Al Qahtaniyah (Syria) (AFP) – Holding a weapon in one hand and fixing her scarf with the other, Atia Hassan patrols one of northeast Syria’s vast wheatfields, a vital source of income in the country’s breadbasket. The 50-year-old is among dozens of volunteers, some of them women, helping the semi-autonomous Kurdish-led region protect the fields near Qahtaniyah, from fires and arsonists.
