Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (21 page)

Tehran still preferred a political solution that protected Iranian interests, according to Professor Izadi of the University of Tehran. It all hinged on the fate of Assad. Tehran believes that without Assad, “it's very difficult to hold Syria together…. Having free and fair elections is very difficult now. It's very difficult for the Assad government to be an [opposition] political party with all the fighting.”
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But Iranian leaders do see an exit strategy that might eventually ease Assad out of power. They know the Islamic extremist rebels won't participate in peace talks. But other rebels might be persuaded to join a power-sharing cabinet with Assad, “something like South Africa…where old wounds are healed,” said Izadi. That could lead to elections that Assad might lose. Iranian leaders realize Syria can't go back to its old ruling system. “If Assad loses an election, and the country doesn't fall apart, that's the ideal situation for Iran.” That assumes, of course, that Assad would allow free elections and then accept losing.

Iran argued that the civil war will continue so long as the United States and its allies provide funding and arms, so it was trying to convince the West that extremist Sunni rebels posed a bigger threat than Assad's regime. Foreign Minister Zarif told
Time
magazine that Iran is prepared to participate in international peace talks. He said Syria could have a huge international impact by pitting religious groups against one another and spreading terrorist attacks. “If the sectarian divide that some people are trying to fan in Syria becomes a major issue, it will not recognize any boundaries,” he said. “You will find implications of this on the streets of Europe and America.”
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Washington rejected the suggestion that Iran join peace talks unless it first agreed to Assad's ouster from power. Rouhani and other moderates might favor reducing support to Assad, but that decision will be made by Supreme Leader Khamenei. “Rouhani probably could not change Iran's approach to Syria even if he wanted to,” noted Mehdi Khalaji, a senior research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “There are some indications that Tehran's Syria policy is designed and implemented by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and therefore not fully under the president's control.”
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Washington has always been reluctant to allow Iranian participation in a Syria peace process. In 2014, neither Assad nor the rebels appeared willing to reach a political settlement.

Each still hoped for decisive military success. Tehran will likely continue to back Assad until some other leader comes along who is willing to have friendly relations with Iran. Similarly, Washington will back the rebels, hoping to install a pro-US regime in Damascus. Eventually, the United States, Russia, and Iran will have to directly or indirectly agree on a political settlement if peace is to arrive in that troubled land.

I met twenty-two-year-old Barkhodan Balo at a Syrian Kurdish refugee settlement in northern Iraq. Balo took me on a walking tour of the three-hundred-person Moqebleh Camp, which consisted of dirt roads and concrete-block houses with plastic roofs. When it rained, she told me, “you hear every drip. In the winter it's very, very cold. In the summer, it's very, very hot.”
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Balo taught herself to speak English by watching TV and movies. “I love English, and I love to speak.” I asked her the name of her favorite movie star. “Jackie Chan!” she shouted with glee. Ah, the joys of globalization. A Syrian Kurdish refugee learns English from a native Chinese speaker more famous for his fighting skills than his diction.

Kurds make up an estimated 10 to 15 percent of Syria's 22.5 million people. The Kurdish language, culture, and historic territory make them a group distinct from Arabs, but they have become part of multinational Syrian society. Assad's government considers the Kurdish-dominated northeast of the country strategically important because it borders Turkey and Iraq. The Kurdish region is fertile, water is abundant, and it contains virtually all of the country's limited oil supplies. Government leaders feared Syrian Kurds secretly favored independence because Kurds in other countries have made that demand. All Syrian Kurdish parties currently reject separatism; however, they do demand greater rights as a distinct nationality within Syria.

To get more background on the Kurdish struggle, Balo and I walk over to her family's tent. She and her family migrated here after a Kurdish rebellion in 2004 in the city of Qamishli. Thousands of Kurds fled Syrian government repression after engaging in antigovernment protests.

Balo introduced me to her father, a political activist who was arrested in 2004, released, and then jailed again two years later. “He was tortured and brutally beaten,” said Balo. “After he got out, he came home and took off his shirt and showed his wounds. He said, ‘I want you never to forget the Syrian government deeds.' I was thirteen years old. But like any Kurdish girl, I joined the Kurds in the demonstrations. In our country, when children are six or seven, children learn about our society. When I saw the wound on my father's back, I cried. I was so angry. If I caught any policeman or even any Arab, I would have killed him and drank his blood.”

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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 without 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.
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The PKK established a reputation for fighting military repression and gained some popular support.