The young man was killed during the clashes the city had seen before she left with the family in late 2017, and was hurriedly buried while the Global Coalition’s planes roamed the sky and gunfire from all sides filled the air.

In her daily search for the apple of her eyes, Mrs. Nawfa has repeatedly visited organizations concerned with missing persons, affiliated with the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria which controls the city, as well as the concerned individuals in the Raqqa’s Civil Council’s first Responders Team, but always came back empty-handed.

On a ‘sad’ Raqqa night, as she described, and with the help of her neighbors, Nawfa buried her son with her own hands while tears ran down her face. She never imagined burying him at this place, next to Al Taj Wedding Hall, the place where she wished to have his wedding party, surrounded by family and relatives.

The hall is located in south Raqqa, next to the old bridge. Before the war, it was a place to spread joy, a destination for the neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods to have wedding parties, but it soon became a gloomy place shrouded in darkness, remembered sadly and sorrowfully by Raqqa’s people and all Syrians, because they buried their children and loved ones in a mass grave next to the hall and named after it, “Al Taj Mass Grave.”

Al Taj grave, or “the grave between bridges” as the residents call it because it’s located between the old and the new Raqqa bridges, was founded hurriedly by the residents at an open piece of land with red soil over an area of 4 dunams (around 4000 m2) at a crossroads next to a bypass road, in order to cover dead bodies during the fierce battles between ISIS and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which took control over the city on 17 October 2017, backed by the US-led global coalition.

“After the burial, I left the city as the battles got fiercer at the last days of defeating ISIS. After a few months, I was able to go back to the war-wrecked city, full of hope of visiting the grave that entombed his body so I could bury it at a proper place and be able to visit him, like others who lost their loved ones,” said Nawfa.

But Mrs. Nawfa did not foresee what actually happened. When she visited Al Taj mass grave, she did not find her son’s grave, as the place had transformed after moving the graves to another place. The once-famous hall was also completely removed by the end of 2017.

“The bodies were hurriedly exhumed from Al Taj grave, as I was told by a volunteer in the team working on exhuming the bodies, and the bodies were then moved to Tal Al-Bay’a Cemetery (east Raqqa) and were buried there. And when I asked him about my son’s body, he said we don’t know.. it might have been buried with the piles of bodies,” Nawfa added.

Like Mrs. Nawfa’s son, two successive global coalition airstrikes on Raqqa in the early hours of 12 October 2017 ended the lives of the 80-something Mohammad Fayyad Abu Seif and 16 other family members (Mohammad al-Fayyad and his three daughters, Ammar al-Fares, Yusri Abdul Aziz, Rezqeya (child), and Salem Hamad) and their neighbors, after the air raids destroyed his house and his brother-in-law’s (Hussein Hamad al-Fares) house in a narrow street at the middle of Raqqa, according to a detailed survey by Amnesty International.

According to the testimony of a source close to the family and the testimony of the surviving neighbors, the man had lived in his house for 50 years and refused to leave his house when the military campaign on the city began, but the series of airstrikes led to his death and burial in a mass grave close to the ruins of his house. The remains were later moved to a cemetery outside the city without identifying bodies and recognizing victims.

The international law deals with mass graves as “crime scenes” and considers exhuming bodies from mass graves in primitive ways to be one of the reasons leading to concealing the traces of the crime or why and how the victims were killed. Bodies, where they are, and how they look are evidence that should not be tampered with before forensic and legal examination as a part of investigations, as explained by legal experts.

Which now makes finding and identifying the remains of a victim that was buried in a mass grave and moved somewhere else, like the remains of Nawfa’s son, nearly impossible.

Dr. Mahmoud Kahil, forensic expert, argues that “the main problem with the process of moving mass graves is that it will cause the identities of the dead people to be lost and take away their families’ right to identify them.”

“In mass graves, there are no identification documents with the remains, not one piece of evidence, thus, the identified bodies are only the bodies that were buried in homes or were under fallen ceilings. The rest of the bodies have no papers.”

– Yasser al-Khamis, head of the Syrian Missing Persons and Forensic Team in Raqqa Civil Council (First Responders Team)

In the year when al-Fayyad’s family and Mrs. Nawfa’s son were killed, another 1600 civilians were killed in air and artillery bombardment by the coalition according to documentations by Amnesty International and Airwars, after an analysis of 200 airstrike sites, while others were killed as a result of battles, bombardment, and blockade targeting the city.

Moving the Remains Again!

In April 2013, ISIS announced its control over Raqqa, and in July 2014, a US-led coalition to defeat ISIS was formed.In 2016, US-backed “SDF” waged a campaign to take control over Raqqa, and was able to take control over it in October 2017.

As a result of these battles, Raqqa became the most destroyed city of the modern age, according to OCHAA, and around 80% of the city was left uninhabitable.

Amnesty International says that over 2500 bodies were exhumed from Raqqa, most of which are of civilians who had nothing to do with the conflict other than living on the battlefield. The organization believes that around 3 thousand bodies remain under the rubble or in mass graves, most of which are also civilians.

Its report, “Syria: War of Annihilation: Devastating Toll on Civilians, Raqqa ─ Syria” published in June 2018, describes the civilian’s situation as they are “killed by the coalition forces’ missiles, buried under the rubble, and killed by random artillery shells of the SDF, in addition to those killed by ISIS’ snipers and mines scattered on escape routes, in a strange joint mission to murder.”

A night before ISIS’ exit, besieged civilians had to bury their dead under fire, and since burial in public cemeteries became impossible, residents turned to burying their families and neighbors in public spaces, playgrounds, parks, and even inside and next to their homes or in random mass graves.After the SDF took control over Raqqa, the First Responders Team’s “body exhumation” department began examining mass graves and moving the remains outside the city to cemeteries that were especially made to entomb the remains of those who were in mass graves in Raqqa.

Al Taj mass grave, south of Al Taj hall, from which the process of moving the remains took over a month, from 6 June to 26 July, was only one of 28 graves from which the team has exhumed and moved bodies to other places.

The number of bodies exhumed by the team involving volunteers, diggers, and coroners, was over 6100 bodies, only 700 of which were identified and given to their families since the team started working on 9 January 2018. Thus, leaving the identities of 5400 bodies, among which the remains of Nawfa’s son, al-Fayyad’s family, and hundreds of others, unknown after the main mass graves were moved to bigger cemeteries outside the city (Al-Shohadaa, Tal Al-Bay’a, and Hittin) to be put in the ground there.

In a report obtained by the investigative team, ICMP states that exhuming bodies in primitive ways destroys important evidence and further complicates identifying bodies.

Yasser al-Khamis, who led the search and exhumation team, believes that the role of his team was relief in the first place, and that they worked without training, due to the dire need to move the bodies from the city upon the request and urge of the residents, who started returning after ISIS’ exit.“When we entered Raqqa, we saw bodies in the streets. The city was all piles of bodies, and people lived on top of them. The bodies were, for example, in the streets, between houses and buildings, in halls, on berms, in the Euphrates, and among farmlands. Can you imagine that I’ve found 60 bodies in a wedding hall.. and witnessed constructing a building on top of 10 bodies in Harat Al-Badw?”

