|
The PKK and Syria's Kurds
18.2.2007
By James Brandon
|
|
|
|
February 18, 2007
In January, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
appointed "Doctor Bahoz," the nom de guerre of
Fehman Huseyin, a Syrian Kurd, to lead the People's
Defense Forces (the HPG), putting him in charge of
the movement's day-to-day military operations. The
appointment of a Syrian—and a noted hardliner—to
head the military wing of the Kurdish group seems
likely to increase tensions between the movement's
older members, who are largely supportive of the
Syrian government, and its younger recruits, who see
Syria's 1.7 million Kurds as an oppressed minority
ripe for liberation.
Although Bahoz's rise to the top of the PKK—a
movement that is ostensibly Turkish—is unusual,
there are thousands of Syrian Kurds in the PKK,
which is the result of a long-standing alliance
between the guerrilla movement and Damascus.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that as much as 20
percent of the PKK's 4,000 troops in Mount Qandil,
the PKK's headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan, are of
Syrian origin [1]. These Syrian Kurds fall into two
rough categories: older members who joined the PKK
to fight against Turkey, and younger, more radical
recruits who have joined more recently and who
believe that all Kurdish lands—including those in
Syria—should be liberated.
The tension between PKK members loyal to the Syrian
government—of whom Bahoz is one—and those who
believe the PKK should fight Syria could have
serious regional consequences. The PKK is in a
crisis, struggling to remain relevant to ordinary
Kurds, while caught in a region-wide struggle
between Islamism and ethno-nationalism; between
Western democracies and Arab dictatorships. The
winner of the struggle within the PKK will decide
whether men like Bahoz continue their traditional,
Maoist guerrilla war against Turkey, or if power
will fall to younger, more radical recruits who
advocate a broader, pan-Kurdish campaign of urban
warfare.
History of Syria's Kurds
Syria's estimated 1.7 million Kurds make up around
10 percent of the country's population and are
concentrated in a geographically compact area of
northeast Syria in the triangle formed by the
Turkish and Iraqi borders. The region's main towns
are Qamishli and Hassaka, which also have large
Christian populations. There are Kurdish villages
scattered along the northern border with Turkey. In
addition, at least 100,000 Kurds live in Damascus.
Some of these Kurds are recent migrants, while
others are from families that have lived in the
Syrian capital for generations.
Historically, the Kurds of the rolling plains of
eastern Syria have adopted a far-more quietist
attitude than the Kurds in the rugged mountains of
Iran, Syria and Iraq. While these latter Kurds have
been engaged in almost continuous rebellions against
their central governments since at least the 1960s,
Syria's Kurds have no comparable history of revolt
against Damascus.
Syrian Kurds—like those elsewhere—have largely
rejected the political Islam promoted by Gulf Arab
states, preferring to mix secular politics with a
personal attachment to conservative and rustic
"village" Islam. Although Syrian Kurds are proud of
their ethnic identity, this only rarely translates
into a desire for independence or even regional
autonomy. In general, the Kurds' grievances against
the government are those of most Syrians—they desire
political freedom, basic human rights and greater
economic opportunity.
"The Kurdish people in Syria don't want autonomy;
they just want their democratic rights in a
democratic Syria," says Kawa Rashid, the Netherlands
representative of Yekiti, one of the largest Syrian
Kurdish political parties. "They also want their
language and culture to be respected" [2].
Syria and the PKK
For the last quarter century, Syria has aimed to
weaken its neighbors by stoking pan-Kurdish
sentiments around the region, while also urging its
own Kurdish minority to subordinate their ethnic
identity to Syria's Arab—and increasingly Islamic—
identity. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the
Syrian government backed the PKK against Turkey by
providing its fighters based in Lebanon's Bekaa
Valley with arms and training. Simultaneously, Syria
supported Iraqi Kurds against Baghdad. In
particular, Syria aided the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, which was founded by Jalal Talabani in
Damascus in 1975.
