The “Defence and Protection Authority” of the Aljazeera area in Syria issued a ruling on 15/6/2017 including “immersed Arabs” in the compulsory army recruitment, from which they had previously been exempt.
The “immersed Arabs” are those that came from Alhasaka as part of the Agrarian Reform project in 1974. The majority of them are from Ar-Raqqah, and few are from Aleppo.
On 16/6/2017, the village of “A’war al-‘Arab”, close to the town of al-Ma’bada in rural Alhasaka, witnessed a campaign of raids and arrests against the immersed Arab youths in the village, in which the military police of the DPA took the youths to mandatory recruitment centres.
The military police also carried out raids in the village of Karkay Dajweer and the two villages of Ali Kameesh al-Sagheera and al-Kabeera in rural AlHasaka, in which tens of Kurdish youth were arrested as part of the compulsory recruitment.
More arrests were made for compulsory armed recruitment in rural al-Malikiah, in the province of Alhasaka.