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A murder stirs Kurds in Syria
16.6.2005
By Nicholas Blanford, The Christian Science Monitor |
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QAMISHLI, Syria -
At a meeting of Syrian political-intelligence
officers in late April in the Kurdish northeast, the
only item on the agenda was Sheikh Mohammed Mashouq
al-Khaznawi. He was becoming a problem for Syria,
says a Western diplomat familiar with the meeting.
A moderate Islamic cleric who once worked with the
Syrian government to temper extremism, Sheikh
Khaznawi was emerging as one of its most outspoken
critics. He advocated Kurdish rights and democracy,
galvanizing many of the 1.7 million Kurds against
the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. At the same
time, Kurds were gaining political power in Iraq,
Lebanon was casting Syrian troops out, and the U.S.
was criticizing Syria's government.
"[Syrian intelligence] wrote a report saying he ...
should be stopped. They said he would start a
revolution," says Sheikh Murad Khaznawi, the eldest
of Sheikh Mohammed's eight sons.
On May 10, the cleric disappeared in Damascus. Three
weeks later, he was found dead.
His murder sent shock waves through Syria's
marginalized Kurdish community, sparking mass
demonstrations earlier this month and mobilizing a
community that represents the most potent domestic
threat to President Assad.
"The sheikh was a symbol for the Kurdish people and
he wanted all the people to unite and struggle
peacefully," says Hassan Saleh, secretary-general of
Yakiti Party, a banned Kurdish group.
The Syrian authorities deny involvement in
Khaznawi's killing. But analysts and diplomats note
that the cleric's death coincides with a crackdown
by Damascus against internal political dissent.
"The stability of Syria is in the hands of the
Kurds," says Ibrahim Hamidi, correspondent of the
Arabic Al Hayat daily. "They have a unique position.
They are organized, they have an Islamic identity,
regional support through the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq
and Iran, international support with some European
countries lobbying for them, and political status
because of [the Kurdish empowerment in] Iraq."
Syria's 1.7 million Kurds comprise the largest
non-Arab group in Syria, making up about 9% of the
population. Most Kurds live in the Hasake province.
The area's economic importance and the Baath Party's
Arab nationalist ideology have ensured that the
province has long been under firm state control.
In 1962, a year before the Baath Party took power, a
census stripped around 120,000 Kurdish Syrians of
their citizenship, reclassifying them as
"foreigners," who carry red identity cards rather
than passports. Today, some 300,000 Kurds live here.
In the early 1970s, thousands of Arabs were
resettled on confiscated Kurdish property along a
200-mile strip on the Turkish border as part of an
Arabization policy that included banning Kurds from
schools.
Preaching individual rights
It was in this milieu that Sheikh Khaznawi was
raised. He was born into a respected religious
family that followed the Sufi branch of Islam, a
movement of organized brotherhoods, known as Tariqas,
each one headed by a sheikh. But the young Khaznawi
broke with Sufi tradition and began preaching
individual freedom and self-responsibility rather
than collective obedience to a single leader.
"The sheikh used to speak against the majority of
Sufi ways. He said it was like drugging the mind,"
says his son Murad.
A father of 16 children, he cut a distinguished
figure in his traditional garb of gray tunic and
tightly wrapped white turban. He possessed a good
sense of humor and, unlike most Islamic clerics, was
happy to shake hands with women. Khaznawi's moderate
ideas, which included support for secularism and
tolerance of other faiths, won him a growing number
of followers and endeared him initially to the
Syrian government, which views Islamic extremism
with hostility.
In March 2004, simmering tensions in the Kurdish
northeast exploded into bloody clashes between
Kurds, Syrian security forces, and Arab tribesmen.
The government asked Khaznawi to travel to Qamishli
to help ease tensions. His mediation helped calm the
situation, but he grew increasingly active in
advocating Kurdish rights. When 312 Kurdish
detainees were released in March, Khaznawi was there
to greet them. In April, on the anniversary of the
death of a Kurd in last year's riots, he publicly
denounced the government's treatment of Kurds.
"After that he was warned by the security [agents]
that what he was doing was dangerous," says Mr.
Saleh. Then, Khaznawi traveled to Brussels in
February and met with the exiled head of the Muslim
Brotherhood, an Islamist organization which fought a
terrorist campaign against the government in the
early 1980s. The meeting earned him another warning
from state security.
In April, he gave an interview with the Canadian
Globe and Mail newspaper in which he was quoted as
saying, "Either the regime will change or the regime
must go.... The reason I can speak out is because
the Americans are trying get rid of dictators and
help the oppressed."
Khaznawi began receiving death threats from Islamic
extremists who abhorred his moderation and his
criticism of suicide bombings in Iraq. Also
threatened was his colleague Mohammed Habash,
director of the Islamic Studies Center in Damascus,
an institution that advocates moderate Islam.
