A group of fighters, after being forcibly conscripted to the PYD, have recently defected from their ranks. The group of fighters arrived in Turkey yesterday.

According to the official Facebook page of “Al Hasaka Youth Union”, a group of army recruits defected from the ranks of the PYD. A number of the soldiers were identified as Mahmud Muhammad Al Hussein, Ammar Hajo, Mohammed Ali Al-Khalaf, Ismail Hamidi Al-Sudan and Hasan Ali Al-Mohammad. The fighters all come from the village of Rawiya, west of Rass al-Ain city, in northern rural Hassakeh.

According to the Youth Union’s page, one of the defectors, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, said: “The leadership of the PYD are deliberately mobilizing Arab recruits in the frontlines in battles, and they are killed by mines that are implanted by Daesh, in the process”.

The defector continued by saying that hundreds of Arab fighters, are waiting for the opportunity to defect from the ranks of the PYD, which is forcing them to fight in the frontlines without taking their safety and security into consideration, but rather only depleting the Arab fighters. In turn, the military intelligence of the “PYD” are raiding defectors’ homes and tightening control over them.

Hisham al-Mustafa, head of the National Union of Revolution and Opposition Forces in Hassakeh, told RFS: “There has been a recent increase in the number of defectors from the ranks of the PYD , and the number of defectors has increased because of their refusal to conscript.”

He continued, “This is an expected result. If there were safer channels to defect, we would have witnessed thousands of these cases. Unfortunately there is no safe channel to defect as the PYD military intelligence is tightening control with an iron fist, and targets anyone who disobeys it”.

Al-Mustafa also added that there has been a significant increase in the death toll among Arab fighters in the PYD, especially in the battles of Deirezzor and Raqqa.

Al-Mustafa noted that the leadership of the PYD understands that most of the fighters in question, are not equipped to fight against Daesh, as most of them are children, yet they ignore that fact, and continue to recruit them and involve them in battles, which is only resulting in depleting the Arab fighters.

It is worth noting that both the YPG and PYD issued a decision to prevent fighters, especially the Arab of them, from taking time off in fear of their defection.