Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect

by Reese Erlich

  Balo's animosity stemmed from government policy of bringing Syrian Arabs into the Kurdish region in an effort to dilute Kurdish influence. The government then incited those Arabs to attack Kurds. As she became older, Balo no longer blamed ordinary Arabs. “I know it's the government's fault,” she said. “They brought Arabs from other cities and gave them land owned by Kurds.” Kurds have long faced government discrimination in Syria. “After Syria had its independence from France,” said Balo, “the Arab governments haven't given Kurds any rights. They worried about the Kurds separating. They didn't give them half the rights of Arabs.”

  At the time of the 2011 uprising, most Kurds opposed the Assad dictatorship but were also highly suspicious of the Arab rebels. Tens of thousands of Kurds fled Syria because of the fighting. By the middle of 2014, the Kurdish region had become a patchwork of areas controlled by the government, by extreme Islamists, and by Kurdish militias. To understand Kurdish attitudes toward the 2011 uprising, we must first understand some modern Kurdish history.

  I met a Kurdish revolutionary for the first time at a Berkeley forum in the late 1970s. He wore traditional pantaloons, a loosely fitting jacket, a sash wrapped around his waist, and a twisted headscarf. He looked like a dashing rebel out of the previous century. Only later did I learn that Kurds proudly wear their traditional dress on special occasions, a practice that hasn't changed much over the years. I guess speaking to a bunch of Berkeley lefties constituted a “special occasion.” At the time I knew nothing about Kurds and sat in fascination as he described his people's long history.

  Kurds trace their roots back nearly a thousand years as a nomadic people in the Middle East. Their language and customs are distinct from Arabs, although over time most adopted Islam. Today, by conservative estimate, 30 million Kurds live in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and former Soviet republics. They constitute one of the world's largest nationalities without a homeland.

  The famous twelfth-century leader Saladin, who drove the Crusaders out of the Middle East, was a Kurd from Tikrit in Iraq. Indeed, the famous Crusader fortress in Syria known today as Krak des Chevaliers, conquered by Saladin, was originally called Hisn al-Akrad (Castle of the Kurds). After the Crusaders’ defeat, Kurdish military units settled in Damascus, creating what became known as the Kurdish Quarter of the city. Some Kurds maintained a strong warrior tradition, serving as loyal troops during Ottoman and French colonial rule. Others became anti-imperialist peshmerga fighters. Peshmerga is the general term for a fighting unit, which literally means “those who face death.”

  Historically, most Syrian Kurds lived in the northern provinces while some migrated to Damascus and Aleppo. During World War I, British officials promised independence to Kurds living under Ottoman rule. But as with similar promises made to Arabs and Jews, the British had no intention of giving up any of their colonial territory to fulfill the promise. In 1920 the Allies and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Sevres, which included maps of an autonomous Kurdish region of Turkey and called for a referendum on Kurdish independence within one year.2 The treaty was rejected by Kemal Ataturk and the newly empowered Turkish nationalists, however, and was never implemented (see chapter 3). In 1923 the Treaty of Lausanne replaced the Treaty of Sevres, and it ignored the Kurdish issue entirely. As a result, the Ottoman-era Kurdish region was divided up between Turkey, Britain, and France. Nearly a century later, the unfulfilled promises of the Treaty of Sevres remain a Kurdish rallying cry for those who feel the old story is being played out again by regional and international powers.

  Leftist and nationalist Kurds joined the anti-French-colonial movement in Syria during the 1930s. They founded a party called Xoybun, which, loosely translated from Kurdish, means “independence.” In late 1931 and early 1932, Xoybun elected three parliamentary deputies in Syria's first election under a French-imposed constitution. The party eventually dissolved, and many members joined the Syrian Communist Party.

  Political battles surged back and forth across the always-porous borders in the Kurdish regions. And, as the Berkeley Kurdish revolutionary reminded us, only one independent Kurdistan has ever existed. It was led by leftist revolutionaries at the end of World War II.

