AFRIN, Syria (North Press) – Videos and photos, evoked media sites and accounts on social media circulated a sensation, as people appeared to chop trees in forests in the countryside of Afrin, north of Aleppo.
Fayez al-Doghim, a journalist from Tel Abyad in the north of Raqqa, posted a video on his Facebook account, documenting cutting thousands of trees within hours in a forest surrounding Midanki Lake in the countryside of Afrin.
Al-Doghim said, in the recording that cutting off hundreds of trees around the lake is not an individual act.
Where it was done by bulldozers, and this is not the first time, indicating that the remaining trees, which are almost seen, may be the nest target of a new cutting process.
Activists published pictures that showed what the forests were in Afrin, before the control of the Turkish-backed opposition faction also known as Syrian National Army SNA, and what it has become today.
As a result of over-cutting, today it is an arid land, almost devoid of vegetation.
Frequent chops
Chopping operations have been repeated in Afrin areas, in the northern countryside of Aleppo, by SNA members, since they took control of the area in March 2018.
On August 23, the Turkish-backed Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement uprooted 300 olive trees at the entrance of Jindires district in Afrin countryside.
An exclusive source told North Press that the trees belong to Jwan Youssef, who has been displaced from the area since the Turkish invasion in 2018. These trees will be taken and sold in the local markets.
The source pointed out that the aim of uprooting the trees is to establish settlements for the families of the factions.
In mid-August, the Sultan Murad faction cut down 375 olive trees, owned by Ibrahim Ibish and Jalal Omar from Bulbul district north of Afrin.
Members of the aforementioned faction moved all the felled trees to the faction’s headquarters in the nearby village of Qizilbash and the district’s center to be sold in local markets and areas controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, formerly al-Nusra Front).
A day earlier, members of the Turkish-backed Jaysh al-Nukhba cut down 35 olive trees owned by Muhammad Issa in the village of Ain al-Hajar in north of Afrin.
Logging and selling
Human Rights Organization-Afrin has documented in its annual report for the 2021, the cutting of 23.500 trees by Turkish-backed SNA factions.
Thousands of forestry and fruity trees have been burned by SNA to establish the settlements, the report added.
Logging and cutting of trees are increasing in Afrin region, with the approach of winter despite the factions’ pledge to prevent chopping under big accountability.
The opposition factions sell firewood in the markets of Afrin and export it to Idlib areas in exchange for huge sums of money, according to media reports.
The city of Afrin was occupied by Turkey in 2018 following a military operation called “Olive Branch” to push away the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) under the pretext of protecting Turkey’s “national security”.
The operation caused the displacement of about 300.000 of the original inhabitants of the Kurds of Afrin who have been taking shelter in 40 villages and five camps in Shahba region since then.