Source for ARK: Shooting to limit Kurdish farmers' access to their fields and their loss of livelihood

Source for ARK: Shooting to limit Kurdish farmers' access to their fields and their loss of livelihood

Jan 05 2023

ARK News... The village of Kafr Zeit, in the city of Afrin, in Syrian Kurdistan, on Tuesday, January 3, 2023, witnessed live bullets to prevent farmers from reaching their fields and losing their livelihoods.

The Kurdish farmers in the aforementioned village, and the neighboring villages, woke up to the impact of cutting trees with chainsaws and machines that run on fuel, at night, which led to the farmers going down to the fields to lose their livelihoods and limit the unjust cutting.

A source from the village told ARK that the farmers were surrounded by live bullets, to limit their access to agricultural fields and to reveal those involved. The number of damaged trees was not disclosed, but the village is under the control of the Hamzat faction of the Syrian National Army.

The unjust cutting has become the most prominent title of the ongoing daily events and violations in the Afrin region, a region that is famous for hosting millions of olive trees, fruits, cypresses, pine trees, and other species.

Every day, Kurdish farmers wake up to the impact of violations from the unjust cutting of olive trees, the only source for Kurdish farmers. The trade-in firewood has become a pioneering trade, as one ton is sold in Afrin for $70, while it is sold for $150 in each of Idlib and Izaz.

Near the military hospital and the headquarters of the military police in the city of Afrin, the Arabs, with the protection of the armed factions, cut down more than forty trees few days ago, belonging to a Kurdish farmer. While the Ahrar al-Sharqiya faction of the National Army, on December 27, 2022, cut down a number of olive and cypress trees in the vicinity of the factories. Al Berin is near the city, according to the ARK source.

Organizations and activists confirm that more than one and a half million olive trees and other fruitless trees were cut down at the beginning of Turkey and the armed invasion's 2018 control of the city and its towns and villages, without any of the perpetrators facing trial or prosecution.

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