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SPECTER OF PARTITION : Kurds' ambitions add explosive element to Syria equation
16-Aug-2012
In any assessment of the potential winners and losers from the political chaos in Syria, the country's Kurdish minority could be among the winners. (Source: persianrealm.com)
While President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is fighting rebels in Damascus and Aleppo, he has given up control in parts of the Kurdish north east.
Kurdish leaders say they now control about 50% of the territory there, and warn they will fight the regime if it tries to retake power.
The fate of this area has implications beyond Syria. Iraq, Iran and Turkey have their own Kurdish populations. With a combined total of about 30 million, they are the world's largest stateless people.
CNN - The Syrian Kurds (CNN, Jan 29th, 2012):
Syrian kurdish opposition congress in iraqi Kurdistan . american cnn tv reports about the syrian kurds the biggest ethnic minority in syria making between 10% - 15% of syrian population. Syria's Kurds make headway amid crisis (AFP, Aug 1, 2012): Syria's Kurds, hostile to a regime that has oppressed them and suspicious of the opposition, are focusing on unity and managing their own region in the face of an uncertain future. In the northern Kurdish town of Jinderes, schools have begun lessons in Kurdish and locals are working toward creating their own administration.(NOTE : To Watch Double Click Here)
Kurds take control in Syria's northeast (Al Jazeera, Aug 12, 2012):
Control of large parts of Syria's north east is now in the hands of the Democratic Union Party - the main Kurdish party in the region. About 2 million Kurds live in the area, making up 10 per cent of the population. There are also significant Kurdish populations in Turkey and Iraq and more in Iran. Control of large parts of Syria's north east is now in the hands of the Democratic Union Party - the main Kurdish party in the region. About 2 million Kurds live in the area, making up 10 per cent of the population. There are also significant Kurdish populations in Turkey and Iraq and more in Iran. In Syria, the Kurds suffered discrimination and loss of culture under the ruling Baathist party since the 1960s. Many were granted citizenship only last year by President Assad, after the uprising started. As Assad's stretched security forces left parts of the north east, Kurdish committees have taken more control. Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid is the first international reporter to travel to the region since the uprising began last March.
Kurds divided by Syrian uprising (Al Jazeera,
May 5, 2012):
For centuries, the towns of Turkish Nusaybin and Syrian Qamishli were one, until politics put a border between them.
The governments of both countries have been hard on rebellious Kurdish minorities in the region. Now, with the uprising in Syria, many Kurds see the potential for major political gains.
While some want to play a greater role in the opposition, others believe Kurdish interests are best served by working with the Syrian government.
Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught reports from Nusaybin in southeast Turkey.
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SPECTER OF PARTITION
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Will Syria's Kurds benefit from the crisis? (bbc)
In any assessment of the potential winners and losers from the political chaos in Syria, the country's Kurdish minority could be among the winners.
The Kurds make up a little over 10% of the population. Long marginalised by the Alawite-dominated government, they are largely concentrated in north-eastern Syria, up towards the Turkish border.
Aaron David Miller, a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC, believes that the Kurds could be one of the main beneficiaries of the demise of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
"Syria is coming apart, and there's not much chance it will be reassembled with the kind of centralised authority we saw under the Assads."
For the Syrian Kurds, whom he describes as "part of the largest single ethnic grouping in the region that lacks a state", there is "an opportunity to create more autonomy and respect for Kurdish rights".
"They have the motivation, opportunity, and their Kurdish allies in Iraq and Turkey to encourage them. But what will hold them back is Turkey's determination to prevent a mini-statelet in Syria along with the Kurds own internal divisions," he says.
"It is unlikely," he believes, "that Syria's Kurds will be able to establish a separate entity in Syria. Nor will the United States, nor the international community accept that."
"At the same time, the several dimensions of the Kurdish problem - the Iraqi Kurds' growing determination to remain a separate entity; Turkish determination to avoid another mini-Kurdistan along the Syrian-Iraqi border; and the issue of the PKK, the armed Kurdish insurgents fighting the Turkish Army - will create a real flashpoint."
There in a nutshell is the scale of the problem.
The Kurds' future in Syria will have an important bearing upon what sort of country it is going to become.
Turkish worry
But the fate of the Syrian Kurds also has ramifications well beyond the country's borders. These processes are already under way.
Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the London School of Economics, told me that "the Syrian Kurds have already seized the moment and are laying the foundation for an autonomous region like their counterparts in Iraq".
"The exit of Assad's forces from the Kurdish areas has complicated the crisis and deepened Turkey's fears that its borders with Iraq and Syria will be volatile for years to come," he says.
"The Kurdish factor in the Syrian crisis will prove to be as significant as the Kurdish question in Iraq."
Prof Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish Studies programme at the Moshe Dayan Centre at Tel Aviv University, agrees.
"The Kurdish dimension is likely to become a potent factor in the near future because of the weakening of each of the states in which they live, because co-operation among the states for curbing the Kurds is non-existent, and because the Kurds have made headway in the United States and in the West, where they proved their loyalty and lack of religious extremism.
"In a word, the West might like to support them."
If a Kurdish spectre is stalking the region then it is probably Turkey that has most reason to be worried.
Even as Ankara has watched developments in Syria with unease, its own struggle with guerrilla fighters of the Kurdish PKK has flared up again - Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davotoglu insisting that the Syrian government is encouraging the PKK, to get its own back for Turkey's insistence that President Assad must go.
But it is even more complicated than this. The dominant Kurdish faction inside Syria is a close ally - some say even an off-shoot - of the PKK. It has little love for the mainstream Syrian opposition championed by the Turks.
Colonial borders
Whilst fighting the PKK on one front, Turkey is desperately trying to curb the political ambitions of Syria's Kurds by political means.
