Page 2 of 2 Jitters over Syria's
Kurdish clashes By Sami Moubayed
Euphrates River, at a cost of 5 billion Syrian pounds (US$100 million), which
will include various kinds of chemical, food, textile and engineering
industries. This among other investment projects aims at developing regions
inhabited by Kurds.
The number of Kurds unregistered in Syria varies from one source to another.
Kurdish sources put it at 25,000, with another 225,000 registered as
"foreigners" with red identification documents, no passports, granted by the
Ministry of Interior. There are restrictions on their travel and property
rights. The Western and Kurdish media magnify the restrictions, saying they
prevent parents from giving Kurdish names to their children and that they are
discriminated against at schools, in hospitals and in government agencies.
Human Rights Watch says they are
prevented from starting their own businesses. That is incorrect. They are of
course prevented from using the Kurdish flag in Syria. The Syrian government,
however, puts the number of problematic Kurds at 67,465.
There are some Kurds with problems in Syria, but certainly not all of them.
This is a picture the Syrians have failed to convey to the outside world. Under
the French Mandate (1920-1946), Syria did welcome many Kurds fleeing from
Turkey. The French did not turn anybody down and granted everybody seeking
citizenship a Syrian passport. But even the French frowned when the Kurds set
up a nationalist movement in the 1920s, called Khoybun, which lobbied for
cultural and political autonomy.
It called for the establishment of Kurdish-language schools, recognition of the
Kurdish language and appointment of Kurdish officials in Kurdish areas. So
angry were the French that they banished one of the movement's founders, the
poet Othman Sabri, to the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. In addition
to ex-president Za'im and former prime ministers Muhsen Barazi, the long-time
Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Hassoun (who called on people to fight the
Americans in Iraq), was Kurdish.
The former head of the Shura Council in Syria, Abdul Rahman Pasha al-Yusuf, was
Kurdish, and so was his son Said Bey, who became governor of Damascus in 1949.
So was the long-serving secretary general of the Communist Party, Khalid
Bakdash. He was the first communist to win a parliamentary seat in the Arab
world and it was the Kurds of Damascus - not the communists - who brought him
victory in 1955. There was the veteran Ali Buzzo, a fine Syrian nationalist who
combated the French and became several-times minister of interior, agriculture
and justice in the pre-Ba'ath years.
The Muslim Sultan Saladin - highly celebrated in Syrian history books and mass
media - was Kurdish. The Kurds are respected in the commercial districts of
Syria, with some being affluent businessmen, in the arts and are free to use
their own language with one another.
Even these Kurds who were at the helm of power in the 1950s did not tolerate or
authorize the founding of the first Kurdish nationalist party in 1957. This was
the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, loyal to the Kurdish leader Mullah Mustapha
al-Barazani. They refused to license it and in 1960, under the Arab nationalist
union of Nasser, the government persecuted its members for preaching Kurdish
nationalism.
By 1965, another party had emerged called the Kurdish Democratic Progressive
Party - supported by Talabani, who himself went on to found the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan in 1975 - also, ironically in Syria. Talabani himself remained
very close to the Syrians and worked with a Syrian passport until the downfall
of Saddam in 2003. He returned it "with gratitude" to Syrian authorities
shortly before becoming president of Iraq.
Gifts for Kissinger
The Syrians claim the Kurdish problem in Syria is being fanned by the United
States, the occupation of Iraq and the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan. They
remember only too clearly how former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger
fueled Kurdish aspirations in Iraq in 1974 to create trouble within Iraq to
prevent the Iraqi government from supporting Syria in the aftermath of the
October war of 1973 and the fallout between the Syrians and Egyptian president
Anwar al-Sadat.
Kissinger 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. Seale adds that Rafael Eitan, who was Israeli chief of staff from
1978-82, also once visited Kurdistan Iraq. This scandal was revealed, among
others in the Watergate investigations in the US in 1976, in what came to be
known as the Pike Report. The testimony said that Kissinger had armed and
financed the Kurds to prevent the Ba'ath regime in Iraq from "adventurism",
where Kissinger adds, "Our clients [the Kurds] who were encouraged to fight,
were not told of this policy."
Another story that comes to mind, worth mentioning with regard to Syria's
history with Kurdish separatism, is when the French bombed Damascus in May 1945
with the aim of arresting president Shukri al-Quwatli and speaker of Parliament
Saadallah Jabiri. They spread a rumor in the Kurdish neighborhood that the
president had been killed and the government had fled to Jordan, prompting them
to raise the Kurdish flag and begin plans for Kurdish autonomy.
They did not abandon their plan until visited - and pacified - by prime
minister Jamil Mardam Bey. The incident, downplayed by most Kurds, is an
example how some - certainly not all - can be manipulated by outside forces.
Fouad al-Halabi, the head of Tribal Affairs in 1945, remarked, "If they [the
Kurds] show signs of asserting too much independence of action or of
disregarding the wishes of the Syrian government in any important matter, they
could be conveniently disposed of by having them fall into the hands of
Turkey."
This is a feud that will carry on long - longer than most people expect.
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