Gravedigger

On 21 June 2018, the sun rose on the only sound heard in a number of Raqqa’s neighborhoods, the sound of hand shovels digging the ground, interspersed with the sound of wind passing between the branches of nearby pine trees.

Diggers were then wearing light medical masks, holding blue bags to put body parts and bones in them, and starting to exhume hundreds of bodies from Al Taj mass grave which started to smell like death.

A First Responders Team volunteer, who worked with the team as a digger in this grave at these moments on that day, describes it: “I, and the rest of diggers, were writing down in a chart basic details, like the type of the body, and then put the body in a blue bag and put it in a small van to move the body to rebury them a few kilometers away.

“At Al Taj mass grave, we handed over 31 bodies to their families, after identifying the bodies by personal belongings and documents, or clothes and distinguishing marks. ISIS’ members were also recognized by their clothes.. The rest of the bodies could not be identified, so we numbered each body bag and buried them in Tal Al-Bay’a cemetery.

The digger did not know whether al-Fayyad and his family were among the bodies which remains were moved, due to the difficulty of determining the identity and sex of the victims. What he did know, though, was that only 31 bodies were handed over to their relatives, while 371 bodies of people killed and hurriedly buried here were lost in suspicious circumstances.

The digger’s words intersects with a document obtained by the investigative team on Al Taj mass grave, referring to the exhumation of 402 bodies from the grave, among which 298 male, 36 female, 45 girls, and 17 people whose sex was not determined, according to the document. “We had a choice: either all the evidence (bodies) would be gone or we work on moving them while documenting the reason of death. After two months of work, we had a database, which now contains 6100 bodies. We recorded everything about the bodies, such as any distinguishing marks like a broken tooth or anything of this kind,” Yasser al-Khamis said.

Change of Rules of Engagement

Raqqa city was called the capital of ISIS. At the time, it was overcrowded with civilians, and before the last attack, it was bombarded by the global coalition aircraft as part of rules of engagement specifically targeting ISIS, and limiting civilian casualties.

However, those rules of engagement have changed when the city was subjected to land blockade, and ISIS fighters retreated inside the city, as the land and air forces loosened up some restrictions by US laws, which resulted in a catastrophic destruction of buildings and properties, and the death of civilians, according to rights reports.

The investigative team obtained a copy of the reports recorded by the first Responders Team after exhuming bodies, including details of number of bodies recovered, work days schedule, and the body’s sex, but lack any reference to any additional information or distinguishing marks or even photos of the clothes found next to the body.

This might be explained by the fact that his team has, since ISIS’ exit, started working on exhuming the remains from graves using simple and primitive ways, driven by the requests of the residents who began to gradually return to their neighborhoods, as they lacked experience in this field, and they were mostly regular workers, accompanied by a coroner, and did not use anything but traditional digging methods.

Al-Khamis admits that “there was a hurry to exhume bodies in a nonscientific way, but this was due to the continuous complaints by the residents and their requests to move the bodies in order for everything to be back to normal, so we had to move these bodies.”Um Faisal, a resident of Raqqa, lost her husband in 2012 after he was arrested by the Syrian regime’s intelligence services in Raqqa. Her eldest son, Faisal (18), was her only support, the man of the house despite his young age as she says, but she did not get the chance to rejoice in his youth, as she lost him during the battles Raqqa has witnessed, during the global coalition forces’ bombardment.

In her humble and semi-demolished house, comprising of two bedrooms and a small kitchen, surrounded by the ruins of a city which has not yet recovered from war, she says: “Don’t reopen my wounds again, I’m trying to heal.. Faisal was my home’s pillar after Abu Faisal was arrested, but I lost both the light and the pillar.. We were displaced to Kasrat in al-Birk and stayed there for five months. We crossed the Euphrates with my two young children, after the coalition targeted the bridges, and al-Birk was not safe as the air forces were also targeting boats, it killed many people.”

When the woman returned to the city and when the residents began to move the bodies from Al Taj grave, she went asking for help in moving her son’s body to Hittin cemetery. “I could not find my son’s grave, because the residents began moving their relatives’ bodies before the Responders Team intervened to take them out systematically… So, by the residents recovering their relatives’ bodies and digging the ground, the grave’s features changed and I didn’t know where exactly Faisal’s grave was anymore,” she says.

She adds, “When the First Responders Team started to relocate Al Taj grave, I did not find my son’s body among those they were moving or have allegedly documented. Thus, Faisal died twice, once due to the US-led Coalition aircraft, and the second time when I could not find his grave nor his body”.

Al-Khamis, who still leads the Syrian Missing Persons and Forensic Team, which consists of 43 people (including doctors, data entry clerks, jurists, officers, and engineers), says, “As a team, we did not blur evidence. On the contrary, we documented all undocumented bodies. Legal evidence might be lost, but the body eventually was buried in the cemetery after knowing the cause of death, bombing or execution, or of any other reason. We are proud of our work… our team did not sin but made a mistake… and making a mistake sampling and locating is better than making a mistake and losing the traces of the corpses completely”.

Bodies Hurriedly Buried

The Investigation Team obtained videos documenting the transfer of mass graves, and we also monitored the steps of the relocation, where bodies are placed in bags and then buried in cemeteries like Tal Al-Bay’a, located five kilometres east of Raqqa and considered a public cemetery.

The International Commission on Missing Persons, an international organization working to develop effective procedures for the protection of mass graves, confirmed that the exhumation according to the Commission’s documents requires the analysis of skeletal remains of mass graves and the collection of information on missing persons, the ability to conduct excavations, and the skills used to identify corpses and determine the cause of death.

Thirteen families from Raqqa, who we have contacted and are living in different geographical areas near the city, explained to us that the majority of corpses in mass graves belong to those who were killed by the bombing of the city and the battles the city has witnessed in the last weeks before being taken over and were buried in difficult conditions.“The families of the victims and those missing in mass graves deserve to know the fate of their children and to have access to justice. Preserving evidence from these mass graves is an essential part of this process”.

The Black Stadium

Ammar Gh. (43 years), from the city of Raqqa and works as a microbus driver to transport passengers on the Raqqa-Deir ez-Zor road, recalls how ISIS arrested his cousin in 2016 and put him in Al-Akirshi prison. They then transferred him to the Municipal Stadium in Raqqa (Black Stadium), which the organization used as a headquarter, only to be killed there by the Coalition bombing of the stadium in June 2017.

According to the information that reached the family, the young man was buried in Al-Fakhikha mass grave, south of the Euphrates river (Al-Kasrat area).