"They warned me and Khaznawi that we were playing
with fire," says Mr. Habash. "I'm afraid. I think
there's a clear plan of the fundamentalists to fight
the renewal [moderation] of Islam."
Early last month, Khaznawi received a call from
people claiming to be followers of his father, who
died in 1992. They told the cleric that their father
was ill and wanted to see him. Could he come to
their house for breakfast? He was suspicious, but he
accepted. He left the Islamic Studies Center on the
morning of May 10 and was not seen again. "He said
he would go to breakfast, but unfortunately he went
to his death instead," Habash says.
Kurds rising
Khaznawi's disappearance spurred some 10,000 Kurds
to demonstrate in Qamishli on May 21, calling on the
government to reveal his whereabouts. But the
government denied any knowledge of the kidnapping.
On June 1, Khaznawi's family was informed that their
father had been found dead in Deir ez-Zor. His body,
which was buried in a cemetery on the edge of town,
showed signs of torture. "The security told us he
had been buried for 12 days," says Sheikh Morshed
Khaznawi, another of Khaznawi's sons. "We didn't
believe them because the depth of the grave was only
70 centimeters [two feet] and Deir ez-Zor is very
hot. He should have decayed very badly."
The Syrian authorities blamed the cleric's murder on
a "criminal gang." Two gang members were arrested
and were shown confessing on television.
Tens of thousands of mourners attended Khaznawi's
burial and some 10,000 (mostly Kurd) protesters took
to the streets of Qamishli on June 5. The
demonstration turned violent when police and Arab
tribesmen beat the protesters, including women, then
looted dozens of Kurdish-owned shops.
"We have exceeded the culture of fear that the
regime planted in us," says Machal Tammo, of the
Tayyar Mustaqbal, a Kurdish Party. "For this very
reason, the regime does not want us to ask for our
demands peacefully."
More rights for Kurds?
The main road between Hasake and Qamishli cuts
across a barren terrain of harvested wheat fields,
the monotony of the featureless plain occasionally
broken by small man-made hills, known as tells,
which have been part of this ancient steppe for more
than 4,000 years. The hot wind creates spinning
columns of dust which pirouette and sway gracefully
across the fields of golden stubble.
At the entrance to Qamishli today, plainclothes
Syrian intelligence officers with rifles keep an eye
on passing traffic. More intelligence officers sit
on stools beside their vehicle at a roundabout.
Security has grown tighter since Khaznawi's
kidnapping and murder.
Morshed Khaznawi, who bears a striking resemblance
to his slain father, demands an international
investigation into his father's death. "We think the
Syrian authorities have complete and total
responsibility," he says.
But Mr. Habash and some analysts doubt that the
regime was behind Khaznawi's death, pointing to a
long-running family dispute and the enmity he
aroused among Islamic extremists.
"I believe the children of Mashouq are in the eye of
the storm and have a desire to accuse the
government," Habash says. "Mashouq had good contacts
with the regime, government, army, and intelligence.
His political activities were not enough to get him
killed."
Following the March 2004 riots in Qamishli, Abdullah
Derdary, the Syrian planning minister, traveled to
Hasake province and reassured the Kurds that
economic assistance was on its way.
"Nothing happened and this time no one believes
them," says a Western diplomat familiar with Kurdish
affairs. "They are looking at Iraq and thinking we
can organize ourselves and the regime knows it."
During the 1990s, Syrian Kurds were permitted to
fulfill their military service with the PKK, the
Kurdish armed separatist group that was fighting for
autonomy in southeast Turkey. Damascus and Ankara
signed a security pact in 1998 which ended Syria's
support for the PKK. But, according to the diplomat,
many Syrian Kurds have slipped into northern Iraq to
continue fighting with a newly resurgent PKK, which
could have alarming implications for Damascus.
Still, there are indications that the government is
taking the Kurdish dilemma more seriously. The
government recently appointed Major General Mohammed
Mansoura as head of Syria's powerful political
security department. General Mansoura has extensive
experience with the Kurds having headed the Hasake
branch of military intelligence from 1982 to 2002.
Regardless of who killed Khaznawi, the death of the
respected cleric has refocused attention on Syria's
Kurds. Last week's Baath Party Congress referred to
unspecified steps to help the Kurds — widely
reported to involve granting citizenship to the
300,000 stateless Kurds.
But for many Kurds such government measures are too
little too late. "The Kurds are really fed up. They
don't care anymore," says Maan Abdelsalam, a Syrian
civil rights activist.
The Kurds' Status in Syria
- Population: 1.7 million. As Syria's largest
non-Arab group, Kurds account for approximately 9%
of the country's total population.
- Stateless Kurds: In 1962, more than 120,000 Kurds
were stripped of their Syrian citizenship. Today the
number of Kurds without Syrian passports has swelled
to more than 300,000.
- Hasake Province, where most Kurds live, is the
main source of Syria's oil and gas reserves and a
major center of cotton and wheat production.
www.csmonitor.com
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