Inside Syria: The Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect (24 page)

The PYD had emerged as the strongest Kurdish party in Syria, controlling a number of towns and border crossings into Turkey. After over forty years of covering insurgencies around the world, I've developed a rule of thumb. You can learn a lot about how a group will govern after the revolution by how they exercise power in areas they control
before
the revolution. Let's take a look at how the PYD stacks up.

I interviewed Christians who had fled Hasakah, a mainly Kurdish region in northern Syria. They were terrified of the al-Nusra Front militiamen who had set up roadblocks, robbing and raping Christians. By comparison, the PYD militia respected Christian rights, according to Saba, a Christian female refugee I interviewed in Lebanon. “They protect their areas but they don't interfere in ours,” she said. “They are very well organized. We've never had any problems with them.”
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But some Kurds living in the PYD-controlled town of Afrin told a different story. “Almost everyone in Afrin has been threatened by the PKK,”
resident Tourlin Bilal told
Global Post
. “They demand taxes from everyone. If you refuse they threaten, steal, or destroy your property…”
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In theory, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and Kurdish National Council (KNC) were jointly ruling the towns. Another resident named Oum Beshank said, “On paper, there is a coalition rule, but in reality the PKK [PYD] are the only ones with the weapons to force the people.”
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The PYD faces strong opposition from other, smaller armed groups, such as the Islamic Kurdish Front, the Peshmerga Falcons, and the Martyrs of Mecca, all located near Aleppo.
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Such groups fight alongside Arabs of the FSA and denounce the PKK. They want to remain part of Syria and oppose separatism, claiming that the PYD favors independence. Serious fighting broke out when two extremist groups, al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), kidnapped 250 Kurds in July 2013. Most of the hostages were Kurdish civilians taken when the groups seized control of two Kurdish villages. The groups clashed with the PYD, and dozens were killed on both sides.
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Some FSA militias and extremist groups issued a joint statement denouncing the PKK/PYD, indicating a new level of antagonism. They accused the PYD of dividing Arab and Kurd, thus helping the Assad government. The PYD, they wrote, created “a hostile relationship with hate and resentment that drains a lot of our time, effort, blood, and money.”
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The groups made no mention of Kurdish rights, instead characterizing the entire Syrian struggle as religious. “Our goal is to pleasure Allah and to ensure a safe life for our people in Syria and to maintain the unity of the Muslim Syrian people, and to maintain the progress of our blessed revolution until the fall of the criminal regime.”
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Even the FSA and conservative Islamists believe that religion will solve problems between Kurds and Arabs. They fear that the call for Kurdish rights is just a prelude to the dismemberment of Syria. To find out more about the mainstream Arab opposition view, I went to Istanbul to interview Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

I met with Omar Mushaweh, a member of the Directorate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Asked about Kurdish rights, he immediately criticized the
PKK for divisiveness. He made no distinction between the PKK and PYD. The brotherhood received strong financial, political, and military support from Turkey, so it wasn't surprising that he echoed the Turkish government position that the PYD was supporting Assad. “There are some extremist Kurds who are actually supporting the regime,” he told me. “At the beginning of the uprising, some of them created instability in southern Turkey.
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He criticized the PYD for raising the PYD and Kurdish flags in the towns it controls, saying they should fly the Syrian opposition banner. Mushaweh expressed a willingness to talk with the Barzani-backed KNC, which he saw as more moderate. “The KNC has their own vision about the Kurdish state, which doesn't necessarily represent the vision of all the Kurds in Syria,” he said. “We are negotiating with them to reach the best solution.”

Neither the brotherhood nor other Arab opposition groups are willing to recognize the Kurdish region's autonomy. Mushaweh argued that autonomy only promoted separatism. “Many of the Kurdish leadership don't express their desire to separate from Syria, but they sometimes list some demands that will lead eventually to separation,” he said.

For years, Kurds were among the strongest opponents of Assad. But Kurdish groups found themselves fighting both Assad's army and political Islamists who were unwilling to recognize Kurdish rights. Kurdish leaders, at latest count, had formed sixteen parties broken into two coalitions. Those reflect the wider conflict between the major trends in Kurdish politics: Barzani's forces in the KRG and the PKK in Turkey. They sometimes form tactical alliances, but their underlying political differences make future unity difficult.