The family now thinks that the body of their son is located somewhere in Raqqa, after the transfer of corpses from Al-Fakhikha cemetery to Tal Al-Bay’a cemetery at the beginning of the year 2020. Ammar says, “The family has tried to find where the body of my cousin is through the Responders Team but there were no distinctive traces…In Tal Al-Bay’a cemetery (to where the bodies were transferred from the mass grave of Al-Fakhikha), many corpses were not recognized by the people… They are very large numbers .. thousands of bodies which were not identified because there is no DNA testing device”, as he said.

The young man holds the international community and international organizations accountable for that, as they did not probably and quickly help to identify the dead and the fate of the bodies, as the capabilities of the forensic doctors are limited, the Responders Team work is slow, and there are no DNA testing devices.

“People are waiting impatiently”, he says. He pointed out that getting DNA test devices and identifying the bodies is the only way to determine the identity of more than 5 thousand unidentified bodies.

The Forensic and Missing Persons team has always complained about the lack of support and experts in archaeology and anthropology. Yasser Al-Khamis, who leads the team, agrees with what Ammar and the rest are saying and calls for the need to provide such devices that make the work of the Forensic team much easier. He says, “We need DNA test devices, as well as intensive training courses to deal with the situation”.

For his part, Fadel Abdul Ghany, Head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, calls the Central Tracing Agency, run by the International Committee of the Red Cross, to start aiding in the search for thousands of missing persons in Syria, and trying to reveal their fate, which is a way to help determine the fate of the bodies and the missing, according to him.

Where is My Brother’s Body?

Fayez (41 years), from Raqqa – Ben Al-Jisreen, has lost his brother Salah (43 years) during the battles and fighting between SDF and ISIS near Al-Karajat area, at the end of 2017.

We got a number to contact him via WhatsApp to find out the fate of his brother’s body, and we found out that he is currently out of Raqqa and living in Turkey as a refugee. He agreed to speak on the condition that his full name not be disclosed because his family is still in Raqqa.

Fayez narrates the details of the story, recalling when his brother Salah left home one afternoon “to search for a place from which he could secure bread or anything to eat from the shops near Al-Karaj {the garage}, but he was late until after the Maghrib call and did not come back, while we were home waiting for him to come back, not knowing it was the last time we would see Salah”.

The tall buildings in the area and near Salah’s home were stationed by ISIS snipers, and these buildings were largely targeted by the Coalition forces and the SDF. Used by the snipers, these building were thus destructed, while Ben Al-Jisreen area was targeted by SDF.

Every moving thing is a target, according to Fayez. He says, “Salah did not come back that day and there was no way to communicate with him. A resident of the neighborhood found his body with a sniper’s bullet in his chest, near Al-Karajat area, and was able to pull his body with some neighbors. They buried him in the nearby cemetery, where the people and ISIS buried the dead”.

While the former director of the forensic medicine authority in the Free Aleppo Governorate, Dr. Mohammad Kahil, considers that moving bodies from mass graves to other cemeteries without documentation is considered a crime on its own, in addition to the crime of murder.To this day, the family does not know who targeted Salah and put an end to his life, and Fayez does not know exactly what happened to his brother’s body after moving the graves outside the city after they left Raqqa and had the chance to go to Turkey through the city of A’zaz.

Praying on the Grave

In July of 2018, a Human Rights Watch report confirmed that, if workers continue to exhume the graves without appropriate technical training, equipment, and support, families may lose the chance to accurately identify the remains of their beloved ones.

According to the same report, “evidence related to the crimes in the area might be lost, including ISIS crimes and others”.

“We will not move any new bodies until we have received training, as well as devices to take samples from the bodies and reveal the reason of death”, Yasser Al- Khamis confirms the endeavour of his team in the coming days. Meanwhile, Um Faisal still hopes to find the grave of her son one day… Every day she goes to the place where he was first buried (Al Taj grave) and reads Al-Fatihah for his soul, then goes to where he was buried the second time (where his remains were transferred to the Hittin cemetery) and reads Al-Fatihah for his soul again, hoping her prayers will reach his soul and absent body.

As for Fayez, despite not knowing where his brother’s body is, who moved it, and how they did move it until now, he hopes to be able one day to stand at his brother’s grave, who left three kids behind, the oldest of whom is 8 years old and the youngest is 2 years old, to tell him what happened to their city, which was destroyed by the war.

*The investigation was done under the supervision of the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – SIRAJ, published on DARAJ.

The post Syrians Lose Their Relatives’ Remains After They Were Removed From Mass Graves appeared first on SIRAJ.

Military service is mandatory for Syrian men between the ages of 18 and 42, and the stakes rose significantly in February when an army official announced on Facebook that a new regulation would allow authorities to confiscate the property of “service evaders” and their families. Pressure was mounting on Yousef to decide.

And so, in June, he made his way to the Syrian Embassy in Stockholm with $8,000 in cash, ready to pay the fee to have his name taken off the conscription rolls. A shiver ran down his spine as he collected his receipt.

“This money will be used by the Syrian regime to buy weapons and kill more people,” Yousef told OCCRP, his voice trembling.

He is far from alone. About a fifth of Syria’s population of 17 million are men of military age, according to data from the World Bank. With some 6.6 million Syrians having fled abroad since the protest movement of early 2011 slipped into civil war, there are likely to be hundreds of thousands in Yousef’s position.

Studies have shown that the threat of being conscripted is a major reason many refugees fear returning to Syria.

The Syrian government has been able to leverage this anxiety into revenue, harvesting foreign currency from the roughly 1 million Syrians who have settled in Europe to help prop up their ailing budget after U.S. sanctions cut them off from the international banking system last year.

Syrian embassies, which used to only process paperwork for the military exemptions, have recently begun collecting cash payments. Two researchers, an airport official, and a former diplomat interviewed by OCCRP and the Syrian Investigative Reporting Unit (SIRAJ), said they suspected the cash makes its way back to Syria via diplomatic pouch.

Although it is difficult to determine exactly how many Syrians have paid the military exemption fees, government documents and official statements show that Bashar Al-Assad’s government projected that the policy would raise substantial income.

The findings speak to the lengths the Syrian government is going to in order to raise cash, and raise questions about when exactly sovereign relations between a government and citizens slip into a form of extortion.

Syria’s army, finance ministry, foreign ministry, central bank, and military recruitment service did not respond to requests for comment. U.S. authorities declined to comment.

Sanctions and Crisis

In June last year, the U.S. implemented the Caesar Act, a tough set of sanctions named for a defected Syrian officer who had leaked tens of thousands of photos of torture victims in Syrian prisons six years earlier.

The sanctions worsened an already difficult financial situation for Syria, cutting off its access to the international banking system. Processing payments for vital imports such as wheat and oil products became even harder, and the Syrian pound — now worth barely one percent of its pre-crisis value against the dollar — suffered further losses.

“Shortage in foreign currency has become an acute problem, especially after the Caesar Act came into force,” Armenak Tokmajyan, a researcher at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, told OCCRP. “The regime needs foreign currency. The more it has, the longer it will survive.”

Under pressure, the government has leaned increasingly on its diaspora to fill its coffers since the crisis broke out. A Syrian passport, for instance, is one of the world’s most expensive to obtain abroad, at $300 for a new passport and $800 to get it expedited.

