Afrinpost – Special
The “Afrinpost” correspondent in the center of “Shara / Sharan” district, east of the occupied Kurdish region of Afrin, in northern Syria, reported that the settlers in the village of “Sarenjik” of the sub-district are looting olives in front of the eyes of the Kurdish villagers who own the land, as if it were their property.
In a separate context, the “Afrinpost” correspondent said that a settler from Idlib was talking to some of the Kurdish people in an olive press on the road to Shara district, saying brazenly: “These are our days, you have been eating olives since ages, now it is our turn.”
With regard to olive theft as well, a member of the “Sultan Murad Division” militia, called “Abu Faris”, in one of the villages near Nabi Huri, Sarenjik, Nazo and Alija in Shara / Sharan district, sells the stolen olives in Afrin markets for $ 8,500, and the buyer was from the Boubna clan (above the industrial zone), he buys olives at a price of 750 Syrian pounds per kilogram.
The “Ahrar al-Sharqiya” militia led by “Abu Hatim Shaqra” and which occupies the villages of Qastal Kishk and Qarah Tebah imposed on each tree a cut-off royalty amounting to two thousand Syrian pounds, regardless of the percentage of its production under the pretext of protecting the people, and that the season was low this year.
In Sharan sub-district, the gunmen of the “Sultan Murad Militia” secured about a thousand olive trees belonging to a citizen of Afrin named Abu Jamil from the (Jalousi) family from the village of “Kurtakah / Al-Hifrah”, to a settler who is from Rastan area in the countryside of Homs.
In another context, a leader of the “Sultan Murad Division” militia named “Abu Ibrahim Al-Juhaishi” steals the olive seasons for the people of Afrin, by taking workers at the water channel near the village of “Qibar / Al-Hawa”, to harvest the olive season in fields he selects randomly.
In a leaked audio recording of a leader in the militia of the Sultan “Malak Shah” called Mahmoud al-Baz, addressing a person in the name of Hajj Mahmoud, rejecting the price offered to him, estimated at 800 Syrian pounds, and saying that the Hanish group offered him olives at a price of 700 Syrian pounds, and praising the quality of olives in the Sharran sub-district, quality of production, after previous experience, as 13 olive bags produce about 8 tanks of oil.