Masoud Barzani sees himself as a leader of all Kurds. He has the financial and military resources of the KRG and can thus potentially train a powerful Syrian peshmerga. Significantly, he has the support of the United States and Turkey, who strongly oppose the PKK. The United States, which claimed to be a staunch defender of Kurdish rights when seeking to oust Saddam Hussein, did an about-face in Syria. Because it sees the PKK as the main enemy, the Obama administration came
out against autonomy. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon said, “We don't see for the future of Syria an autonomous Kurdish area or territory. We want to see a Syria that remains united.” He also said the Syrian opposition should be more inclusive of Kurdish concerns but didn't provide specifics.
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The Kurds weren't following US advice. They continued to oppose the Assad regime while asserting their national rights. Both Arabs and Kurds have a common interest in creating a parliamentary system in which the majority rules but minorities retain their rights. The Arab opposition must accept Kurdish demands for local political control while the Kurdish groups should seek unity among themselves and reach out to the civil-society opposition.

As the Syrian uprising continues, both the government and rebel forces are paying closer attention to Kurdish demands. The Kurds have become the wildcard in the Syrian uprising, and they have no intention of leaving the game.

I grew up a Zionist—not out of ideological conviction, but because I thought all Jews were Zionists. Living in west Los Angeles in the early 1960s, being Jewish meant telling Jewish jokes, attending temple three times a year, having a discriminating palate for chopped chicken liver, and donating dimes to plant trees in the Negev desert of Israel.

Being Jewish also meant unconditional support for Israel. When studying for my bar mitzvah and later for confirmation, I learned the Zionist version of history: Jews had faced genocide in the Holocaust, Israel provided the world's only safe haven for our people, and now the Arabs wanted to kill us all.

By 1965, I had joined the growing anti–Vietnam War movement while attending the University of California, Berkeley. That movement for the first time presented me with an alternative view. It shocked me to learn that Israel supported the Vietnam War, allied with the dictatorial Shah of Iran, and had close ties with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Israel later even helped South Africa develop atomic weapons.
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I learned that Israel supported US, British, and French military aggression while opposing groups fighting colonialism. While claiming to be the victim of a far superior Arab force, in fact, Israel had the strongest military in the region. Most importantly, every time Israel went to war claiming self-defense, it grabbed new territory. By the end of the June 1967 War, Israel had expanded more than three times the size of its original borders under the 1948 UN plan while refusing to recognize the legitimacy of a Palestinian state. At that time, Israeli officials argued that if Palestinians wanted a homeland, they should go to Jordan.
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For me, this all came to a head in June 1967, when Israel waged war against Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. After only six days, Israel won a decisive military victory and seized the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Syria's Golan.
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I opposed the war. When I announced my newfound beliefs to my parents in Los Angeles, they freaked out. It was worse than marrying a Catholic. They flew me down from Berkeley to meet the rabbi.

Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin was an outspoken liberal, a supporter of civil rights, and an opponent of the Vietnam War. A few years earlier he had founded Stephen S. Weiss Temple, a bastion of liberal Jewry. But like most Jewish liberals, he believed that Israel was only acting in self-defense. For people of my parents' generation who lived through the virulent anti-Jewish bigotry of the 1930s and '40s, and the horrors of World War II, Israel could do no wrong. Or if it did, as American Jews, they couldn't say anything about it.

I spent the day with the rabbi, arguing Middle East history and Zionism. I learned a lot from the discussion. For example, that there were labor and conservative Zionists. The labor Zionists advocated social democracy and some set up egalitarian
kibbutzim
(communes). But neither Zionist trend recognized the rights of Palestinians. The rabbi argued that American Jews shouldn't criticize Israel unless they were willing to move there. Engaging in a little Talmudic debate, I asked, “So if a Vietnamese living in America wants to criticize the Vietnam War, he must first move to Saigon?” The rabbi was not amused.

Rabbi Zeldin lost the argument that day. I broke with Zionism and supported a two-state solution in which Israeli and Palestinian nations could live in peace. I also wanted Israel to return all of the Golan to Syria. Little did I know that I would someday see the Golan from both sides of the disputed border.