In return, Turkish and Iraqi Kurds, backed by
Damascus, abandoned all claims to lead Syria's
Kurds. Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK's founder and
leader, even publicly said that Syria's Kurds were
not fully Kurdish [3]. In 1998, however, Syria,
under heavy Turkish pressure, ended its support for
the PKK, expelling Ocalan from his home in Damascus
and closing PKK camps in Lebanon. While this
precipitated Ocalan's arrest soon afterwards in
Kenya, the PKK survived by moving their camps to
Iraqi Kurdistan.
This did not, however, end Syrian involvement with
the PKK since Syria had already encouraged thousands
of its own Kurds to join the PKK to fight against
Turkey. Many of these traveled to the camps in Mount
Qandil in Kurdistan where they have been joined by a
steady trickle of Syrian Kurds eager to fight for an
independent homeland. Syrian PKK members have also
continued to take part in attacks in Turkey. For
example, when a Syrian PKK member was killed near
Trabzon in northern Turkey in August 2005, Kurdish
activists returned his body to his family in Syria
(Journal of Turkish Weekly, August 24, 2005). There
are also widespread rumors that Syria continues to
covertly fund, supply and train the PKK.
Growing Activism
Despite Syrian success in co-opting the PKK, the
last few years have provided evidence that Syria's
formerly placid Kurds are becoming increasingly
angry with the Syrian government—and increasingly
determined to take action against it. In 2004,
Kurdish restlessness peaked when Syrian police shot
dead seven Kurds during a riot at a football match
in Qamishli on March 12 (Amnesty International,
March 16, 2004). Further violence took place at the
men's funerals, leading to a rapid escalation of
hostilities. On March 13, events akin to a
spontaneous uprising began in Qamishli, Aleppo and
Afrin. In Qamishli, thousands of Kurds attacked
police stations and government buildings, burning
some of them.
Events climaxed when Kurds in Qamishli toppled a
statue of Hafez al-Assad in imitation of the
toppling of Saddam's statue in Baghdad just a year
earlier. The Syrian army responded quickly,
deploying thousands of troops backed by tanks and
helicopters. At least 30 Kurds were killed as the
security services re-took the city. According to
Amnesty International, more than 2,000 Kurds were
subsequently jailed for their role in the violence.
Syria's tough response silenced the Kurds, but only
temporarily. Soon after, Sheikh Mashuq Khaznawi, a
popular Kurdish Sufi religious leader, began to
speak out against the government and met Muslim
Brotherhood members abroad. Later, on May 10, 2005,
he was kidnapped, tortured and killed. The
government blamed criminals, yet his family and
supporters blamed the security services. Thousands
attended his funeral where, again, violence erupted
between Kurds and the police.
As Syria tightly controls and monitors political
activity, this rise in activism seems to be largely
spontaneous and organic, inspired in part by Kurdish
achievements in neighboring Iraq and by Saddam's
overthrow. A pan-Kurdish message has also been
broadcast around the region by Roj TV, a
Denmark-based satellite channel supportive of the
PKK. Kurdish assertiveness has been stoked by
regional trends such as the spread of the internet,
increasing unemployment and a general polarization
of Middle East politics.
Blowback
Rising Kurdish national feeling is also the belated
blowback from Syria's schizophrenic policy toward
the Middle East's 25 million Kurds. For the last 30
years, successive Syrian governments have backed
Kurdish nationalists against Iraq and Turkey, while
seeking to preemptively intimidate their own Kurds,
aiming to stifle their separatist ambitions without
triggering an outright rebellion.
In the modern era, Syrian repression of its Kurds
began in the 1960s, when around 150,000 Syrian Kurds
were stripped of their Syrian citizenship and
declared to be "foreigners." Today, their similarly
disenfranchised descendents number over 200,000.
Around the same time, the Syrian government removed
many Kurds from a 10 kilometer deep strip along the
country's northern and northeastern borders,
replacing them with Arab settlers.