Indeed the ramifications of the Kurdish issue go even further. Prof Gerges insists that the Kurdish question "is here to stay".
"It transcends national borders and has the potential to redraw the Sykes-Pico agreement, which, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, established existing nation-state boundaries.
"Although it is too early to talk about the emergence of a greater Kurdistan, an imagined community of Kurds resonates deeply among Kurds across Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran."
It is in this sense the upheavals associated with the "Arab Spring" take on their full regional significance.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement (named not surprisingly after the two negotiators, Mr Georges Picot and Sir Mark Sykes) was a secret understanding made between France and Britain in 1916 for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire.
The agreement led to the division of Turkish-held areas of the Levant into various French and British administered territories which eventually gave rise to the modern-day states of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and ultimately Israel.
Fawaz Gerges asserts that the events in Syria and their potential repercussions risk over-turning this familiar world; a broader re-ordering of the region in which Kurdish aspirations are just one part of a very complex picture.
"Many of the problems in the contemporary Middle East are traced to that colonial-era Sykes-Picot map, which established the state system in the region. The Palestine and Kurdish questions are cases in point."
"National borders do not correspond to imagined communities. Although the state system has established deep roots in the Middle East in the last nine decades, the current uprisings have starkly exposed the fragility of the colonial system imposed on the region.
"My take is that the great powers, together with their local partners, will fight tooth and nail to prevent the redrawing of the borders of the state system in the Middle East.
"For once the map is re-drawn, where would the limits be? There would be a real danger of perpetual instability and conflict," he says.
Sowing chaos?
The Kurds of Syria, of course, are not in quite the same position as their brothers in Iraq and would find it much harder to break away.
Noted Syria expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma says that while Syria's Kurds are a compact minority they are not a majority even in the north eastern border area with Turkey - where they constitute some 30-40% of the population.
They have sometimes tense relations with local Sunni Arab tribes who see this as an integral part of Syrian territory, reinforced by the fact that this is an area rich in oil resources vital to the Syrian economy.
Prof Landis argues that what is going on in the Kurdish north-east offers a useful pointer to President Assad's "Plan B" should his control over key cities like Damascus and Aleppo crumble.
He says that the "embattled president withdrew government forces from the north-east because he couldn't control it and wanted to focus on the most important battles in Aleppo and Damascus".
"But in the back of the president's mind, there may be the thought that empowering the Kurds is a way of weakening the Sunni Arab majority and underlining the risks of fragmentation should his government fall. It's a strategy of playing upon divisions to sow chaos," he said.
This way, says Prof Landis, "the Syrian Army - which is rapidly becoming an Alawite militia, whilst still the strongest military force - may lose control over large swathes of the country, but will remain a vital factor in determining the political outcome in Syria".
It is a bleak prospect.
Prof Landis asserts that President Assad "may lose Syria, but could still remain a player, and his Alawite minority will not be destroyed".
"That's the future of Syria," he says, with little enthusiasm. "It's what Lebanon was and what Iraq became."
Related pictory :
LET THE CHILDREN IN: Princess Ashraf visits Kurdish refugee camp Iran-Iraq border (1974)
Persian Dispute before UN Securitiy Council 1946
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Read more: Kurds' ambitions add explosive element to Syria equation
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The fighting broke out late on Sunday evening and was continuing, he said.
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by Darius Kadivar on Sat Aug 18, 2012 04:53 AM PDTKurdish chance? (bbc)
By Orla Guerin
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simple
by MRX on Fri Aug 17, 2012 07:16 AM PDTHuman beings are tribal to begin with. Each person likes to be a member of his or her own tribe. (Sorry to dissapoint our lefty commy jahan vatany friends) that is why you feel more comfortable hanging around with an Iranian friend than some one from somalia or venezuela.
Having siad that we will end up having a same problem as in Syria or the rest of the Arab world dow the road and the only way out of it is resurection of Iranian culture and Iranian tribalism.
'I will take on regime' - Syrian farmer
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How ethnic and sectarian divisions are limiting the Arab spring
by Darius Kadivar on Fri Aug 17, 2012 01:40 AM PDTNew awakening? (bbc)
How ethnic and sectarian divisions are limiting the Arab spring
By Gerald Butt
Middle East analyst
Arabs in several countries around the Middle East are relishing the prospect of a new era built on political reform and democratic rule.
This craving for democracy was motivated by a desire to throw off the shackles of the past and finally achieve independence in every sense of the word.
This is hardly surprising. For decades, Arabs' self-esteem had been smothered by the totalitarian rule that followed colonial occupation. Colonialism itself had been preceded by centuries of Ottoman domination.If Erdogan wants to play it smart...
by FG on Thu Aug 16, 2012 10:28 AM PDTHe should recognize the independence of Kurdish areas in Turkey and encourage unification of all Kurdish areas in the region, and suggest a common market--thereby catering to Kurdish self-interests, both economic and military. It is a no-brainer for both sides and another major blow to Turkey's potential enemies who are all tied to the Islamic Republic.
In one big move, Erdogan would become popular overnight with Kurds--vastly more preferable than Khamenei, Assad or Al-Maliki. Only Erdogan is in a position to do this I think.
Kurds would keep their independence while reaping economic benefits and the prospect of military aid from Turkey in case the three Really Bad Guys make trouble.
To ease any concerns on the part of a post-Assad Syrian government, the common market offer could extend there as well. Meanwhile, what a blow to an already tottering Islamic Republic!
Inevitable
by MRX on Thu Aug 16, 2012 09:38 AM PDTCreation of country of Kurdistan is a matter of time and it's inevitable. The only question that needs be answered is how large it is going to be and where the boundry lines will be drawn.