  Reza Shah, Iran's dictator from 1925 to 1941, brutally suppressed the Kurds, who lived mostly in the far northwest of Iran. He had been brought to power by the British, but in 1941, he angered the allies by declaring Iran neutral during World War II. The allies labeled him pro-Nazi. In 1941 British troops entered Iran and occupied southern Iran while Soviet troops did the same in the north. Most Kurds welcomed the Soviet troops as liberators from the oppressive Shah.3

  Local Kurds administered a quasi-independent government after the last of the Shah's officials left the Kurdish area in 1943. Kurds ruled the small city of Mahabad and surrounding areas. A judge named Qazi Muhammad allied with local merchants and tribal chiefs to set up a self-defense militia. With help from the Soviet soldiers, the area prospered economically—albeit under wartime conditions. In 1945, Kurds in the region formed the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), which was eventually headed by Qazi Muhammad. The KDP's main military leader was Mustafa Barzani, father of today's Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) president Masoud Barzani. The Soviet Union backed an independent Kurdistan as a check against British and American domination of Iran.

  So with Soviet encouragement in 1945, Kurds declared the independent Kurdish People's Government, which became known as the Mahabad Republic. The new republic immediately set about making significant reforms without the repression associated with the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The new government opened a girls’ high school and passed laws for compulsory education and free education for the poor. It introduced Kurdish-language instruction for the first time.4

  But by the end of 1946, Soviet policy shifted as the Soviet Union sought an accommodation with the government in Tehran. It withdrew troops from the Mahabad Republic, and without Soviet support, economic conditions worsened. The KDP also lost support as some merchants and tribal chiefs switched sides to support the central government. On December 15, 1946, Iran's troops occupied Mahabad and quashed the independent republic. Under the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah, son of the previous Shah, Iran banned instruction in Kurdish and closed the Kurdish media. Qazi Muhammad was convicted of treason and hanged. Mustafa Barzani fled to northern Iraq and eventually to the Soviet Union to live in exile until his return to the region in the 1950s. Today both Barzani and Qazi Muhammad are regarded as heroes in the struggle for Kurdish rights.

  Modern-day Kurdish political parties trace their history, in part, to the KDP of 1945. Syrian Kurds established the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS) in 1957. The KDPS called for peaceful struggle to achieve Kurdish rights within the Syrian state, but it was banned nonetheless, and its members were forced to work underground.5

  The Baathists came to power in a 1963 military coup and maintained the same antagonistic view of the Kurds. The new regime proceeded with plans to create an Arab cordon (Hizam Arabi) some three hundred kilometers long and fifteen kilometers wide along the Turkish and Iraqi borders. The Baathists didn't trust the Kurdish population and started to settle Bedouin tribes there beginning in 1973.

  One Kurd told investigators for Human Rights Watch, “The government built them [Arabs] homes for free, gave them weapons, seeds, and fertilizer, and created agricultural banks that provided loans. From 1973 to 1975, forty-one villages were created in this strip…. The idea was to separate Turkish and Syrian Kurds, and to force Kurds in the area to move away to the cities.”6 Hafez al-Assad ended the resettlement program in 1975 but never returned Kurdish land or provided reimbursement for confiscated property. Over the next decades, he pursued an opportunistic policy toward the Kurds, continuing domestic suppression while supporting Kurds from other countries when it suited his foreign policy.

  Over a period of thirty years Assad became a major player in the Arab fight against Israel, exerted control over Lebanon, and allied with Iran against Iraq. Even wit
hout a major army or economic clout, Assad created strategic alliances to promote Syrian power. He turned a lightweight country into a major contender for regional influence. Assad was a clever fighter, punching well above his weight. And his policy toward the Kurds was just one more jab.

  The Syrian Baath Party was engaged in a vicious political fight with Iraqi Baathists, who had come to power in a 1968 coup. The main dispute centered on who would lead the Baathist movement: Iraq or Syria. Saddam Hussein helped engineer the Iraqi coup, and he became Iraq's president in 1979. So Assad decided to make an alliance of convenience with leftist and nationalist Kurdish groups to defeat the Iraqi Baathists.