Today, the Syrian government continues to harass,
arrest and occasionally kill Kurdish activists,
fueling broader Kurdish resentment. For example, in
1993 when the main prison in Hassake burnt down,
killing 61 Kurds, including many prominent
activists, many Kurds accused the government of
starting the fire deliberately. Syrian Kurdish
activists say that at least 300 Kurds are in prison
today for political reasons. In addition, Kurdish
culture has been forced underground. The use of the
Kurdish language is prohibited in business or
government. The government strictly curtails Kurds'
expressions of other aspects of Kurdish culture such
as music and celebrations of the spring Newruz
festival.
Fearing the cumulative effects of these factors—and
un-nerved by the 2004 Kurdish "intifada"—the Syrian
government has periodically attempted to placate the
Kurds. In March 2005, 312 Kurds who were jailed
following the Qamishli violence were pardoned (al-Jazeera,
June 8, 2005). Soon afterwards, the Syrian
government promised to address Kurdish grievances by
granting them greater social and cultural rights.
Syrian ministers also proposed awarding nationality
to the stateless Kurds. These concessions, however,
came as Syria reeled from a series of international
and domestic crises, in particular the assassination
of Rafiq Hariri in early 2005. By 2007, the Syrian
government, strengthened by the United States'
difficulties encountered in Iraq and the success of
Hezbollah's summer 2006 war with Israel, has
reverted to its traditional intolerance.
As a result, Kurdish discontent remains high and is
likely increasing, fortified by the knowledge that a
post-Assad regime is unlikely to treat them any
better. Even moderate Syrian democrats and secular
reformists regard the Kurds with a mix of fear,
disgust and contempt [4]. Islamic opposition figures
also distrust the Kurds' separatist and secular
inclinations and have made little attempt to include
them in their plans [5].
PKK Action in Syria
Just as Syrian policies toward the Kurds have helped
make Syrian Kurdistan a potentially fertile ground
for future uprisings, so have the PKK's own
contradictions threatened to undermine the
decades-old understanding between the PKK and
Damascus, by radicalizing not only its own members,
but also Kurds around the region. The PKK's
longstanding strategy of using Syrian Kurds to fight
Turkey—while also working with the Syrian
government—therefore threatens to constantly
backfire.
This danger is exacerbated because the PKK's camps
on Mount Qandil currently have a revolving-door
effect of radicalizing and training Kurds and then
spewing them out across the region. Just as many
Turkish Kurds are leaving the PKK disillusioned by
the party's aging leadership, its peace overtures to
Turkey and the sense of lethargy prevailing on Mount
Qandil, so too are many Syrian Kurds (Terrorism
Monitor, September 8, 2006). Trained and motivated,
some of these Syrian Kurds may someday return to
their homelands to engage in activism there—just as
the shadowy Turkish group the Kurdistan Freedom
Falcons has evolved as a radical rival to the PKK
(Terrorism Focus, October 17, 2006).
This problem may be even more acute for Syrian Kurds
who must be baffled by their leaders' denial of the
Syrian Kurds' nationalist aspirations and by their
enduring loyalty toward the Syrian regime. The PKK's
hypocritical attitude toward Syria also contrasts
with its overt support for PJAK, the PKK's Iranian
clone, whose success in mobilizing Iranian Kurds is
attracting ever-increasing interest from Washington
(Terrorism Monitor, June 15, 2006).
Therefore, in the internal struggle to decide the
future of the PKK, the appointment of Dr. Bahoz
marks a victory for pro-Damascus factions of the PKK.
It may also, however, mark the increasing
marginalization of the aging Kurdish leadership from
the Kurdish mainstream, while also accelerating the
flow of younger Syrian PKK members away from the
group and into smaller and potentially more radical
movements.
Notes
1. Author interviews at PKK base camp, Mount Qandil,
Iraqi Kurdistan, March 20-22, 2006.
2. Author interview with Kawa Rashid, Netherlands
representative of Yekiti, February 12, 2007.
3. Author interview with Jawad Mella, president of
West Kurdistan Association, London, Spring 2006.
4. Author interviews with Haitham Maleh, Ayman Abdel
Nour and Sami Moubayed, Damascus, Spring 2006.
5. Author interview with Ali Sadreddin al-Bayanouni,
secretary-general of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood,
June 2006.
jamestown org
More about Kurds in Syria - (Kurdistan-Syria)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 