An Israeli friend and I got ready for the five-hour drive from Jerusalem to the Golan. I planned to interview Israelis and Arabs living there about the Syrian Civil War. My friend took us on the scenic route, past the Dead Sea area, east to the Jordanian border, and then north on a
two-lane road that skirted the Sea of Galilee. Then I realized why we took this route. On the left was the sea, the region's largest source of fresh water. On the right were hills sloped upward at a sharp angle.

“Before the Six Day War,” my friend said, “Syrian army snipers would shoot at us from those hills.” Syrian troops would also lob artillery shells into Israel. Israel captured the Golan in 1967, lost some of it in the 1972 war, and then annexed the remainder in 1981. For years the Israeli government considered these hills critical for its self-defense. Whatever the accuracy of that claim before 1967, today it makes no sense because missiles need no commanding heights. Extremist rebels have lobbed mortars and fired rifles from Syria into the Israeli kibbutzim in the Golan. Annexing the Golan hasn't guaranteed Israel's security. Only a mutually beneficial political settlement can do that.

We continued our journey as the road wound through the mountains. My rented car (“May I please have your least expensive model?”) slowed as we hit the steep grades. The Golan has become quite a tourist attraction. Israelis come here to ski, backpack, and taste wine. Kibbutzim raise grapes and other fruit. One even became famous for dubbing TV and films into Hebrew. Broadband may one day replace drip irrigation as a source of sustenance.

An estimated twenty thousand Arabs of Syrian origin live in the Golan—those who didn't flee after the 1967 war. Most, but not all, are Druze, and they live in their own towns. The Israelis live in kibbutzim but say they get along well with the Druze. Compared to relations with Palestinians, that's true. But most Druze resent the continued occupation of Syrian land and also support Palestinian self-determination. The citizenship statistics tell the story. The Arabs could become Israeli citizens, enjoying the same status as Israeli Arabs, but 90 percent refuse. Since those born after 1967 aren't Syrian citizens either; they became stateless.

By midafternoon, we entered Majdal Shams, the largest Arab town in Golan. Now the road got really steep, potholes multiply, and I was downshifting into first gear. I can only imagine what the roads were like during the time of colonial occupation, when donkeys and horses must have suffered multiple hernias.

At the center of one traffic circle sits a statue of men in traditional Druze dress. There stands Pasha Sultan al-Atrash and his fighters from the 1925 rebellion against the French. From these Jabal Druze hills, he gathered his fighters to attack the French railroads and military camps. The Arabs of Golan proudly remember that history.

In 2006, I visited the same area, but from the Syrian side. The government had constructed a small building near a UN observation tower to accommodate meetings along this international border. Below was a chain-link fence and a no-man's-land mined by the Israelis. Syrians used bullhorns to shout to relatives standing on the Israeli side. It became known as “the shouting fence.” For years it was the only way families could communicate after being separated by the 1967 war.

Cell phones and e-mail had almost replaced the bullhorns. But as Syria's civil war destroyed cell phone towers and sometimes slowed Internet connections to a crawl, the shouting fence came back into fashion. Residents just don't use bullhorns anymore. “There are problems with communications now,” said Maryam Ajami, whose apartment overlooks the fence from the Israeli side. “I used to contact my relatives by Skype, but now we go over there, to the roof of that restaurant, and talk to each other over a public address system.”
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The shouting fence was just one reminder of Israeli occupation. Akba Abu Shaheen, an elementary school teacher living in the occupied Golan, told me he wanted the area returned to Syria. He admitted that economic conditions are much better here in Israel than in Syria. But he quoted Jesus that “man does not live by bread alone.” He added, “My history, culture, my family, and I belong to Syria.”
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Given the civil war across the border, however, the question arises: To which Syria would Golan return? The civil war has split residents into pro- and antigovernment factions. Shaheen is Druze, an Islamic minority group. The war affects him personally because he said extremist rebels would persecute minorities if they came to power. “It's important for me not to live in a religious country, but in a secular country,” said Shaheen. “It's important for Syria to remain a state for all its people.”

