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Syria Kurdish groups to try to unite
against Bashar al-Assad
19.1.2012 |
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January 19, 2012
ERBIL-Hewlęr,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — Syrian Kurdish groups
opposed to Bashar al-Assad will try to unite this
month to explain their autonomy demands to Arab
groups trying to topple the Syrian leader, activists
said on Thursday.
While security forces have clashed daily with
protesters and insurgents demanding Assad's downfall
in mainly Sunni Arab towns, Syrian Kurdish areas
have remained relatively calm, despite many Kurds'
long-standing opposition to the government.
Syrian Kurdish exile leaders say they do not trust
the Arab opposition to heed their demands for
self-rule in the mainly Kurdish northeast of the
country.
Kurdish groups representing Syria's largest ethnic
minority are also divided among themselves, with
some factions backed by Iraqi Kurds, and another by
Turkish Kurd rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),
independent analysts said.
"There will be a national conference of all the
Kurdish parties to form one front," said Mahmoud
Mohammad Bave Sabir, a leading member of the
Democratic Union Kurdish Party of Syria, one of the
oldest Kurdish opposition groups.
"The aim of the conference is to press the demands
of the Kurds in Syria and to open a dialogue with
the Arab opposition," he told Reuters.
A date for the meeting has not been set, but it will
be held this month in Erbil, capital of the
semi-autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan, the
activists said. All the main Syrian Kurdish parties,www.ekurd.net
plus intellectuals and independent organizations,
have been invited.
"The Arab opposition does not care about the Kurdish
cause," said Sarbast Nabi, a Syrian Kurdish politics
professor at Salahaddin University in Erbil. "All
they have promised is to deal with us as Syrian
citizens."
Kurds say they have been sidelined from the
opposition Syrian National Council, an exile group
that was set up in Turkey to coordinate a
10-month-old uprising against Assad.
"The Arab opposition is made up of Islamists and
Arab nationalists who do not accept Kurdish demands
for a democratic, pluralist, secular state where the
rights of all minorities are recognized," Nabi said.
Syrian Kurdish groups are also wary of Turkey's
influence on Syrian Arab dissidents based in
Istanbul, given Ankara's historic hostility to
demands for autonomy for its own large Kurdish
minority.
In 2004, Syrian Kurds fought deadly clashes with
security forces for days after an incident at a
football stadium in the main Kurdish city of
Qamishli. At the time, they said they received no
support from Arabs now leading the opposition.
But student activists say they are still mobilizing
support inside Syria in preparation for taking to
the streets.
Many thousands of Kurds live in the capital
Damascus, as well as in the northeast, and if they
swung their weight behind the uprising, it would
deal another powerful blow to Assad.
By Zhear Sarkawt and Jon Hemming - Reuters
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Reuters
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