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Archive for the category “Kurdistan”

26 Mar 2015

Syrian Kurds and their democratic model of ‘Rojava’

Rojava Syrian Kurds Saleh Muslim PYD leader

Big moves are afoot in Rojava, northeast Syria, where the Kurds are battling ISIS on two fronts. It is a clash of ideologies and will be a fight to the death, as Saleh Muslim, the softly spoken President of the PYD, Syria’s most powerful Kurdish faction, told a full house in the Houses of Parliament last night. So many people came, myself among them, that a room treble the size of the planned one had to be found.

Syrian Kurds have been largely invisible and overlooked in the media so far, but this may be about to change. Saleh Muslim’s organization, the PYD (Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party), was founded in 2003 to resist the Assad regime. Affliated to the PKK – the Kurdish resistance party in Turkey – the PYD is regarded as a terrorist organisation by the United States, so Saleh Muslim himself has never been granted a visa to visit and put his case. The jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, last week released a statement for Newroz, the Kurdish New Year, urging his followers to abandon their armed struggle in favour of a political solution. The UK government and the Foreign Office are as usual dithering and at least six months behind the curve.

For when the Assad regime’s army pulled out of the northeast in mid-2012, the Syrian Kurds were given a once in a lifetime chance to start afresh, creating an inclusive society in which all ethnicities and religions are involved – Kurdish and Arab, Syriac, Yazidi, Sunni, Alawi and Shi’a – a society uniquely based on trust. In November 2013 they declared the self-governing region of Rojava, incorporating the three cantons of Afrin, Kobani and Jezira.

rojava map

From their capital Qamishli they now rule through a series of committees all of which are made up of 40% women, with plans for this to rise to 50%. Women are represented throughout, alongside men, even in the fighting groups known as the YPG, the People’s Protection Units, a fighting force of some 50,000 fighters.

rojava female fighters

These are the same fighters who, without fuss or recognition, led the Yazidis to safety via a back route off Mount Sinjar in August 2014, the same fighters who defended their town of Kobani against ISIS. Their struggles against ISIS continue, but less reported, in the canton of Afrin north of Aleppo, and near the city of Hasakeh in Jezira.

rojava yazidis

An academic delegation to Rojava has recently returned, some of whom were also speakers at last night’s open debate. Without exception they declared themselves deeply impressed by what they found, despite the economic problems due to blockaded borders, the lack of electricity, the struggles with lack of medicine and healthcare. Rojava has established a unique democratic model in which all decisions are reached by consensus, in consultation with all groups. So far it is working remarkably well, without infighting, and frankly puts to shame the pretense of democracy in many western countries. The rich Assad regime flunkies ran away in 2012 when the Assad army pulled out, so their land and property has been redistributed.

But if this democratic pluralistic model is to survive in the region, with its emphasis on the inclusion of women at all levels, it will need help. At the moment it is succeeding in its battles against ISIS through sheer will-power and conviction. It is defending its homeland. But Saleh Muslim says he also sees their approach as the right model for the rest of Syria and indeed for the region as a whole. A massive re-education needs to go on, he says calmly, to convince people that this inclusive model is the only way forward, and the West and the international community needs to commit its support rather than standing on the sidelines dithering while thousands die needlessly. In short, there needs to be a coherent strategy, so far lacking in western governments.

rojava mourning deaths

Related articles:

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2015/03/syria-pyd-kurds-federalism-middle-east.html

http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/syria-kurds-struggle-since-battle-for-kobani

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/why-world-ignoring-revolutionary-kurds-syria-isis

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Kurdistan, Rojava, Syria and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
01 Aug 2014
2 Comments

Postcard from Nusaybin, southeast Turkey

POSTCARD from NUSAYBIN (as published in Chatham House’s The World Today magazine (Aug/Sept 2014 issue)

Mar Yakoub Church and university, Nusaybin [DD, 2012]

Syriac Mar Yakoub (St James’s) Church and university dating to the 4th century, Nusaybin [DD, 2012]

One glance at a modern map is enough to understand why Nusaybin is a hotspot in today’s world. Situated in southeast Turkey, it looks across the border at its southerly reflection, Qamishli in northeast Syria; its main east-west highway hosts an endless convoy of tankers with their precious cargo heading out from Erbil in oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan into oil-poor Turkey;  and another highway leads southeast to Iraq’s Mosul. This volatile triangle of territory is delineated by watchtowers and fences along the Syrian-Turkish border, erected in the 1970s, and by the long Syrian-Iraqi desert frontier which became a physical barrier only after 2003.