  By 1979, Assad formalized relations with the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties: the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal Talabani (later president of Iraq), and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), headed by Masoud Barzani (later president of Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government). The parties considered themselves on the left, with the KDP ideologically lining up with Moscow and the PUK aligning with Maoist China. They both opposed Saddam Hussein, and Assad allowed them to set up offices in Qamishli near the Iraqi border. Assad also allowed the Turkish-based Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan or PKK) to operate in Syria. The PKK has a long and controversial history.

  Abdullah Ocalan and a group of student radicals founded the PKK on November 27, 1978, in the Kurdish region of eastern Turkey. Ocalan, a former political-science student, was a fiery leader who inspired complete obedience in his followers. Today PKK supporters hold high a poster showing a handsome Ocalan with slicked-back gray hair and a huge brush mustache. But few know what he really looks like since he's been held in a Turkish prison since 1999. The PKK began as a nationalist and revolutionary socialist group that believed in armed struggle. It was part of a 1970s surge of Middle Eastern nationalist groups adopting aspects of Marxism only to change their ideologies in later years.

  In that era, the US-backed military regime in Turkey engaged in harsh repression against Kurds, refused to recognize them as a nationality, prohibited education in the Kurdish language, and banned Kurdish-language media. The Turkish military imposed martial law in Kurdish areas, which wasn't lifted until 2002. As of 2010 the army's counterinsurgency campaign killed some 35,000 civilians, imprisoned 119,000 Kurds, and disappeared another 17,000.7 The PKK established a reputation for fighting military repression and gained some popular support.

  The PKK originally called for the formation of an independent, socialist state to include the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. It recruited large numbers of women and promoted some to leadership positions. In my almost-thirty years of reporting from the region, I have met few women leaders in any government or opposition party. So the active participation of women is no small accomplishment. I met some of the PKK women while reporting a story for Mother Jones in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.8

  The journey began at the seedy Ashti Hotel in Sulaymaniyah. The Ashti looked like something out of a Graham Greene novel. Its smoke-filled lobby served as a meeting place for obscure diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and spies. Men sat around, staring at glasses of strong tea. Every now and again they'd pour a bit of tea into their saucers, let it cool, and slurp it down. From the Ashti we made arrangements to visit a PKK guerrilla camp in the nearby Qandil mountains. We rode in a four-wheel-drive vehicle as we climbed the mountainside. Green and brown scrub brush covered the land as a chilly wind caused me to button my coat. After one particular death-defying curve in the road, a large, fertile valley opened up. Herds of goats and an occasional gaggle of ducks crossed the road. I knew we had entered PKK-controlled area when I saw two young women wearing PKK uniforms of green pants and shirts with the traditional twisted Kurdish headscarf.

  While waiting for an interview, I chatted with the PKK women as we huddled around a wood stove. They were confident and talkative, saying that almost 50 percent of PKK members are female.9 Other sources report the number may be closer to 40 percent, but in either case, the numbers are impressive. The PKK claims there are no sexual relations among unmarried guerrillas, a fiction maintained to comfort the parents of girls going off to fight in the mountains.

  The women boasted of attacking the Turkish military and police. But they said they didn't intentionally target civilians. The PKK does kill civilians working with the government, however, as well as Kurds they consider collaborators. Turkey, Britain, and the United States label the PKK as a terrorist organization. Other Kurdish parties have many criticisms of the PKK, but they make a distinction between terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and nationalist groups engaged in armed struggle such as the PKK. In Syria the PKK-aligned party protected the local population from extremist rebels. “The majority [of Kurds] believe that despite the PKK's practices, they're a better option than Jihadists and al-Qaeda,” said Hozan Ibrahim, a leader of the Local Coordinating Committees now living in exile.

  During the 1990s, Syria allowed PKK militants to live in Damascus and receive military training in the mountains surrounding the Beka Valley of Lebanon, then controlled by Syria. The Syrian-PKK cooperation was a marriage of convenience. Assad wanted to pressure Turkey to negotiate the return of the Hatay region (see chapter 3). He also opposed Turkey's close alliance with Israel and the United States. The PKK used Syria to launch military attacks on Turkey.

