sparks from cars, harvesters, and agricultural tractor exhausts, or electrical transformers in villages.
Last Thursday, two people died after they participated in putting out fires. Local sources said that Turkish-backed groups had set agricultural fields in the town of Zarkan, north of Hasakah, on fire.
Since the start of the harvest season, fires burned vast areas of crops in northeastern Syria, and local sources confirm that Turkish-backed opposition groups set fire to agricultural fields under their control or those close to the front lines with Syrian government forces.