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Syrian Kurdish PYD Leader: Our fighters
are a bastion against Islamic-Jihadist threat to
Europe
22.5.2014 |
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Salih Muslim, co-president of the Syrian Kurdish
Democratic Union Party (PYD), the biggest Kurdish
party in western Kurdistan aka Rojava (north and
northeastern Syria) .
Photo: Reuters •
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May 22, 2014
LONDON,— Kurdish fighters in Syria
represent a bastion against foreign jihadists who
pose a future threat to Europe, according to the
leader of the dominant Democratic Union Party (PYD)
in Rojava.
Salih Muslim, the PYD co-chairman, was speaking in
London as part of a visit in which he was seeking to
drum up support for the self-declared autonomous
zones that have been set up in the Kurdish regions
of Syria.
“We are fighting these Salafists, who mostly don’t
accept Kurdish existence,” Muslim told the Kurdish
Society at London University’s School of Oriental
and African Studies on Wednesday. “We have no
alternative because otherwise there would be a
vacuum in which the Salafists would control
everything.”
The PYD leader acknowledged, however, that he was
struggling to get the message across to European
governments despite his warning that European
Muslims recruited into jihadist groups could return
from Syria to threaten their home countries.
“If they beat us, what will happen? They will come
to Europe,” said Muslim, whose son, Shervan, was
killed last year in a clash between Kurdish fighters
and al-Qaeda-linked jihadists. “No one is listening
to us, but we continue knocking at the door. For
now, our only support is from Kurds in the diaspora.”
He said he had requested meetings with, among
others, the British Foreign Office.
The PYD leader’s warnings matched concerns
expressed by officials in Europe and the US about
the potential jihadist threat.
France and Britain are among European countries that
have taken action to try to deter their young
Muslims from going to fight in Syria. Concerns about
the phenomenon of so-called “citizen jihadists” has
also been raised by Belgian, Dutch and German
authorities.
However, these concerns have not translated into
Western support for the PYD-led autonomy project in
Rojava, where the military wing of the movement has
been involved in clashes with jihadist groups that
include the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIS).
Western governments, on good terms with Turkey and
the Kurdistan Regional Government, have tended to
regard the PYD as a doctrinaire spinoff from the
militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party. It is also viewed
with suspicion because of its alleged continued
cooperation with the Bashar al-Assad regime.
Muslim downplayed the PYD’s dominant role in Rojava
and said the democratic project there involved other
parties, as well as representatives of local Arabs
and other minorities in the overwhelmingly Kurdish
cantons.
“What we are establishing in our area is part of the
future Syria,” he said. “We consider it a model for
all the Middle East.”
He rejected the claims of PYD cooperation with the
regime. However, he said the movement had rejected
requests from other opposition movements, including
Islamists, before the start of the three-year-old
civil wawww.Ekurd.netr
to mount an armed rebellion against Damascus.
“We were already in a struggle (with the regime) and
so knew the realities,” he said. “We were not
prepared to be soldiers in somebody else’s fight.”
Muslim acknowledged the support of ordinary people
in the Kurdistan Region who had helped their Syrian
brethren but he was critical of the role of Massoud
Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, with which he
was once allied.
He claimed the KDP’s economic links with Turkey were
forcing it to pursue Ankara’s policy in the region.
He accused the KDP of dispatching intelligence
agents to Rojava to undermine the autonomous regime
there.
Muslim said he was not opposed to the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq having
relations with Turkey, but “we are afraid of any
agreements that are against other sectors of the
Kurds.”
By Harvey Morris - Rudaw
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