All this talk of borders would have made no sense at all before World War One. Sykes-Picot had yet to draw their ‘lines in the sand’ creating the modern states of the Middle East. The maps in Baedeker’s 1906 Palestine et Syrie show only the loose provincial Ottoman boundaries and the journey from Nusaybin to the ruins of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire on the banks of the Tigris opposite Mosul, is described as ‘five days on horseback requiring a strong escort.’ Even in the 1930s under the French Mandate when Agatha Christie accompanied her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan to dig the famous tells of Mesopotamia, they would arrive by train at Nusaybin via the Berlin-Baghdad railway, then head south with no customs formalities, despite their trunkloads of luggage.

The defunct border crossing from Nusaybin to Qamishli [DD, 2014]

The defunct border crossing from Nusaybin to Qamishli [DD, 2014]

Nusaybin’s strategic location on east-west trade routes ensured a complex past. Beginning with the Assyrians, empires came and went, and as Roman Nisibis it formed a fortress-frontier against the Persian Sassanids. Forever caught in the power-play of outside forces, there are two indigenous peoples, the Kurds and the Syriacs, in and around Nusaybin who rarely get a mention, stateless peoples whose aspirations for nationhood were repeatedly thwarted. But an unintended consequence of recent events like the US invasion of Iraq, the ‘Arab Spring’ and the rise of ISIS militants has changed the dynamic.

The city’s residents today, like most in the area, are overwhelmingly Kurdish, with just a small Syriac community, but in the 4th century the population was mainly Syriac, and Nusaybin’s Syriac roots are still deep. St James’ Church in the centre is one of the world’s oldest functioning churches, dating back to 325. Alongside it sits the newly excavated university where famous scholars like St Ephrem the Syrian, ‘Harp of the Spirit’ (306-73), composed  hymns and trained all-female choirs. His language was Syriac, and his descendants, ancestors of the Assyrians, still speak a dialect of ancient Aramaic known locally as ‘Suryani’, using its classical form in their liturgy.

Successive persecutions at the hands of fellow Christians, Muslims and Kurds across the centuries caused most to escape to Europe and beyond, but to ensure the language does not die, each year dedicated members of the Syriac diaspora  send their children to Syriac summer schools run by monks at the nearby monasteries. Those who stayed scattered into small broken communities across the region within cities like Raqqa and Aleppo in Syria, Mosul and Baghdad in Iraq.  Qamishli was largely created by Christians fleeing the fighting of World War One.

Next summer  will be the centenary of their worst ever persecution, the 1915 Sayfo (The Sword), little known in the West, a massacre in which tens of thousands of Syriacs were slaughtered alongside Armenian Christians, mainly at the hands of Kurdish tribesmen.  Yet remarkably, today the highly educated and talented Syriac community is reviving, fed not only by families from abroad, but also by refugees from Syria,  returning to their ancient homeland. Most significantly of all, they are gradually healing historic rifts with their Kurdish neighbours, acknowledging that they were manipulated during the 1915 Sayfo by their Turkish masters.

Roman columns of Nisibis in the no-man's land between Nusaybin (Turkey) and Qamishli (Syria) [DD, 2013]

Roman columns of Nisibis in the no-man’s land between Nusaybin (Turkey) and Qamishli (Syria) [DD, 2014]

Looking across today’s barbed-wire border from Nusaybin, through the no-man’s-land where the last relics of Roman Nisibis still rise, the houses and grain silos of Syria’s Qamishli are clearly visible. Blessed with fertile wheat fields, Syria’s largest oilfield and three major rivers, this panhandle of northeast Syria  is quite a prize, and in January 2014 Syria’s Kurds, as the dominant population, declared Qamishli capital of ‘Rojavo’  or western Kurdistan. The 22 cabinet ministers are a Christian/Muslim/Kurdish mix, in line with their secular ideology. Kurdish identity is defined by ethnicity, language and culture not by religion, a fact reflected in Iraqi Kurdistan’s schools where all world religions are taught equally.

Today’s fragile balance is now threatened by new invaders, the Sunni militants of ISIS, who want to rid the region of imperialist borders, and impose an ultra-conservative Islamic state across Iraq and Greater Syria.  A year from now, at the centenary of the Sayfo, will Nusaybin still be in Turkey? What will the map look like? Only one prediction can safely be made – that it will still be a hotspot.

