The intra-Kurdish dialogue in Syria between the Kurdish National Unity Parties allied with the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Kurdish National Council (ENKS), meant to reconcile the two main Syrian Kurdish political factions, has led to significant diplomatic developments in recent months.
One aspect of the negotiations that has gone unreported, however, is the effect that they may have on women’s political empowerment— an area where the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) has made historic advances.
While these policies were pioneered by the PYD, they are by no means exclusive to it. Women in all political institutions and of all ethnic and religious backgrounds have embraced AANES policies mandating women’s representation, and women with no political affiliation at all have benefitted from the legal protections developed and implemented by women’s institutions.
Both sides have alluded to the fact ENKS holds a different view of the issue. An ENKS official claimed in August that women’s representation was a sticking point that was slowing negotiations, framing it as a “detail” rather than the serious issue that it is. In a more recent interview, senior PYD member Aldar Xelil said that “there are issues [still] under discussion, such as the co-chairmanship [and] women’s freedom.”
Quantifying those differences is important. While ENKS has no similar governing experience to be measured on, its ideological and political allies provide a disturbing picture of how it would address women’s issues if given power.
In the Kurdish political sphere, ENKS is aligned with the center-right, nationalist Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), whose record on women’s issues lags far behind that of democratic confederalist Kurdish parties like the PYD.
Only three women serve in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s cabinet, and no woman has ever led the KDP or the KRG as a whole. Women do not hold senior military command roles in the KDP’s Peshmerga military forces at the same rate as they do in the YPJ and SDF.
ENKS is also still a member of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), which has an even more dismal record on women’s participation and empowerment. Just 10% of the members of the General Body of the SNC are women, and only two women serve on its 23-member leadership body.
Members of the Syrian National Army, the armed wing of the SNC-affiliated Syrian Interim Government, systematically terrorize women in occupied Afrin, Sere Kaniye, and Tel Abyad, subjecting them to brutal sexual and gender-based violence. ENKS has proven either unwilling or unable to use its status as a member of the SNC to stop this.
Other ENKS demands also suggest that it is willing to disempower women to gain power for itself. Its reported preference for fewer seats for non-Kurds in a new authority would mean less power for non-Kurdish women—who have fought just as fiercely to build the AANES as their Kurdish counterparts.
Women like Lilwa Abdullah, co-chair of the Deir ez-Zor Military Council, or Elizabeth Gawryie, deputy co-chair of the Executive Council of the AANES, stayed in their homeland to fight ISIS and create a new political system while many ENKS leaders lived in exile. It would be unfair to ask Arab and Assyrian women to give up hard-won leadership roles to elevate men who promote patriarchal, exclusive nationalism.
Asking the AANES to accept a more limited role for women in order to accommodate ENKS would set all women in North and East Syria back. Asking ENKS to rise to the occasion and adopt the groundbreaking AANES platform for women’s empowerment is the common-sense solution.
The experience of other independent political parties in North and East Syria proves that this is not an unfair demand. The Future Syria Party, for example, has been very successful in involving women from all of the region’s communities in all levels of leadership. In recent weeks, it has held preparatory meetings with female co-chairs of its local branches in order to form a Women’s Council. PYD representatives participating in the talks can highlight examples like this to show how other parties have benefitted from empowering more women.
With the United States playing a role in facilitating the talks, American diplomats can also help make ENKS realize that accepting AANES policies on gender equality is their best way forward if they want to participate in AANES governance in good faith.
The United States has committed to promoting women’s rights in foreign policy. The State Department’s Women, Peace and Security Action Plan notes that US policy should “seek and support the preparation and meaningful participation of women around the world in decision-making processes related to conflict and crisis.”
To do this in the context of the intra-Kurdish dialogue, American mediators should affirm the AANES 40% women’s quota and gender-equal co-chair system as a model nonpartisan policy, and urge ENKS to meet that standard. They can encourage women in the ENKS delegation to advocate for more prominent roles for themselves, and for other women on their side of the political divide who are qualified to step up and lead. They could also stipulate that, for the seats that the PYD has provisionally agreed to give to ENKS, no seat currently held by a woman will be given to a man.
While all participants in the talks have expressed a broad desire for unity, this should not come at the expense of something as fundamental as women’s empowerment representation. As with other debates about political inclusivity in the AANES, the inclusion of conservatives who wish to exclude others on the basis of their identity is no inclusion at all.