US designs on Syria's Kurds

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 1962Nothing 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.