 

 

Posted in ISIS, Kurdistan, Rojavo, Syria, Turkey and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
01 Feb 2014

#Syria’s Kurds declare ‘Rojavo’, autonomous western Kurdistan

Mor Augen Monastery near Nusaybin, Turkey, now overlooking the new Syrian 'Rojavo' [DD]

Mor Augen Monastery near Nusaybin, Turkey, now overlooking the new Syrian Kurdish ‘Rojavo’ [DD]

Roman columns of Nisibis in the no man's land between Turkey's Nusaybin and Syria's Qamishli, the new capital of Rojavo [DD]

Roman columns of Nisibis in the no man’s land between Turkey’s Nusaybin and Syria’s Qamishli, the new capital of Rojavo [DD]

The Kurds have been the big unknown in Syria’s revolution/civil war. The Kurdish street slogan has been: ‘Democracy for Syria. Federalism for Syrian Kurdistan.’ The Kurds have seen in the Syrian revolution a major opportunity to further their aspirations for their own homeland, or autonomy at the very least. For years they have been talking about eastern Syria as western Kurdistan – ‘Rojavo’ is their word for it.

‘We were promised our homeland in 1920 but then betrayed, you remember?’ my Syrian Kurdish lawyer had said to me, back  in 2011 in Damascus, when the revolution first broke out. I knew that under the Assad regime many of them had been stateless and dispossessed, with no ID cards. He explained: ‘This means they cannot vote, own property, get a government job, or go to secondary school or university, but they are still forced to do military service. And people forget,’ he had added, ‘that the PKK [Kurdish separatist group fighting against the Turkish state for an autonomous Kurdistan] troubles already killed 45,000 people back in the 1980s and 1990s.’

No informed observer doubted that the Kurds needed to be courted, by both the Syrian and the Turkish governments. Bashar finally gave them citizenship in 2012 after 50 years of state deprivation, in an attempt to deter them from joining the revolution, but by then it was not enough. They were already fighting, sometimes against the regime, sometimes against the rebels, not only in the northeast Hassakeh and Qamishli areas, but also in Aleppo and north of it, in the Kurdish villages like A’zaaz. When Syrian regime forces withdrew from the Kurdish border areas in summer 2012, the PKK took control. Many speculated it was even a tacit agreement between the PKK and Bashar – there is a strange link, as the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan is from the rarefied minority of Alawi Kurds. It should have been a dream come true for the Kurds, but it quickly became worse than under Assad, with local Kurds complaining the PKK were mercenaries and criminals.

Although most are nominally Sunni Muslim, the Kurdish identity is based not on religion, but on ethnicity and cultural tradition. In Iraqi Kurdistan schools do not impose Islam but teach all world religions equally. The last thing Kurds want is to be ruled by an Islamic state. This explains the fighting that broke out around Ar-Raqqa in summer 2013 between Syria’s Kurds and the extremist Islamist groups like Jabhat Al-Nusra and ISIS who are seeking to establish precisely such an old-style caliphate. These were the very groups the Italian Jesuit Father Paolo sought to mediate between when he entered the lion’s den and was kidnapped by ISIS for his pains.  This Kurdish versus Islamist in-fighting is an unwelcome distraction, but for Syria’s Kurds these extremist Islamists represent the greatest menace of all, and they would still choose the hated PKK over the Islamists. The leader of the Kurdish Saladin brigade declared his position: ‘We want a civil democratic government that treats everyone equally.’

He may have got his wish, for on the eve of the January 2014 Geneva II talks where Syria’s Kurds were denied a seat of their own, the establishment of Rojavo as a semi-autonomous region was declared, with 22 cabinet ministers based in Qamishli. True to their ideology, the new government is a Christian/Muslim/Kurdish mix.

The international community would not care greatly what the Kurds got up to, except that Iraqi Kurdistan is oil rich, Syria’s oilfields lie mainly in its northeast and Turkey’s oilfields are in its southeast provinces. A future independent Kurdistan has the potential to control a massive chunk of the Middle East’s oil reserves – to say nothing of its water or even its wheat reserves.

The new Rojavo region now has the 100,000 barrel-a-day Suwayda oilfield which accounts for more than 60 per cent of the country’s oil production; the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Khabour rivers; and one of Syria’s richest wheat-producing agricultural sectors. What a prize – well worth the wait.

