NORTHERN ALEPPO (North Press) – This year, Amina preferred to buy her ration of olive and oil, shouldering financial burdens than to risk her safety and that of her family members in harvesting olive crop from A land lying on frontline.
The 47-yar-old Amina Haboush, from the village of Burj al-Qas in Sherawa sub-district of Afrin, is scared to harvest her olive crop as her field comes under repeated shelling by Turkish forces and their affiliated armed Syrian opposition factions, known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), positioned in the adjacent village of Brad.
The woman says she had lost her husband in Turkish shelling of their village in the context of the Turkish cross-border operation “Olive Branch” in 2018. She is obsessed with fear that her children face such a fate in case they go to the land.
Since then, olive crops in villages locating on the frontlines have been engulfed in dangers as such areas relentlessly come under shelling.
Afrin, a Kurdish city in the north of Aleppo, has been under the occupation of Turkey since March 2018 following the operation “Olive Branch” which resulted in the displacement of about 300.000 people of the original inhabitants of the city and its countryside.
Haboush, who feels an ache in her heart for her land, said, “Sound of shelling and gunfire makes me horrified.”
“Our lands no longer produce olives, rather Turkish fatal bullets,” she added.
In the same village, North Press interviewed other villagers who own fields located on the frontlines in Brad, home to a base of the Turkish forces and pro-Turkey factions, they affirmed they have never harvested their crops for fear of being targeted directly by the Turkish forces.
The same applies to the villages of Soghana, Aqiba, Ziyara, Kheribka, Mayassa, Zarna’it, Burj al-Qas, Zouq al-Kabir, Ibbin, and Kalota that are not held by the Turkish forces.
In Kherbika, hard living conditions and the dire need to harvest her crops, 60-year-old Farida Mahmoud is forced to take risks to harvest her crops. Her land is located close to the frontline in the village of Ziyara, south of Afrin.
The woman, who owns 150 trees on the frontline, tries, in a hurry, to harvest the crop, “Every delay means a loss,” she said.
Presumably, Mahmoud was to finish her harvest at the end of October. However, owing to relentless shelling it has belated many times.
She indicates she will harvest 50 trees or less as the vast majority of trees located in an area close to Turkish forces.
“The crops that used to gap a mass bridge in our needs of olive and oil and secure amounts of money is no longer suffices our rations,” she added.
As she was preoccupied with picking up pierces of olive, she noted, “Those pierces of olive could make me face the risk of being subjected to sniper’s bullets or shells.”
Logging and cutting down trees in Afrin are common practices in winter by Turkish-backed SNA, despite the opposition groups’ pledging to prevent this practice, fearing accountability.
Afrin is one of the most important Syrian regions known for olive growing, where the number of olive trees until the end of 2017 reached more than 18 million, 16 million of which were productive, according to the approved toll by Autonomous Administration in Afrin at the time.