  By 1998, the Turkish government had become fed up with the cross-border raids and Syrian intransigence. The Turkish military massed troops along the border and threatened to attack Syria. One newspaper headline read, “We will soon say shalom to the Israelis in the Golan Heights,” meaning Turkish troops would advance all the way to Syria's border with Israel.10 So Hafez al-Assad, ever the strategic boxer, made one of his famous pivots. In October 1998 Syria signed the Adana Agreement with Turkey, declaring the PKK a terrorist organization and prohibiting its activities inside Syria.

  Ocalan was forced to flee Damascus, and in 1999 he was captured in Kenya with help from the CIA. Taken to Turkey, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison. He's been serving time in isolation at the Imrali island prison ever since. Ocalan's arrest capped a series of major PKK defeats in the 1990s. In response, the PKK sought accommodation with the Turkish government and moved to the Right politically, abandoning Marxism and calling for Kurdish autonomy, not independence.11

  In the early 2000s the PKK formed separate political parties for each of the countries where it operated. The Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat (PYD), or Democratic Union Party, was formed in 2003 as the Syrian offshoot, led by Saleh Muslim, a chemical engineer. The PYD argued that it is an independent party with only ideological ties to the PKK; critics said the two parties are controlled by the same PKK leadership.

  The PYD has developed a reputation for sectarianism, putting its own interests ahead of the broader Kurdish movement. The Kurdish National Council, the umbrella Kurdish opposition group, “has accused the PYD of attacking Kurdish demonstrators [and] kidnapping members of other Kurdish opposition parties,” according to a report by the Carnegie Middle East Center.12 The PYD has also been accused of assassinating leaders of other Kurdish parties.13

  The PYD also shared the PKK's cult worship of Ocalan. Supporters kept his picture in their homes, chanted his name at demonstrations, and wore his image on T-shirts. A PYD leader calling himself “Can Med” told me, “The leader Abdullah Ocalan gave us a solution for all the issues. He defined the way to solve our issues.”14 However, the PYD and its armed militias presented a disciplined, secular force in a region beset with religious extremism and chaos. The party gained popular support in northern Syria as the best among the bad alternatives.

  These days, the Turkish and Syrian governments condemn the PKK and PYD as terrorists and blame them for lack of progress in achieving Kurdish rights. But long before the PKK was founded, the Syrian government oppressed its Kurdish population.

  In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Turkish government cracked down on Kurdish acti
vists. The repression forced some Kurds from Turkey to flee to Syria. The military rulers of Syria, even before the Assad family came to power, didn't trust the Kurds. In 1962 the government conducted a special census in the predominantly Kurdish province of Jazira. The government denied citizenship to an estimated 120,000 Kurds, claiming they were born in Turkey or Iraq.15 That constituted some 20 percent of Kurds living in Syria at the time. Successive generations born in Syria didn't receive citizenship either because their parents weren't listed as citizens.

  Noncitizen Kurds remained in limbo. They couldn't obtain passports, be hired for government jobs, officially open businesses, or receive government-subsidized higher education and healthcare. The government confiscated the land of unregistered Kurds and gave it to Arabs. The problem festered for almost fifty years. Some 80 percent of Kurds lived below the Syrian poverty line as of 2007.16

  I interviewed Bashar al-Assad before the uprising and asked why many Kurds still had no citizenship rights. He claimed it was simply a technical problem of sorting out who was Syrian and who was Turkish. I pressed him by pointing out that since many Kurds criticized his rule, wasn't the dispute political? “We don't have political problems,” he claimed. “Who is Syrian is Syrian.”17

  In reality Assad didn't want to resolve the citizenship issue without exacting concessions from Kurdish leaders who periodically criticized his government. By 2011 the number of Syrian Kurds without citizenship grew to an estimated 300,000. Fearing Kurdish support for the uprising, Assad shifted course on April 7, 2011. He suddenly granted citizenship to about 250,000 Kurds. The exact numbers remain in dispute.18 The reform was popular among Kurds, and Assad bought some much-needed time. But Kurds disliked his government, in no small part because of how he handled the 2004 Kurdish rebellion.