Shaheen stridently supported President Bashar al-Assad, echoing the Syrian government argument that outside forces created the uprising. He argued that even before the Tunisian uprising that initiated the Arab Spring, imperialist powers were plotting against Syria. “I think it was an international conspiracy on Syria from the very beginning,” said Shaheen. “Maybe the CIA or other agents took many young people from Arab countries to West Europe to train them.”

But other Golan residents said the uprising reflected genuine popular discontent with the Syrian government. Dr. Ali Abu Awad favored the rebel Free Syrian Army and suffered the consequences. He said pro-Assad militants firebombed his car and attempted to burn down his house. He told me that in the long run, a rebel victory would improve the lives of ordinary Syrians. “Assad the dictator made Syria a desert politically,” he said. “It will take time to make democracy in Syria. But we have a history. We have people who can do that.”
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But how long will that take? I took a side trip in the Israeli-occupied Golan to try to find out. I was working with a local Arab journalist, Hamad Awidat, who had been recommended by a friend. But I hadn't known him previously. He was our fixer, the person who set up interviews, translated, and arranged transportation. After nightfall we drove down an isolated and pitch-dark dirt road outside Majdal Shams. He said our destination was a surprise. I wasn't sure if we were being set up for a scoop or a kidnapping. Even a flat tire would have stranded us for hours.

The Golan air was chilly and crisp. A kibbutz orchard stretched out on the right. Finally the driver stopped in front of a large rock and a concrete barrier. It was the end of Israel. Below were the fence, no-man's-land, and lights from Syrian towns. We could hear the distant pounding of Syrian army artillery. Awidat pointed out the areas controlled by the Syrian army, the Free Syrian Army, and al-Nusra. It was a minitableau of the civil war. It would take a long time before one side could prevail.

We saw a vehicle at the border flash its lights. Awidat explained that every night Israeli military ambulances went to the border to pick
up severely wounded people. Syrians living in the proregime areas generally had access to government hospitals. Rebels and their supporters did not. The Israelis said they would treat severely wounded people as long as they did not carry arms. The Israelis treated both civilians and FSA soldiers. In order to make sure they don't allow al-Nusra extremists to enter, the Israeli military had to coordinate with the FSA.

Officially, Israel had proclaimed its neutrality in Syria's civil war. But as indicated by its policies in the Golan, the reality was different. To find out more, I had to visit Tel Aviv.

Israel's public-transport system is quite good. I arrived at Jerusalem's central bus station one morning, stood in a short line, and paid the equivalent of eleven dollars for a one-way ticket to Tel Aviv, which is forty-two miles away. A bus left every twenty minutes. My bus quickly filled with students, retirees, business people, and young soldiers clad in olive-green uniforms and carrying Galil assault rifles. I was off to interview experts at Tel Aviv University, one of the country's most prestigious educational institutions.

While the transport system is cheap and efficient for Israeli Jews, it's very different for Arabs. Palestinians from the West Bank can't travel anywhere in Israel without special passes. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are legally able to travel but are often afraid to ride the bus. On a previous trip from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I sat next to a young woman grading papers in English. She turned out to be a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem who commuted to teach at an Arab school near Tel Aviv. On the bus, she never wore a hijab nor spoke in Arabic. She spoke only English, fearing the driver or a passenger would throw her off. By being quiet, she hoped to pass as a foreigner.

I got off at the Tel Aviv station and took the short taxi ride to the university. I walked into the sprawling campus to meet Eyal Zisser, a history professor and dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Back in early 2011, when most of the world welcomed the democratic aspirations of the Arab Spring, Israeli leaders were already wary, according to Zisser. After all, demonstrations were targeting pro-US dictators who
had reached accommodations with Israel. Israel might have to pay the price for having cooperated with such repressive regimes.

So when Syrians rose up, Israeli leaders were wary once again. For all Syria's anti-Israel rhetoric and supposed support for Palestinians, the Assad family had kept the Israeli border quiet and secure. “He's the devil we know,” Zisser told me. “We got used to Bashar al-Assad. This regime is evil…but at the same time, it kept the border quiet. Better to stay with Bashar al-Assad. Who knows what will happen if he falls?”
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