Related links:

* http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/64e97c3e-8465-11e3-9710-00144feab7de.html#axzz2s4UVAt2o

* http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/82550c80-4c7e-11e3-958f-00144feabdc0.html#slide0

* http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5984016e-f08d-11e2-b28d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2s5M0GLwP

* http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f3e76df2-b8bd-11e2-a6ae-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2s4UVAt2o

* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23614968

* http://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/news/2014/january/a-door-to-damascus

* http://www.hauspublishing.com/product/445

Old border gate between Nusaybin and Qamishli, new capital of Rojavo [DD]

Old border gate between Nusaybin and Qamishli, new capital of Rojavo [DD]

Posted in Iraqi Kurdistan, Kurdistan, Rojavo, Syria, Turkey and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
01 Feb 2014

A Dangerous Chemistry – the Kurds and water

Flooded Rumkale in Eastern Turkey, following the damming of the Euphrates upstream

Flooded Rumkale in Eastern Turkey, following the damming of the Euphrates upstream

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01gsjdw/From_Our_Own_Correspondent_Turkey_and_France_What_Lies_Beneath/

The southeast of Turkey is being transformed by the ambitious and controversial water scheme known as GAP. Since the 1980s 22 dams and 19 power plants have been built on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and GAP – or the Southeast Anatolia Project to give it its full title – is now nearing completion.  By 2015 the Turkish government hopes that GAP will double Turkey’s irrigated farmland, produce over a quarter of its electricity and bring social benefits to the impoverished population in the nine provinces affected, 90% of whom are Kurdish.

For decades Turkey has been wrestling with its Kurdish problem in the southeast of the country. Since 1984 over 45,000 lives have been lost in the skirmishes between the Kurdish separatist group known as the PKK and the Turkish army. In April this year however, after months of negotiations, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan reached an agreement that, if fully implemented, will end the 30 year old conflict. In exchange for greater recognition of Kurdish rights, the PKK agreed to withdraw to Iraqi Kurdistan. The withdrawal is ongoing, but slow, with only 20% so far having left. The peace process is fragile, and downstream in the Kurdish parts of Syria, unpredictable forces have been unleashed by the ongoing civil war. Will the GAP project help or hinder?

***

Soreyya, a mature stylish teacher from Istanbul, is one of a steady trickle of cosmopolitan Turks now venturing cautiously eastwards. She wants to explore the other half of her own country.

‘I had no idea it was so civilised!’ she tells me, as we sample an exotic lakeside breakfast at the half-submerged village of Halfeti. ‘My friends thought I was crazy to come this far east. They said I would hate it, but I love it,’ she says, putting her bare bejewelled arm maternally round young Zafer, our beaming Kurdish host.

‘Yes, we are learning to understand each other,’ he affirms.

We have just enjoyed an early morning boat ride to Rumkale, a mighty Byzantine fortress on the Euphrates, now stranded on an island by flooding.  Drowned in the valleys all around, lie hundreds of other sites, their archaeological treasures lost, stolen or transferred hastily to local museums.

Flooding is a not a new phenomenon in Eastern Turkey. It began with the epic deluges described in the stories of Gilgamesh and Noah, though unlike those cataclysms of nature, today’s version, the equally epic GAP project, has been decades in the planning. The Turkish government hopes it will redress the balance in living standards between the poverty-stricken Kurdish southeast provinces and the wealthier western parts of the country, by bringing employment and prosperity.

‘You must be so pleased,’ I say to Zafer, ‘with all this development helping your restaurant business.’

‘I am one of the lucky ones,’ he tells me, ‘Land values have tripled since 2000 and I own this place. But many do not own the land they farm. Aghas, wealthy  landlords, own it. They get big government payouts when their land is flooded.’

‘You mean the Kurdish farmers get nothing?’ I ask.

‘Nothing,’ he repeats. ‘Some have lost everything. The government must sort out property rights and compensation for us as well. And this boom has made bride prices shoot up!’

‘Don’t worry,’ laughs Soreyya, ‘Next year I’m coming back to get a job at one of the private schools. Maybe I’ll bring my teenage daughter with me!’

Further east in the Tigris gorge at the ancient city of Hasankeyf,  I sit with Kobe, a gloomy Kurdish cafe owner  whose livelihood will shortly disappear under 70m of water when the controversial Ilisu Dam is completed.

‘They tell us there will be underwater tourism,’ he grumbles, ‘so people can still see the historic bridge and monuments. But why do we need all these dams? This is just Ankara’s way of blocking the valleys where the PKK used to infiltrate and displacing us from our land. We have too much water already.’

Perversely, while some have too much water, others have too little. Downstream in the broken jigsaws of Iraq and Syria  – whose Kurds are also striving for autonomy – GAP, according to UN sources, has already led to a 40% reduction in water flow. The recent exodus of Syrian Kurds into Iraqi Kurdistan was driven not just by fighting, but by lack of water. Turkey, controller of the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, can turn the tap off – or on.

More difficult to control are its Kurds, some 10-12 million of them and growing. Kurdish birth rates are legendary.