The military exemption fees are even more substantial.

Conscription has long been difficult to escape in Syria, where the constitution enshrines military service as a “sacred duty.”

Two recent amendments to Syria’s conscription law laid the groundwork for the situation now confronting Yousef and many others. The first, passed in August 2014, raised the exemption fee from $4,000 to $8,000. The second, in December 2019, allowed the government to seize assets without prior warning from people who reached the age of 42 and had not yet performed their service or received an exemption.

Early this year, the head of the military’s Allowance and Exemption Branch, Brigadier General Elias Al-Bitar, stoked the fears of many potential recruits when he announced on Facebook that the new amendment was going into effect.

Fear of Confiscation

It’s unclear to what extent the new conscription law amendment has been used to seize assets in Syria. But there was already precedent in the infamous “Law No. 10” of 2018, which effectively allowed authorities to seize property without due process, and the earlier “Decree 66,” which has been used to expel residents of previously opposition-held areas.

Sara Kayyali, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, told OCCRP that the organization had received “fairly credible reports” from people whose assets had been placed on lists to be frozen by the finance ministry.

Although the lists did not say exactly why the assets would be frozen, “it did happen after Caesar was implemented, so we estimate that these cases are a result of assets freezing for people evading military conscription,” Kayyali said.

There are also signs the government expected the conscription amendment to bring in new revenues.

A parliamentary study from 2015 — the year after Syria raised the fee — predicted that payments to avoid service could bring in over $1.2 billion a year, even if only 10 to 15 percent of Syrians wanted for conscription actually paid up, Mujeeb Al-Rahman Al-Dandan, a Syrian member of parliament, told local radio in an interview in November last year.

The study has not been made public. But according to Dandan, it found that annual revenues from the fee could rise to between $2 to $3 billion within five years, meaning it would be a “good contributor to the treasury” and could even “help raise the wages of public servants, including military personnel.”

Syria’s 2021 budget projection predicts revenues from the military exemption fees to reach 240 billion Syrian pounds — about $190 million at the official exchange rate — up from 70 billion pounds in 2020, according to copies published in Syria’s Official Gazette.

The estimated revenue makes up 3.2 percent of this year’s budget revenue, up from 1.75 percent in 2020, Syrian economist Karam Shaar told OCCRP.

The government has also made a point of pursuing draft dodgers. In January 2019, the defense ministry issued lists of more than a quarter of a million people wanted for reserve recruitment and circulated them to recruitment offices around the country.

The Sweden Case

Sweden illustrates how the new amendments have played out among Syria’s diaspora. The Scandinavian country hosts about 114,000 of the roughly 1 million Syrian refugees in Europe and is home to tens of thousands of relatively new arrivals as well as second- and third-generation Syrians.

Between June and August this year, OCCRP reporters made three visits to the Syrian Embassy in Stockholm. They counted an average of 10 applicants a day waiting in the embassy’s queue for military service exemption.

Another hint of how many people were paying the exemption fees came a year earlier, in June 2020, when the embassy website published the names of 43 Syrians cleared to pay the fee. It is unclear exactly when those on the list applied, but for other procedures, such as passport issuance, the embassy usually issues its lists once per month.

The June post was the last such public announcement.

An embassy employee — speaking to an undercover OCCRP reporter who did not identify himself — said he could not say exactly how many had applied for the service exemption, but that there had been a “significant increase” in the first half of 2021, which he attributed to Bitar’s statement.

“On some days, 10 come to us and on other days the figure can go up to 50,” the employee said. If true, this would mean the embassy could be taking in as much as $400,000 in cash on some days.

Cash Is King

Even before the Caesar Act, the European Union and the United States had broadened sanctions to include Syria’s central bank. This made it almost impossible for Syrian embassies in European countries to send funds to Syria electronically, as local commercial banks refused to carry out the transactions.

A sign posted at the entrance of the embassy in Stockholm in June 2020 hinted at the difficulties, saying payments needed to be in cash after the Swedish electronic payment processor Bambora had stopped working with the mission.

Susanne Stöger, a spokesperson for Bambora, told OCCRP that the payment service had terminated its contract with the embassy on instructions from MasterCard — one of the credit card brands whose payments they process — given prohibitions on dealing with the Syrian government. Wordline, the payment services company that owns Bambora, had also flagged Syria as an “unacceptable” risk, she said.

Two researchers, an airport official, and a former diplomat said they suspected that the embassies were using diplomatic pouches to get around these restrictions.

Ayman Abdel Nour, a Washington, D.C.-based researcher and director of an opposition media outlet, told OCCRP that the Caesar Act had forced the Syrian government to adapt, listing diplomatic pouches as one of the possibilities. “The more money the regime gets, the longer it stays in power,” he said.

Bassam Al-Emadi, who served as Syria’s ambassador to Sweden between 2004 and 2008 and then defected in 2011 and now lives in Spain, also said he suspected that the embassies were using diplomatic pouches to send cash back to Syria.

If true, the move would violate the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which regulates the work of diplomatic missions, he said. The convention says that “packages constituting the diplomatic bag must bear visible external marks of their character and may contain only diplomatic documents or articles intended for official use.”

“Diplomatic immunity does not cover sending money inside the diplomatic bag,” Emadi said.

“I Will Not Do It”

OCCRP spoke with ten Syrians — eight in Sweden, one in Germany, and one in Lebanon — who decided to pay the conscription fee. Some, like Yousef, were frightened by the prospect of asset seizures in Syria. Others had more practical reasons.

One 29-year-old named Ali said he paid the fee at the encouragement of his family, who considered the payment to be “a form of direct participation in the Syrian war effort.”

Gian, a Syrian who works at a home for the elderly in Frankfurt, Germany, said he had no issue in paying the money.

“I am getting a monthly salary, the exemption process is easy, and I want to safeguard my family’s property in Syria from being seized,” Gian said. He said three relatives with asylum status in Germany also paid the fee.

But many Syrians are still leery of funding the government they feel was responsible for sending them into exile.

Abdullah Jaafar, a 35-year-old Syrian who has been living in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city, for eight years, said he sees the exemption payments as a kind of extortion.

“I have the full amount, and I can pay it, but I will not do it,” Jaafar said. “This government is illegal.”

*Abdullatif Haj Mohammad (SIRAJ), Sana Sbouai (OCCRP), and Lara Dihmis (OCCRP) contributed reporting.

The post How Syria’s Embassies in Europe Help Fund the War Back Home appeared first on SIRAJ.

“The corpses the officers had marked we would later dig up and hand back to them. They would ask the victims’ families for $1,500 to $3,000 per body.”

Syria’s Sinister yet Lucrative Trade in Dead Bodies, Anwar al-Muhammad was wandering around the garbage dump like he had done for years, looking for anything of value that could be traded or sold, when he suddenly smelt a strange smell. It was moldy mixed with the reek of flesh. At first he thought it was a dead dog.

