The Syrian wing of the PKK terrorist organization, the YPG, abducted a girl in Syria’s northeastern Hassakeh province, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) reported on Sunday.
Sidra al Muntaha Ahmad Melhem, born in 2006, was abducted from the village of Fatouma in the northeastern suburbs of Hassakeh governorate, the SNHR shared in a written statement.
According to the rights group, the girl was abducted, taken to one of the YPG's recruitment centers and conscripted into the terrorist organization.
The SNHR noted that the girl’s parents were not informed about the conscription and communication between them was not allowed.
The group said it “feared her involvement in direct or indirect military operations” and stressed that around 156 children are still conscripted in the YPG camps.
Furthermore, according to the SNHR, 75 civilians were killed by the YPG in 2021, while United States-led forces killed another two civilians.
The terrorist group training and using children as fighters has been repeatedly documented in U.N. reports.
A U.N. report "Children and armed conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic," released May 18, showed that the YPG/PKK used more than 400 children between July 2018 and June 2020.
Though the PKK/YPG initially signed a pledge with Geneva Call – a Swiss humanitarian organization that works to "protect civilians in armed conflict" – to stop the use of child soldiers in 2014, its use of child soldiers has only increased since then.
Previously, the U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General’s (DoD-OIG) Aug. 4, 2020 report on the Command Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) noted that in 2019, the YPG "recruited children into their ranks from displacement camps in northeastern Syria." The U.S. report stated that each year since 2014 the "Kurdish entities partnered with the U.S." made promises to stop using child soldiers, but the practice continues each year.
The U.S. has primarily partnered with the YPG in northern Syria to fight Daesh. Turkey strongly opposes the YPG's presence in northern Syria, a major sticking point in strained Ankara-Washington relations. The U.S. has provided military training and truckloads of weaponry to the YPG, despite its NATO ally's security concerns.
Local people living in areas held by the YPG have long suffered from its atrocities, as the terrorist organization has a notorious record of human rights abuses, ranging from kidnappings, recruitment of child soldiers, torture, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.
Since its foundation, the PKK has forcibly taken at least one child from families who fail to "pay taxes" in support of the group. To fill its ranks, the PKK continuously raids villages and kidnaps young adults from the ages of 15 to 20 using violent means. In addition to forced conscription, the PKK also conducts propaganda campaigns that mainly target university students. The terrorist group's approach has remained largely consistent, according to statements by captured or surrendered members of the organization.
Apart from the forced abductions, the YPG continues to attack civilians. The latest incident happened on Saturday when the terrorist group fired mortar shells on farmlands in northern Aleppo province.
Despite Turkey's cross-border operations to free northern areas of terrorists and establish calm for Syrian civilians to go on with their daily lives, the YPG continues to target residential areas and civilians by using areas like Tal Rifaat as bases.
Since 2016, Turkey has launched a trio of successful counterterrorism operations across its border in northern Syria – Euphrates Shield in 2016, Olive Branch in 2018 and Peace Spring in 2019. These operations aimed to prevent the formation of a terrorism corridor and enable the peaceful resettlement of residents.
