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US designs on Syria's
Kurds
By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - One of the overriding fears in
the Middle East is how Kurds might be manipulated
by outside forces to create havoc in the region,
as has happened before.
On May 29, 1945,
while the French were trying to topple the Syrian
government, they bombed Damascus and ignited
violence in the Hay al-Akrad neighborhood of the
Syrian capital, where the city's Kurds resided.
The French told the Kurds that acting
prime minister Jamil Mardam Bey had fled to
Jordan, spreading a rumor that president Shukri
al-Quwatli had been killed, leaving Syria in
chaos. It was now up to the Kurds to take matters
into their own hands, the French said. The Kurds
quickly took to the streets, occupying police
stations, destroying government offices, and
raising the Kurdish flag to replace the Syrian
one. They were calmed, and brought back to order
by Mardam Bey.
The event, which took place
exactly 60 years ago, explains how easily some
Kurds can be incited to cause trouble. The story,
mentioned in the memoirs of Mardam Bey, was
confirmed by an observer of the events of 1945,
but challenged by a Kurdish gentleman who said,
"Absolutely untrue. An officer in the Syrian army,
who was a Kurd, called on us to carry our weapons,
and to defend Shukri al-Quwatli."
This
shows the degree of division in Syria over the
Kurdish issue, with some insisting to denigrate
the Kurds as separatists who have no loyalty to
Syria, and others insisting that they are a part
of the Syrian identity, just like any Syrian Arab,
who shaped Syria's history and culture over the
centuries, and are Syrian nationalists at heart.
The truth, another camp argues, is somewhere in
between.
The de-Syriafication of
1962
Nothing shows this division better
than the violence that rocked Syria in March 2004,
conducted, once again, by some - but not all -
Kurds, and generally believed in Syria to be the
dirty work of the US. The event led to the killing
of some Kurds and to the arrest of hundreds.
In March this year, President Bashar Assad
released 312 Kurds, all arrested during the
disturbances of 2004, promising to grant Syrian
citizenship to 300,000 Kurds who were stripped of
it in 1962.
Currently, 25,000 Kurds are
unregistered in Syria, and another 225,000 are
registered as "foreigners" with no Syrian
passports but red IDs, granted by the Ministry of
Interior. They have restrictions on travel,
marriage and owning property. Exaggeration in the
Western media says that they are discriminated
against at schools, in hospitals and in government
employment and wages. In July 1996, the Syrian
government told Human Rights Watch that the number
of Kurds with such status was only 67,465.
Assad today wants to be nice to the Syrian
Kurds, fearing that inspired by the autonomy and
grand concessions, they are gaining in Iraq, they
will make similar demands for autonomy in Syria.
The truth is that the Kurds of Syria are very
different from those of Iraq. They want
citizenship, not autonomy.
Ahmad Barakat,
of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Progressive
Party, confirmed this to the Christian Science
Monitor, saying, "Our problem is very different
from that of the Kurds in Iraq. Their aim in Iraq
is to get a state of their own. But in Syria, we
just want our culture and freedom as Syrian
nationals."
The US media, however, and
some US-backed Kurdish activists, in Syria and
abroad, insist on marketing a story of Kurdish
plight, unrest and separatism in Syria, claiming
that the Syrian Kurds are oppressed and deserve
autonomy, just like their Iraqi counterparts. Many
see this as part of a grand US smear campaign
against Damascus.
The London-based
al-Hayat published an article on April 3 saying
that Syria "was putting the last touches on a law
that will give citizenship to roughly 300,000
Kurds". Most of them had come to Syria in the
1920s, fleeing persecution in neighboring Turkey.
Everybody who came to Syria during the French
Mandate, Kurdish, Armenian, etc, were given Syrian
nationality as a part of France's plan to create
diversity in Syria. Nobody was turned away between
1920 and 1946.
These Kurds had their
citizenship revoked in August 1962 during a highly
controversial census conducted under president
Nazim al-Qudsi, a civilian pre-Ba'ath leader of
Syria. The Qudsi regime came to power when Syria
dissolved its merger with Egypt in September 1961,
and was coming under daily fire by president Gamal
Abd Nasser, who accused the new leaders of
Damascus of being opponents of Arab nationalism.
To prove their Arab zeal, Syria's new
leaders passed decree number 93, stripping about
120,000 Syrian Kurds of their Syrian citizenship.
The argument of the authorities in 1962 was that
the census was aimed at identifying "alien
infiltrators" in Syria; those who had illegally
crossed the border from Turkey. Kurds had to prove
that they had lived in Syria at least since 1945,
or lose any claim to Syrian citizenship. The
census was rigged, and led to the fiasco of
Kurdish "unrest" in Syria, which exploded in 2004.
The Kurdification of trouble in
2004
The chronology of the disturbances
that took place in 2004 is difficult to believe.