What the 35-year-old garbage collector found instead in the landfill in the village of Hadath east of Aleppo would turn his life upside down, and turn him into a very rich man.

As it turned out, the smell emanated from the partly decomposed body of someone recently liquidated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).“If it were not for the remains of God’s creation, I would not have been able to build my house on the land I inherited from my father,” said Anwar pointing at his home. “Look, it has a courtyard and stone fences. And I have planted olive seedlings.” Having dug a hole next to the dump Anwar buried what was left of the corpse. He feared leaving it out in the open might attract stray dogs. This was in August 2014.

Like most people in the region, Anwar did not know why ISIS killed these people and dumped their bodies the way they did. Yet, on the foreheads of most of the bodies ISIS fighters had written in blue or black “infidel” or “apostate.”

After the first corpse had been dumped, many others followed,” Anwar explained. “Most bodies had ropes around their feet, hands or necks. Initially, the ISIS fighters warned me that if I were to recognize a body and contact the family, my place would be among the dead.”

Like most people in the region, Anwar did not know why ISIS killed these people and dumped their bodies the way they did. Yet, on the foreheads of most of the bodies ISIS fighters had written in blue or black “infidel” or “apostate.”

ISIS used to throw bodies in wells, dry streams or river beds and garbage dumps, according to reports issued by both local and international human rights organizations.

Anwar gradually became aware that the bodies had a value and price, as some point he started selling them to the victims’ relatives. “That’s how I made the money I would never have made just working in a landfill,” he said.

13th Century Fatwa

From 2013 to 2015, more than 20 mass graves were found across Syria, containing thousands of bodies. One of the most famous places where ISIS used to dump its victims is the 50-meter deep Al-Hota pit, located some 85 kilometers from the northern city of Raqqa.

“The Al Hota gorge was once a beautiful natural site,” said Syrian researcher Sarah Kayyali in Into The Abyss, a report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in May last year. “It became a place for terror and punishment.”

During our 18-month investigation in Syria and neighboring countries, we did many interviews and obtained photographs confirming the trade in dead bodies. We tracked four cases in different geographical areas to ensure there is a pattern to the trade which has made some individuals involved in the conflict very rich indeed.

In the governorates of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa and the countryside of Aleppo, ISIS did not give the bodies to the families, based on a fatwa issued by the 13th century Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, which states it is forbidden to bury an “apostate” in a Muslim cemetery. And so ISIS threw them in wells, dumps and large pits instead.

In 2015, one family was searching the dumps in the countryside north of Allepo for the body of their son, who had been killed by ISIS for “dealing with foreign parties.”The family met Anwar and offered him $7,000 for finding their son, after they had been told his body was thrown onto a village dump. They even told Anwar not to worry “if the corpse were decayed, for they could still recognize it from the teeth.”

Anwar told the ISIS fighters who regularly came to the dump to throw bodies about the family looking for their son. They demanded $10,000 for the body. Anwar would get a commission of 100,000 Syrian pounds.

8,143 People Still Missing

“The Islamic State’s (ISIS) expansion in Iraq and Syria featured horrendous public abuses,” HRW stated in its report Kidnapped By ISIS, which was issued in February 2019. “Largely unseen but equally egregious were the widespread detentions and kidnappings – thousands of people snatched from their homes and cars and at checkpoints, who subsequently went missing.”

While the full scale of the missing is not known, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has reported more than 8,143 cases of individuals detained by ISIS whose fates remain unknown. The majority of those taken were men. But HRW also documented the disappearances of several women.

“ISIS members would ask for money in exchange for informing families about the fate of their son,” Anwar said. “People did not bargain a lot.”

When we were researching other waste dumps in the Aleppo countryside to confirm what Anwar told us, one worker there told us: “They were throwing bodies, once or twice a day. And I also saw them take bodies from the dump.”

Yasser Al-Najjar used to work as an official for the Syrian military authorities negotiating the exchange of prisoners and dead bodies. “ISIS at times had crippling conditions in their requests,” he said in his office in Kilis in southern Turkey. “But that did not stop them from selling bodies for money. In the shadows, far away from media and cameras, anything is possible in Syria.”

SNHR director Fadel Abdul-Ghani told us how one of his teams once witnessed an exchange between the Syrian regime and opposition factions, in which the bodies of Iranian militants were handed over in return for the release of detainees.

In Damascus

A Syrian man currently living in the Swedish capital Stockholm used to work for a public funeral service in Damascus which transported bodies to cemeteries on a daily basis. At first, he refused to speak with us, but after several calls he finally agreed to give us his testimony on the condition of anonymity.

“Our assignment was to transport bodies from the Tishreen Military Hospital and the Mezzeh 601 Military Hospital to two large cemeteries in Qatifah, north of Damascus, and one in Najha, south of the capital,” he said. “The car looked like a decorated box with pictures of Bashar al-Assad on all sides, so we could pass all checkpoints.”

“Some corpses had specific numbers or signs on them, which we would bury next to the mass grave,” he continued. “The others were thrown into the mass grave, one on top of the other, and covered with sand by a bulldozer.”

“The corpses which the officers had marked, we would later take out and hand back to them,” he added, after pausing to drink a cup of water. “For each body, they demanded some $1,500 to $3,000 from the victims’ families.”

He then made us listen to audio recordings and phone messages of conversations between him and the military and security officers. He estimated the total number of bodies he contributed to selling at 125.

According to HRW, the Syrian regime arrested and forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of people. The detention centers under its control are known for the widespread and systematic use of torture, and catastrophic living conditions. According to the SNHN, there are still some 130,000 detainees in the detention centers of the Syrian regime, including 7,913 women and 3,561 children, which represents 88.5% of all detainees in Syria.

The Corpse Market

In August 2020, 30-year-old May learnt that her husband Zaid Jibril had been killed three years after his arrest by the Syrian regime’s security forces for “organizing anti-regime demonstrations.” He was buried in the Qatifah cemetery north of Damascus,May said she was forced to sell her house to be able to pay $7,000 to an officer in the Syrian security services through a local broker, who then brought her husband’s body, so she could bury it.

“I thank God I was able to obtain my husband’s body so our children can visit,” said May by Skype from a refugee camp in the northwestern state of Idlib. “Many families paid money to regime officers and brokers. Many sold everything they owned to obtain news of their loved ones.”

“Trading in corpses, mortgaging them to exchange or sell them is considered a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” said legal expert Hussein Hamadeh.

According to him, any assault on or mutilation of corpses, leaving them in the open, not allowing them to be buried, using them as tools of political pressure or selling them violates international law. Authorities are furthermore not allowed to intentionally withhold information about those missing, given the level of anxiety and mental stress it produces for friends and families. When the person in question dies, the authorities must provide the family with information regarding the place of burial.

Five BodiesAhmed Al-Sayed’s family learnt that one of their sons had been arrested by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during their control of the city of Raqqa in October 2017.

The young man was arrested after an airstrike near the Abu Al-Hays intersection. The 34-year-old was transferred to a nearby medical center. His father told us that the family had asked all the center’s health workers about their son, but at first they could not find him.

