The Cradle | July 8, 2023

Militants of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched massive arrest campaigns targeting young men in the areas under the groups control in northeast Syria, immediately taking them to compulsory recruitment camps, Sputnik reported on 8 July.

Civic and local sources told the Russian news agency that SDF militants loyal to the US army, are launching, for the third day in a row, campaigns of mass arrests and kidnappings of young men born between 1998 to 2005 in all the cities and towns of Hasakah and Raqqa governorates, where more than 500 young men were forcibly conscripted.

The sources added that SDF forces set up permanent and temporary military checkpoints in the cities of Hasakah, Qamishli, and Shaddadi, and arrested large numbers of young men, including university and institute students.

The sources indicated that Hasakah residents demonstrated on 5 July in front of the local SDF recruitment headquarters demanding the immediate release of their conscripted sons. In response, the SDF called in military reinforcements, including US-made armored vehicles, to disperse the sit-in.

In Raqqa, local sources told Sputnik that SDF militants set up a checkpoint near the old bridge in the city to stop passing cars in search of young men to conscript and take to the groups military camps.

Last month, Arab News reported that 13-year-old Kurdish girl, Peyal Aqil, went missing on her way home from a school exam, after being approached by a recruiter for the Revolutionary Youth, a group connected to the SDF and its parent group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). She followed him to one of the groups centers in the city of Qamishli.

Her friends waited for her outside, but she never emerged.

Peyals mother, Hamrin Alouji, said she and her husband complained to local authorities, who refused to help.

The Revolutionary Youth group later said Peyal joined willingly, a claim her mother rejects. We consider that at this age, she cannot give consent, even if she was convinced by the groups program, Alouji said.

A month after her disappearance in May, Peyal managed to run away from one of the training camps and return home.

Arab News notes that according to a UN report issued....