Presumably, Kurds clashed with Syrian Arabs in the
town of Qamishli, 600 kilometers northeast of
Damascus, on March 12. Reportedly, the Syrians
provoked them by chanting anti-Kurdish slogans and
raising photos of Saddam Hussein, to remind the
Kurds that it was the ex-Iraqi dictator who had
gassed them to death in Halabja in 1988.
This provocation was very had
to believe since no Syrian with the right mind
would dare ignite such tension, and praise Saddam
so publicly in a country falsely accused by the US
of having supported him. The truth is that there
was no provocation in the first place, and in
fact the soccer match that the media talked about as
having fueled the fight never happened. The Kurds
came to the stadium, attacked the Syrians, then
accused them of foul play.
Maybe had
the match occurred, then a clash between soccer fans
would have led to violence, giving a more
reasonable scenario. Reportedly, the Kurds began
chanting praise of Jalal Talabani, who one year
later (on April 6) became president of Iraq,
Masoud al-Barazani, and George W Bush.
As
the Syrians fought back in self-defense, police
broke up the mob, killing 14 people in the
stampede. Violence spread like a forest fire
throughout Syria, with Kurds attacking Aleppo
University, small towns in northern Syria, and the
Dummar district in Damascus. They burned
automobiles, smashed billboards, attacked public
property, and in one case, tried to set a hospital
ablaze.
In Ayn al-Arab, a town
500km from Damascus, they destroyed police
headquarters, ransacked the Ba'ath Party office,
and demolished garbage trucks. As police
retaliated, more deaths occurred, and according to
then-Syrian interior minister Ali Hammud, a total
of 25 people were killed (six of them in Aleppo).
More shocking than the violence were the protests
that took place in Belgium, where Kurds demanded
an end to the "Qamishli massacre", offering to
donate blood to the wounded and claiming that
Syria was letting them die of their injuries.
Yes, people died in Qamishli, and yes some
innocents might have been killed, but there was no
"massacre" in Syria in 2004. The police did their
job in keeping order. The Kurds, who make up 8.5%
of Syria's 17 million, are not an oppressed group
in Syria. The Syrian Kurds, who currently number
nearly 1.5 million, are a well-respected minority.
They have one problem: citizenship. Apart from
these "unregistered" Kurds, whose plight will be
shortly resolved, the Syrian Kurds are first-class
citizens.
It would be madness to mirror
their story to the plight of the Kurds of Iraq.
Salaadin, the most celebrated warrior in Arab and
Muslim culture, who is highly glorified in Syrian
history, television and schools, was a Kurd. In
1920, Abd al-Rahman Yusuf, a Damascene Kurd, was
senior adviser to the Syrian government, while his
son Sa'id was governor of Damascus in 1949.
Also in 1949,
Syria's first military president, Husni al-Za'im, was a Kurd, as
was Adib al-Shishakli, a Kurd from Hama who
ruled in 1951-54. Two prime ministers, Husni
and Muhsen al-Barazi (in 1941 and 1949), were
Kurds. Khalid Bakdash, the veteran leader of
the Syrian Communist Party, was also a Kurd, and he
became a member of parliament in 1954 because of his Kurdish
roots. It was the Kurds of Damascus, rather than
the views of Karl Marx, that won him a seat in
parliament.
Syria's Grand Mufti Ahmad
Kaftaro, the highest Muslim authority in Syria,
who held office from 1966 until his death in 2004,
was a Damascene Kurd. Ali Buzzo, a prime Kurdish
leader of the 1950s, was a many-times minister of
interior, agriculture and justice. The list of
prominent Kurds in Syrian government and society
could go on and on, but these are just a few names
to prove the Syrian argument.
The Kurds
were not only active in the political life of
Syria, but had their own political environment. In
1957, one of the earliest Kurdish parties was
founded in Syria, called the Democratic Party of
Kurdistan, loyal to Iraq's Kurdish leader, Mullah
Mustapha al-Barazani. It was a replica of the
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq, echoing
its same program and objectives. It called for
recognition of the Kurds as an ethnic group in
Syria, and more government attention to their
districts, which were economically underdeveloped.
Its activities were greatly suppressed by
the pan-Arab regime of Nasser, who became ruler of
Syria in 1958, and its members were persecuted. In
1965, two years after the Ba'ath Party came to
power in Syria, the Kurdish Democratic Progressive
Party was founded, supported by Talabani, head of
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which was
founded in Damascus in 1975. The Progressive Party
is currently headed by Abd al-Hamid Darwish, who
became a member of the Syrian Parliament in 1992.
Other prominent parties are the Kurdish
People's Union Party and the Kurdistan Workers
Party, headed by Abdullah Ocelan. Everybody in
Syria remembers only too clearly that it was
because of Ocelan's residence in Damascus that
Syria nearly went to war against Turkey in 1998.