A few days later a  military source told the family their son had been killed. Obtaining the body would cost them $10,000. “We paid the full amount to a SDF commander through a local broker and started digging near the archaeological park in Raqqa,” said Ahmed’s brother. “We found five bodies, one of which was my brother. We reburied the others in the same place, while we took my brother’s body to the family cemetery on the outskirts of Raqqa.”

We requested representatives of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, as well as the Syrian Ministry of Interior to comment on our findings, yet did not receive a response.

As soon as the burial begins, the march of Abu Al-Ward begins too. And of all others who work just like him.

The March of Abu Ward

Abu Al-Ward is a local broker in the city of Idlib. After burying some bodies, he and three young men set out to search for a corpse that someone had asked for in exchange for $3,000.

In the center of Idlib, you can see bodies entering the forensic medical center on a daily basis. They were found, or belong to people killed in mysterious circumstances. Some 75 bodies a week arrive, according to the center’s documentation office.

“There are bodies that the courts and hospitals refuse to hand over to their families, especially those known as Shabiha [gangs closely related to the Baath Party],” said Abu Al-Ward by WhatsApp. “What follows is the process of handing over the body and receiving the money.”

“The body remains in the fridge for some 15 days to a month,” said Ali Al-Taqash who works at a medical center. “Samples for DNA testing are stored to facilitate future identification.”

As soon as the burial begins, the march of Abu Al-Ward begins too. And of all others who work just like him.

The Corpse in the Well

On January 6, 2014, the family of Mohamad al-Ali (a pseudonym) managed to obtain his body, which had been thrown in a well near the town of Deir Sunbul in the Idlib countryside.

Mohamad had been kidnapped at a checkpoint of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) and was later liquidated by a gunshot to the head

“After negotiations that lasted for days, we paid a local mediator $10,000 and the SRF allowed us to extract the body from the well,” said the young man’s family.

Local activists we met in the north of Syria and Turkey said they witnessed the sale of at least five bodies between January 2012 and March 2014. Their statements were backed by photographs and videos of the negotiations and sale, which are in our possession.

Military Gains

On the road between the Jenderes border crossing and the village of Qatma north of Aleppo, we met Abu Jaafar, who used to be responsible for forensic medicine in the opposition-held areas east of Syria until late 2016.

He had witnessed the exchange of bodies between the armed opposition and the regime and pointed at another dimension of the trade, which reflected military gains in the war.

“The body of one fighter in an Iranian-backed militia was exchanged for five or six detainees alive in the prisons of the Syrian regime,” he said.

The Syrian war has witnessed countless negotiations and exchanges of bodies and prisoners between the regime and the opposition. In August 2012, the Al-Baraa Brigade in Eastern Ghouta concluded a deal with the regime to release over 2,000 detainees from Syrian prisons, in exchange for the release of 48 Iranians, most of them belonging to the military.

“Any assault on a corpse is considered a crime prohibited in international law,” said SNHN director Abdul-Ghani. “Take the The Hague Convention on respecting the laws and customs of war, which clearly stipulates a commander is responsible for all actions of people under his command, and calls for respecting the dead and preventing the remains from being despoiled.”

This investigation was carried out under supervision of the Syrian Investigative Journalism Unit Siraj and edited by Mohammad Bassiki. published on DARAJ. 

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At Alderbasia city which affiliated to Al-Hasakah governorate, northern east of Syria, middle of November 2017 , the child Aven Sarokhan (12 years) was kidnapped in front of her school ,as her uncle Aram said  ,and he asserts that happened in conjunction with a campaign of kidnapping girls, whom they are same to her age, the fifth child in her arrangement between her sisters, who she was going to school for learning Kurdish language .

Her kidnappers denied “they are members of PKK (Kurdistan workers’ party)” that she was existed with them when her mother has gone to one of their headquarters in the city, “but due to existence of witnesses on the kidnapping accident in front of the school, they admitted in that and told her that she will follow a military course then we will returned her back “.

“They lost contact with her completely” as her uncle said, and her father later knew that she is existed on one of fronts in Dier Azzor, after publishing on one of the social media ” FaceBook ” affiliated to the units a photo for her between group of girls, and on the photo was written a comment saying ” your beauty & kindness… don’t hide the revolution which inside you”

“And even , If Aven was kidnapped and was recruited her by compulsory  ” as her uncle said. but story of the child Bashar Ahmad (14 years) has a different shape , being that he went by himself to  “swedkai ” encampment beside Almalkia at Al Hasaka countryside in November 2016 for training on carrying a weapon, and one of the encampment’s supervisor told his family when they came to visit their son that “you should forget your son ” he became son of the question , and he is not  your son after now” as a close source of the family said.

In this investigation  ,and during nine months , number of investigators has surveyed cases of recruitment children by through social media accounts (12 cases ) , and has observed of deaths announcements  , for 19 Childs under age of 18 , their ages average range between 12-17 years, when they has officially joined to the fighting , and they were held interviews with 7 child’s families ( 5 males – 2 females ) one of them killed on the fronts , and they were recruited in the ranks of ” People’s Protection Units YPG ” and in the factions which affiliated to it ,since of establishing the units in year 2012 until October 2018 .

The recruited children, some of them have dead at the fronts and the units has published his death , and others still fighting ,after their motives have  diversified for carrying weapon before reaching adulthood, and the investigation team has observed many methods for recruiting children and some it are innovative  ,and we are in the same time hide identities of some minors fighters , and the information resources , for their safety , because they still resident and working in areas of units’ control north of Syria & east  .

Recruitment the children in units’ control areas form a part from operations of recruitment children in Syria by the conflict’s parties , and in Arabian countries which have an armed conflicts ,”which multiplied through one year” , and In a report of united nations organization for childhood care “Unicef ” in September 2017 , that the number of recruited children in the middle east conflicts and north of Africa including Syria multiplied through one year , and that number of recruited children whom they have recruitment in the fight have raised from 576 of year 2014 to 1.168 cases of year 2015 “.

The painful side unfolds from size of the phenomenon through documented numbers by the Syrian organization “sound & picture”  during the last three years in areas of ” kassad’s” control, for the dead soldiers children , where killed 17 Childs under age of 18 years at least , by targeting locations affiliated to Kurdish Units or during the battles in Raqqa , Aleppo and Deir Azzor , “and these information were documented by one of children who recruited in 2016” as saying the organization director : Sarmad Aljailani .

Rates of the recruitment are rising to double

In a report issued in 3 august of 2018 , “Human Rights Watch” said that People’s Protection units  ,which are the largest member in the Syria’s Democratic Forces north eastern Syria and they are recruiting the children , between them girls , and they use some of them in the fighting works , in spite of their pledges to stop these thing .

Eight families in three camps for displaced people in north eastern Syria, the organization report said: that individuals from units of the people’s protection and “the Asayish” (police) at the camps have encouraged their children for joining. and these families said that six girls and two guys , their ages between 13 and 17 years were recruited , and most of the families couldn’t communicate with their children since recruitment of them , and they didn’t know , unless from the authorities, that the children were training.

