The “National Police” in al-Rai city, northern Aleppo, announced the graduation of the fourth batch of Police and General Security forces in the area.
The total number of the personal who have been graduated is 220 members, including 25 women, who had been trained and exposed to intensified coursers by Syrian trainers and Turkish advisers, according to Major Firas al-Sheikh Mohammed, head of al-Rai police, on Tuesday (August 28).
The graduation ceremony was attended by the assistant governor of the Turkish province of Kilis as well as a number of Syrian and Turkish officers and the head of the local council of the city and a number of its members. The ceremony’s events which included a police parade were also attended by several residents and the graduates’ families.
The police officer Osama al-Masharqa, one of the graduates of the fourth batch, said that he and his colleagues received intensive training on all police sciences to be law-abiding people capable of protecting the homeland, citizens, public property and fighting crime, according to what he told Enab Baladi.
The first batch of al-Rai police forces graduated in December 2017, and included 150 members, after receiving training courses over a month.
Throughout northern Aleppo, the “National Police” received training in Turkey, and received payments to take over the security centers in cities and towns controlled by the “Free Army.”
Turkey supported the “Free Army” factions in the northern and eastern parts of Aleppo in the operations through which they captured large areas that the “Islamic State” was in control of, including the city of al-Bab and the villages and towns surrounding it. The last of the areas controlled by the “Free Army” was Afrin, following battles against the Kurdish “People’s Protection Units.”
Women Are Also There
Among the last batch of graduated police forces in the city of al-Rai, the female component was fully present, as the batch included 25 policewomen trained to practice the profession despite the pressure on women in the Syrian society, though exceptions do really exist.
In October 2017, the police forces witnessed the graduation of the first batch of women police officers in the city of Azaz, northern Aleppo, as a first step in the areas out of the Syrian regime’s control.
Their duties are limited to safe and medium-risk levels, including the inspection of “women” at checkpoints, garages, police command centers and service institutions, such as local civil councils, dispensaries, hospitals and the like, according to Major General Abdul Razzaq Aslan, commander of the police and national security forces.
In a former interview with Enab Baladi, Aslan said that the women apprentices were also trained on firearms and close combat weapons, and some sport exercises appropriate for their age and health conditions.
“They were directed politically and intellectually in accordance with domestic law, international law, human rights and the fight against extremism and terrorism,” he said, adding that “some of the episodes included instructions for their work with the police and cooperation with the judicial system and even with citizens in general.”
In the view of some, women’s work in the field of police in the northern countryside of Aleppo is a natural result of the new distribution of the social roles required by the current phase, and their integration into the building and organization of the community is an inevitable necessity that must be accepted.