He had been given asylum in Syria, along with
members of his party fleeing the Turkish dragnet,
by president Hafez Assad. When he left Damascus,
Ocelan was arrested by Turkish authorities, and
Kurds went into frenzy in Turkey and Europe,
protesting violently and setting themselves ablaze
to pressure Turkey not to have him executed.
Back then, the Syrian Kurds did not
protest or create any disturbances, so why should
they rise in fury in 2004? Syria not only
supported Ocelan, but Talabani as well, who
founded his PUK in Syria, and worked in the
underground against Saddam using a Syrian passport
that he only recently returned to Syrian Vice
President Abd al-Halim Khaddam, "with gratitude".
Both Talabani and Barzani, two of the strongest
men in Iraq today, enjoyed excellent relations
with Damascus. Damascus had a common enemy with
them in Saddam, and used them to create havoc for
the Saddam regime throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
The point is that the Kurds had no real
reason to riot in Syria in 2004. They are well
represented in government, in the commercial
community, and in the arts. They have their
schools, are free to use their language among one
another, and have their own political parties,
which although not licensed, number 14.
Yet the vibrations in Iraq have had their
effect on Syrian Kurds, and created shock waves in
Damascus. The fact that the Kurds succeeded in
preserving their autonomy in Iraq, and making
their language official next to Arabic,
undoubtedly influenced the Syrian Kurds to demand
similar privileges.
Today, the Kurds have
75 seats in the Iraqi National Assembly, preceded
only by the Shi'ite List of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim.
They have secured the presidency for themselves,
with Talabani becoming the first Kurdish president
of Iraq. In addition, they are demanding that 25%
of oil revenue be allocated for them, in addition
to annexing Kirkuk, an oilfield, to their
territories. More alarming is their demand to keep
the peshmerga, their famed militia, armed,
to defend Kurdistan Iraq.
This makes the
disarming of any other militia in Iraq virtually
impossible, since other groups would feel
threatened by an armed Kurdish militia, which
would be supported by Talabani. The US, wanting to
add further pressure on Syria, gave the Kurds the
needed nudge to riot and demand similar status in
2004. Assad tried to appease them by making a
visit to the Hasake region in Syria, where they
are densely populated, promising them reforms and
pledging to upgrade their living conditions.
Assad was the first Syrian president
to visit the Kurdish districts since president
Husni al-Za'im (a Kurd) did in 1949. The state
has promised to invest in eastern Syria, where
the Kurds are located, and the reform plan is
expected to be announced during Turkish President
Ahmad Cesar's visit to Syria next Wednesday.
The
Syrian regime, pan-Arab by Ba'athist rhetoric,
cannot forget that the Kurds of Iraq allied
themselves with the US from 1974 onward to topple
the Ba'athist regime of Saddam. Back in 1974,
Henry Kissinger encouraged the Kurds to riot, in
order to drain the energy of the Iraqi army and
divert Baghdad's attention from supporting Syria's
"steadfastness" front against Israel.
Kissinger fanned flames of conflict in
Iraq, and was very generous with the Kurds,
prompting Mustapha al-Barazni to send him
expensive rugs as a token of appreciation, and a
gold necklace for his bride on the occasion of
Kissinger's marriage in March 1974.
According to Patrick Seale, the veteran
journalist specialized in the Middle East, some
Kurds had gone to Israel for training in sabotage
attacks as early as the 1950s (see Assad:
Struggle for the Middle East p 243).
Seale adds that Rafael Eitan, who was Israeli chief
of staff from 1978-82, also once visited Kurdistan
Iraq.
The scandal, among Kissinger's
numerous endeavors, was revealed during the
Watergate investigations in 1976, in what became
known as the Pike Report. The testimony said that
Kissinger had armed and financed the Kurds to
dissuade Iraq from "adventurism", such as coming
to the aid of Syria. The report adds, "Our
clients, who were encouraged to fight, were not
told of this policy."
The Kurds were never
intended to win, only to weaken Iraq, and
materialize US interests in the Middle East.
Wishful hawks in the US administration want a
similar scenario today, hoping Syria will
persecute its Kurds, as Saddam did in 1998, to use
it against Bashar Assad.
The Kurdish
problem is yet another dose of pressure on
Damascus. Assad failed them and refused to act in
a similar manner that would give the US more
reason to confront Syria. He enjoys unanimous
support from the people of Syria in this
particular measure. Everyone is calling on him to
be firm and diplomatic in dealing with the Kurdish
issue, to appease the disgruntled Kurds and end
their plight once and for all, in order to avoid
their deviance, since national unity is one thing
that Syrians (thousands of Syrian Kurds included)
have always boasted of having. History is yet to
prove if granting them citizenship will help bring
calm to Syria and put an end to the Kurdish issue
in the country.
Sami Moubayed is
a Syrian political analyst.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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