One of the mothers  said that her son , who 16 years old when he recruited , and he had a fighting role then died during fighting of the group to recover Al Raqqa city .

Before that , in 16 May of 2018 , the annual report of the United Nations about  the children at the armed conflicts has mentioned that : /224/ recruitment cases for children by the People’s Protection Units and their female unit ,happened in year of 2017 ,in increase approximate about five double of the previous year 2016 , and it was 72 from the children , almost a third of the girls ,and in /3/ cases at least , the forces kidnapped the children to recruit them .

Jian A (alias name ) of Afrin population , she says at an interview with investigation team in middle of 2017 , which during it was recruited  her son Aldar compulsory at rows of the units of peoples’ protection last year :” my son was born in 2001 , was taken to the Refaat Martyr’s Center  (nearby Afrin ), after he signed a paper didn’t know its content , he don’t know reading or writing , and without his parents’ approval ,he went out of the home to fix his cell phone and returned back with military boots” in reference from  her for his readiness to join to forces rows .

The lady asserts that her son was recruited, in spite of his suffering from disease of Ischemia in the brain (it happens due to temporary interruption of blood supply to a part of the brain, and this disorders of blood supplies lead to lack of oxygen which reaches to the brain) and she was notified that son will return back as soon as finished off following the military course after he has got an alias name ” Avindar Afrin “.

The uncle’s wedding night

At 10:30 pm on 23 December 2017, a thirty years old youth holding Kalashnikov has stopped with 8 armed persons holding light individual weapons in front of wedding hall at Ain Arab– Kubani, the cold weather was harsh , and the most of whom were at the hall were starting to go out , during this night the youth Jwan Ahmad Muslem who is a leader of group in  Syria’s Democratic Forces has come , with his armed group and took out a child was attending his uncle’s wedding , and put him into a four-wheel car then they went to west of the city in 30 km to “Shuyukh Camp” .

At sunrise of the next day which didn’t adequate for making the parents of the child Kamiran Mustafa Allu (12 years) of” Yadi Qwi ” village south city of Ain Al Arab /Kubani /in  7 km to know , their child’s fate , who was arrested in his Uncle Ahmad’s wedding night . but later has shown by the investigation team that the child was kidnapped for compulsory recruitment purpose, that according to what mentioned from Shirazan Allu , the uncle’s son of the kidnapped child Kamiran , and he asserts that they enabled to  know that the child at the camp in Shuyukh’s Township at Jarablus countryside, ” and this camp is specialized in training of children ,and the camp have dozens of minors kidnapped children” according to Allu.

He is saying that “large number of the children have kidnapped in this camp, but families of those don’t have the courage to transfer their files to the media & the legal international organizations because the fear of the Repression”.

Using children in the aggressive works

And based to that recruitment of the children is against to the international conventions, where the optional protocol of the child rights which relates in  contribution of the children at armed conflicts ,is provides that : the armed groups which not affiliated to the state should not recruit the children under age of 18 years for any purpose . Thus the article 1 of the Child Rights’ Convention in the protocol determines that “the intended of child is every human his age under 18 years” according to the protocol.

And report of “recruitment children and using them in the aggressive works in the International Law of 2017″ which investigation team have obtained a copy of it , refers to continues of recruitment children at units’ areas after entering an amendment to a convention between them and International Organization , which was held to reduce this phenomenon, where ”the People’s Protection Units , Woman Protection’s Units and The Self Administration have signed on (the obligation deed ) by virtue of  Geneva Appeal .

that they will be forced a complete prohibition for using the children under age of 18 years at the aggressive works , but in contrary to the provisions of the optional protocol , the units entered a proviso ,which provides to allow for children of age /16/ years and above to become members at forces of People’s Protection Units by their own free will , and they will contribute in unmilitary activities , and they are not allowed to contribute directly or indirectly in aggressive works ” and  in June ” Geneva Appeal ” has announced that the group will amend the conduct rules’ blog , which they adopt it ,where is not allowed only who above 17 years or more for joining .

The writer Hoshank Awsi , living in Belgium and who is following-up the object of  recruitment of children ,is considers that the reason which makes the Democratic Union’s Party PYD and its military arm the People Protection’s Units YPG for recruiting children is its need to fighters , to fill of the fronts under the pretext of fighting” Isis” Organization and protects the Kurdish areas from the terrorist &  expiatory organizations , referring to that recruiting of the children is one of the supply resources of the fighters , and it is the wars’ fuels of the groups & and the armed parties.

he added that :” there is no another resource to supply the fronts by individuals unless two ways either by Persuasion and satisfaction or  the compulsory recruitment for minors & juveniles”.

Methods of the recruitment

the units attract the younger , according of children testimonies , their parents’ testimony , and legal  organizations , by establishing private grouping under name of “Kawminat ” one of it only to children.

the Kawmin is like a ” council of the neighborhood or the village “, and it is a name called  by the party to neighborhoods’ councils , and the first one of it was established at Afrin city in northern of Aleppo countryside in May of 2017 – before it controlled by armed forces of the Syrian opposition that supported by turkey in last March – in name of “Kawmin of the martyr Jilan Onkul for children “, and Jilan is Turkish girl of Kurdish origin , the supporters of  Kurdistan workers’ party is accuse the Turkish army in targeted her in Diar Baker’s State south of turkey in year of 2009 .

That The purpose of opening “Kuminat” of the children is “to organize, aware of them & developing of their cultural, artistic, educational talents &abilities.

The joint president of Afrin’s Kumin for children, Nawar Hasan, is saying in a press statement quoted by the Hawar agency, through events of opening the Kumin,” the children in this Kumin will learn a cultural, Intellectual, literary & educational lessons currently, and by passing of time will be there projects & another plans for developing of the children talents & their abilities ” and she called all the children’s parents to send their children to Kumin.

The attendance at the Kumin, and Learn about PYD Party principles and its thoughts considers a step in path of putting those children on the way of carrying the weapon, when they give them thoughts like “the revenge is the way of liberty” and ” we have been fighting the world for our leader “, as a legal activist of Arfin city are saying. He preferred not to mention his name for security reasons.

In a response published by ” Human Rights Watch” in 3 August of 2018 , which has reached  to it from the Self Administration authorities , after the organization’s inquiries of the recruitment children operation , and about putting the children in  Kuminat ,where the authorities have admitted in putting the children at private centers whom receiving inside it ” intellectual & occupational training “.

And the response, included reference for ” issuing of the General Command generalization for the people’s protection units & woman in not allow to contribute of whom less than 18 years at the aggressive works under penalty of the legal & moral responsibility, and in case it happened, it will be arrested the direct responsible, in addition to reduce the military rank and the penalty is will be tightened in case of repetition”.