‘When Erdogan says he wants every Turk to have three children,’ Kobe continues, ‘his message is really more subtle than that. For western Turks who are frightened to have even one or two, he wants them to raise it to three. But for us Kurds, who often have 8 or more, he wants us to bring it down to 3 – otherwise, he thinks, what can they all do when they grow up except join the PKK?’

‘If Erdogan isn’t careful,’ he goes on, ‘he may accidentally help us to unite with our Syrian and Iraqi brothers. If he ignores our grievances, he will regret it. Have you looked at a map? Most of the oil wells in Turkey, Syria and Iraq are in our Kurdish territories.’

‘And most of the water,’ I add softly.

His troubled face breaks into a smile.

‘You know, we could be a model for the Middle East,’ he goes on, ‘we are not fanatics like those crazy jihadis trying to take over in Syria. Kurdish Islam is not the Islam of Saudi Arabia or Iran. In Iraqi Kurdistan our schools teach all world religions equally.’

As I wave goodbye to Kobe –  and to Hasankeyf before it vanishes forever –  I can’t help thinking that  a whole flood of western Turks like Soreyya  will need to come quickly to the east, to understand their Kurdish countrymen better  and to save Turkey’s fragile peace process with the Kurds.       Otherwise not just the landscape, but the entire regional map may be reshaped  –  by the most powerful weapon of all , water.

Hasankeyf on the Tigris, due for flooding [DD]

Hasankeyf on the Tigris, due for flooding
[DD]

Posted in Kurdistan, Syria, Turkey and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
01 Sep 2013

Syria is not Iraq – 10 key differences

Images of Paradise in the mosaics of Damascus' Great Umayyad Mosque [DD]

Images of Paradise in the mosaics of Damascus’ Great Umayyad Mosque [DD]

Young and old arm in arm in Damascus

Young and old arm in arm in Damascus [DD]

Following on from ‘Syria’s Ghost’ (posted 31/08/2013) here are 10 key differences between the case for intervention in Syria as opposed to Iraq:

1. In 2003 Iraq was not in a civil war. It was simply another repressive authoritarian Arab state not much worse than Mubarak’s Egypt and Gaddafi’s Libya.

2. Syria in March 2011 witnessed a peaceful spontaneous uprising against its repressive authoritarian leader Bashar Al-Assad.

3. The Iraqi people were not asking the US-led coalition to intervene.

4. A large section of the Syrian people asked the international community to intervene after the Assad regime countered their peaceful demonstrations with extreme violence, arbitrary arrest and torture.

5. Iraq in 2003 did not present a threat to the international community. There were no Al-Qa’ida operatives or jihadis inside Iraq. They came in later to profit from the chaos we created.

6. Syria presents a serious threat to the security of the international community. The Al-Qa’ida-linked jihadi groups have thrived in the vacuum left by our non-intervention, and are growing. They are starting to dominate the moderate rebel groups like the Free Syrian Army.

7. Iraq was not a proxy war.

8. Syria has become a proxy war: America v Russia, Iran v Saudi Arabia, Hizbullah v Salafis. The interests of the Syrian people have been lost in the proxy war interests.

9. Iraq was not a humanitarian intervention. It was not in danger of collapse in 2003. It was not at war and was stable.

10. Syria would be a humanitarian intervention under the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine (Bosnia is the model). Syrians are dying of starvation and lack of medical attention as well as regime massacres and chemical weapons attacks. An entire generation is being lost.

For all those reasons, Syria is not Iraq, and for all those reasons, from the moment the regime made clear its intention to wipe out all opposition, I have supported intervention by the international community. Without it, Syria will disintegrate entirely over a period of years, and the fallout will come back to bite us big time.

Saladin's Castle in the mountains above Lattakia [DD]

Crusader Castle of Saone, later Saladin’s Castle in the mountains above Lattakia [DD]

Saladin's Tomb in Old Damascus. Saladin was a Kurd. [DD]

Saladin’s Tomb in Old Damascus. Saladin was a Kurd. [DD]

Looking at it objectively now 10 years on, the American-led invasion did inadvertently help one sector of the Iraqi people – the Kurds. Autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan could almost be seen as a model for the Middle East. Its schools since 2012 are teaching all world religions equally, and Islam is just one of them, no favouritism. It is booming economically thanks to its oil and its trade with Turkey. But all that was an unintended consequence.

Syria’s Kurds could also benefit from the current crisis in Syria, but that is happening anyway, and will continue irrespective of American strikes. More and more of them are pouring out of Syria’s northeast corner into Iraqi Kurdistan, where they are being warmly welcomed. Kurdistan may well turn out to a lasting beneficiary of the chaos inside Syria, along with the Syriac Christian community in eastern Turkey:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23614968.

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