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Syrian National Council Leaders
Veteran Kurdish fighter Radeef Mustafa arrived in Istanbul to discuss the matter with the other members of the opposition with hopes that the meeting would be the end of discrimination for the largest community of the country.
However, the Islamist-dominated SNC vetoed the proposal to recognize the Kurdish minority and their right to self-rule. Mustafa told Reuters, as he was leaving the meeting in Istanbul, that the decision made by the SNC was “chauvinism” at a time when the international community demands of Syrian opposition to do whatever in its power to avert civil war.
He added that the Kurdish problem in Syria was a ticking time bomb that could not be resolved after Assad fell. Kurds have long fought against the Baath party, that has been dominating the country for many decades, but have kept out of the conflict with Assad’s troops, though their implication would have been decisive for the outcome of more than one year of combat.
The SNC meeting in Istanbul agreed to expand its composition and reform, promising a democratic state and reconciliation, but its agreement was not signed by the Kurdish representatives, who were dissatisfied with the fact that their right to self-government was not taken into account. They kept out of the conflict because they do not trust SNC or any Arab-dominated opposition group.
The Kurds demanded of the SNC meeting a federal system with citizenship guaranteed, property rights, Kurdish language education and a equitable budget distribution. The Kurdish population in Syria does not live in compact groups as the one in Turkey or Iraq, so that the semi-autonomous territory is out of the question. In Turkey the Kurds have a certain degree of self-government, while in Iraq they are practically governing themselves altogether, not to mention that the Iraqi president is a Kurdish person.
Most Kurds in Syria live in the east, where the oilfields are, in the area of Ayn al-Arab and in the agricultural zone Ifrin, at the Turkish border. Entire neighborhoods in Damascus and in Aleppo, the most important cities in Syria, are also dominated by Kurds.
Mustafa explained for Reuters that he wanted for his community the right to be taught in their own language, to be able to sing in Kurdish and to receive a compensation for historic discrimination. By discrimination he referred to what he called land taken from the Kurds and offered to the Arabs in the province of Raqqa, along the Turkish border.
The Syrian National Council had to proceed with caution in handling the Kurdish case, because any concession made to Kurds, could have angered the Turkish hosts of the meeting, who were supportive of the entire activity of the SNC since it was founded last year.
Besides, the rights offered to the Kurds would motivate other minorities in Syria to demand the same kind of rights, and that would create a serious problem. Therefore, the SNC said that the priority of the organization is to bring down Assad, and then to apply the rights that had been agreed upon.
Kurds are said to be divided among themselves as they are organized in parties that are proxies of the Kurdish parties in Turkey and Iraq. Thus, many Kurds are united under the umbrella of Kurdish National Congress, which is in the likeness of the Iraqi Kurdish party, but there is a Democratic Union Party, which is inspired by the famous PKK of the Turkish Kurds.
Hafez al-Assad has been sheltering famous PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan until Turkey threatened with an invasion in 1999, and his son offered citizenship to some 160,000 stateless Kurds earlier in the unrest and made it easier for the Kurds to own property.
Kurds do not seem to be the only people who still support in one way or the other the regime of Assad. Christian communities and Alawites believe that the regime imposed by Bashar al-Assad could be better than a possible Arab-dominated regime, that could be installed after the fall of the current regime.
There are people in the largest cities, Damascus or Aleppo, that did not feel oppressed during the regime, some of them working in the state institutions or supporting the regime in any other way. They are those who cheered Assad during the rallies in his favor organized last year and even last month.
The situation in Syria seems to continue to be critical in spite of the assurances offered by Assad to respect and enforce the six-point plan put forward by special envoy Kofi Annan. Assad on Friday said that he would make all the necessary efforts to make the plan work provided that Annan convinces the “terrorist gangs” to abandon their fight.
SNC members and the other opposition groups said that Assad was only buying time to put down the revolution which has already claimed the lives of more than 9,000 people.
On Thursday, the Arab League convened in a summit where Syria was the main topic, and the leaders present demanded Assad to stop violence and find a political solution through dialogue, without demanding Assad to resign.
The move was considered aimed at allowing Annan’s plan to work, but it backfired, as the people in Syria took it to streets on Friday protesting against what they considered to be the abandonment by the Arab League of the Syrian people by not demanding the president to resign.
The city of Homs, and the province of Hama were targeted by the Syrian artillery on Friday, adding to the international community’s skepticism, as the United States and other states said they were expecting the president Assad to actually take action toward ending violence.
According to the estimates of the activists, 36 people were killed in Syria on Thursday alone, prompting many to believe that the move of the president Assad to accept Annan’s plan is going to be very difficult to implement.
On Thursday, the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke with the Iranian president and attempted to convince him to shift position toward Syria. Iran is a stark supporter of Syrian regime, whereas Turkey is one of the most vivid supporters of transition in Syria toward democracy.
Turkey and the United States had announced earlier this week that they would offer Syrian rebels “non-lethal” help, which is medical support or communications devises. The same move was made by Britain, which said that it would offer the Syrian resistance about 550,000 British pounds in support for “non-lethal” weapons.
In his statement yesterday, the Syrian president alluded to the fact that in order for him to implement the six-point plan Kofi Annan must make sure that the actions of the western powers that support the “terrorists” stop.
Annan’s plan refers to immediately stopping the conflict, by both rebels and government, to the release of political detainees, to initializing a transition toward democratic life. The plan does not demand Bashar al-Assad to resign, which is why it was accepted by Russia and China. The United States however does not believe that any transition can be achieved without ousting president Assad.
There are voices that say that what happened in Syria amounts to crimes against humanity, and that the regime will have to respond before an international criminal court. The U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton said that Assad should know that what he did in Syria will not remain unchecked.
Turkish prime minister said that he would not get away with murder like his father did before him. The British prime minister David Cameron said that the regime in Syria was “illegitimate and criminal,” while France’s Nicolas Sarkozy said that the actions in Syria show a criminal regime.
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