The another way “the soft ” that attracts children by it, by entering of photos of the party & units’ fighters in the study curricula that has imposed by the party in its controlling areas   (the self administration areas), and by demonstrate of them as the typical human ethically, the national hero, and naming the streets & schools in names of the dead persons.

The writer Awsi is considers that ” recruitment the children ” is covered by national slogans that flirt the feeling & national emotions for Kurds , in consideration that this fighting is for the demands & legal rights  , but this conduct don’t not serves the national thoughts or the national project , and recruiting children according to the international law is a war crime and the war crimes are absolutely not serve the national & legal thoughts to any people “and he considered that ” recruitment of the children by the party, for fighting in another areas as Deir Azzor, Al Raqqa and Kubani (Ain Al Arab ) as a custom for it , and an old conduct “.

According to observers, the phenomenon of recruiting is a general status and not only restricted to the units but also it is sharing it with “Isis” organization and factions of The Armed Syrian Opposition.

And In terms of documentation the phenomenon internationally, Ani Massaghi director of the high commissioner’s office for human rights – the middle east  is saying to the investigation team that ” the office has documented number of recruitment children cases in Syria and notified about it , and as a part of working in this regard contributing the Monitoring and reporting mechanism which was assigned that by the security council regarding to the gross committed violations against the children in Syria “.

Online recruitment

At 4:00 pm, on the current 8 October, the girl Awish Bozan has gone from her home at Kharbisan village west of Ain Al Arab city – Kubani – and didn’t return yet.

After hours of her disappearances, the child’s family knew from command center of Democratic Union Party (PYD) that she was recruited at The Woman Protection’s Forces and it’s an armed military wing affiliated to the party , as her uncle Adnan Bozan is saying , in a private interview .

According to family’s card and page of the child Awish Bozan , has shown her date of birth on 1-1-2002 , so she didn’t exceed 17 years old , in spite of the family seeking to prove that to the concerned & officials persons on her recruitment but all their attempts did not success to recover  her , her uncle is saying ” we has presented the family card which regarding the child to democratic union’s party , and provided to them documents, but unfortunately without getting any benefit “.

Through following- up the child’s status by the family , as her uncle asserts to the investigation team , has  shown that Awish was convinced to join to the forces rows by social media, and according to her uncle that ” The Democratic  Union’s Party and the military wings which affiliated to it , uses methods for recruiting children by teams or private groups whom communicate with the children by social media or by the local people and they are lured , and at the neighborhoods there are individuals communicate with the children and spread ideas to facilitate attracting the children , like feeling in the freedom and independence and to be a lady of yourself and other of the ideas which the child is attracted behind it without conscious  “.

After the family knowing  in Awish’s fate, her uncle sent a humanitarian appeal to the local & international organization, asserting that “the operation of recruitment minors still continues at areas of The Democratic Party’s control “, and he added in publication across ” Facebook ” that the above mentioned ” recruits the children under the legal age at their camps and make them involved them in the armed conflicts in Syria, and that breaching to the laws & international humanitarian customs which related to  the children rights “.

A way to make money

Another factors make the children join to “fighter’s rows “, it is the family violence and pauperization, after the conflict caused all the last seventh years in rising up its rates to a standard levels.

A report was made by each of the committees of Economical & Social for western Asia , which affiliated to the United Nations (ESCWA) and Saint Androz British university, and it referred to ” that the numbers of Syrians whom living right now under the pauperization line are almost doubled three times and about 83.4 percent of the Syrians are living right now under the pauperization line in comparison with 28 percent of 2010″.

Hussein Alkhashman (14 years ) , of people of  “Sbaih ” village , which affiliated to Markada township in Al Hasaka countryside , we have met with one of his relatives at Al Shadadi , who refused to mention of  his name for security reasons , said that ” Hussein has joined in February 2017 to YPG due to the need of money without knowing his father , who lost the connection with him , and he has received an amount of /S.P 70.000/ monthly, ($ 145 U.S dollars ), and his armed work was at first only at  the work of guard and inspection patrols , then he forced to go in the last September with YPG armed fighters to Deir Azzor countryside for fighting Isis organization , then he has died over there in date of 24 in the same month ” and his death was announced by the official announcement of the People’s Protection Units .

The child ” Helal Jamil ” (alias name ) (17 years ) , one of Alshadadi city at southern of Al Hasaka countryside ,which controlled by PYD fighters ,  of a poor family , he explains that he felt jealous of his rich colleagues at schools , so one of his friends’ advice for him was to joint to ” Asayish” forces  (police forces ) which considered the security arm for the party in its control areas , against of S.P 54000 monthly ($ 110 U.S dollars ) .

Breyanka Motbarthi ,who are doing the works of emergency section’s director  in ” Human Rights Watch “said “if the children were run away of the family violence or poverty , the people ‘s protection units would not protect them through recruiting them in its forces . If they were serious in helping those children, they must fulfill their Commitments and provide the alternatives to guarantee that children will not lose their future or their live “.

Fighting roles & double crime

The investigation team communicated with Aldar Khalil , the political leader at Democratic Society’s  Movement , and with Moustafa Bali , the spokesman in name of Democratic Syria ‘s Forces , for giving them the opportunity of response and comment on the evidences which documented of the recruiting operations  and which proved its continuous in spite of promises to stop it , but no one of them respond until the moment of publishing the investigation .

But “Human Rights Watch “, in a letter for it on 29 June 0f 218 sent to Democratic Syria’s Forces and to the Executive Committee to “the Self Administration ” which affiliated to “Kurdistan Democratic Union Party ” requesting information of the procedures which were taken by the committee to prevent of recruiting & using them at the aggressive works , and they obtained a response was that ” will notifying the families when are recruiting the children , but the children can join by themselves also without approval of their parents”.

According to the legal organization, the letter admitted that the children whom ages ranged between 16 & 17 years old they can join, but they said that they will not do any fighting roles.

Another time, the investigation team went to confront Nouri Alkhalil , the official spokesman in name of People’s Protection Units,  about what was reached it, by the investigation team , and considered that the reports which were reported by the legal organizations about continuous of phenomenon of  recruiting children’s that it is ” old”, and he is ready to return the recruited children in his units’ rows whom we know them or we documented their joining to the units rows, to their family .

“The crime of recruiting children without approval of their parents is a double crime “as  was classified by writer & political analyzer Abdelbaset Seda, he considered that recruiting the people – even they were of adults – without of their approval and by the De facto authorities that don’t have any legitimacy, is a crime punished by the law , and that what have been doing by the PYD  units , which not provide itself originally as a Kurdish units “and ” in spite of the pressures on the party (PYD ), it will be continuous in the recruiting , and promises in the commitment, and they will be there pledges in stopping of recruiting children and commitment in the international laws which related  in wars & conflicts , and in his role the Syrian Kurdish writer, Hoshank Awsi saying , and he mentioned to that ” it will be thought about how to circumvent these promises, and the continuous of this conduct , because it is one of the sources of the supply of fighters”.

This investigative story was completed by Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – (SIRAJ) In cooperation with NSO. Published on DARAJ.  

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