QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Despite allegations to the contrary, Syria’s Kurds were active participants in anti-government protests when they broke out on March 6, 2011, in the southern city of Daraa. Only 19 days later, Qamishli held its first protest in solidarity, organized by members of the ‘Kurdish Revolutionary Youth’.Twelve years later, Kurdish forces, the opposition, and the government are stuck in a three-way enmity. How did it happen?
Qamishli, the largest Kurdish-majority city in Syria, held a prominent role in early 2011, as protests spread across the country. Located, as it is, in the far east of the country, protests, which tended to form in the immediate aftermath of Muslim Friday prayers, were the first to make it onto the airwaves. Anti-government media shared videos of the events in Qamishli, inciting Muslim protestors further west just as they would leave the mosque. Kurdish-majority cities, as well as Kurdish neighborhoods in Damascus and Aleppo, regularly saw demonstrations of 10-15.000 people. On Oct. 8, 2011, around 100.000 residents of Qamishli took to the streets.
The government in Damascus attempted to buy off the Kurdish minority, offering never-before-seen cultural rights and citizenship to tens of thousands. Despite this, protests in Kurdish-majority cities continued under banners such as “We call for freedom, not just nationality.” Throughout most of 2011, the Kurds’ anti-government credentials were unquestionable.
First cracks
Two developments, however, quickly put a wedge between Kurds and the remaining Syrian opposition: the opposition’s intransigence and the government’s permissiveness.
The first development was the establishment of a government in exile, the Syrian National Council (SNC), in Turkey, by the Syrian opposition parties. The PYD, the largest Kurdish party at the time, attempted to negotiate with the SNC, but when statements by the opposition council reproduced the Arab hegemonic language of the Baath party and they refused to put the statement to a vote, it withdrew. The PYD cited an increasing Islamist influence, and, above all, dependence on Turkey as the reasons, demanding that a ‘national coordination body’ be establish away from Turkey. In its aftermath, the opposition protests in Kurdish cities wound down. Some allege they were prevented from occurring by the PYD.
Instead, the Kurds – led by the PYD – concentrated on establishing a ‘third way’ – neither pro-government nor pro-opposition. They saw the governments in Damascus and Ankara as equally dangerous.
On the other hand, the Syrian government forces’ response to the Kurdish resistance was relatively mild, even as it cracked down brutally on Sunni-Arab protestors elsewhere. Nevertheless, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) – a Kurdish armed force – repeatedly resisted government control. In 2012, the PYD urged the Kurds to boycott a sham constitutional referendum Assad had called. The government, too, continued to imprison PYD members.
First major shift: The 2012 withdrawal
In 2012, the Syrian government did something few had expected: it withdrew almost entirely from Kurdish-majority areas.
That year, Assad was facing a country-wide insurrection and was on the retreat. Many, including in the West, were already planning for a post-Assadist future. Its withdrawal out of the Afrin, Kobani, and Jazira regions allowed the government to mass its troops against the armed opposition, which was actively attempting to overthrow it with Turkish help.
In the years between 2012 and 2014, the YPG played an ambiguous role in Syria. In the cities of Qamishli and Hasakah, where the government retained a presence, the YPG often clashed with Baathist forces. And in Afrin, it expelled Islamist factions from the towns south of Afrin (the countryside of Azaz), and was accused of targeting the Arab opposition. In Aleppo, the YPG defended the Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh against both the government and opposition forces.
Second major shift: The US-YPG alliance
In 2014, the US did something no one saw coming: it allied itself with the YPG. The US had been arming and training opposition groups based in Turkey since the early years of the war in order to overthrow Assad and later to fight ISIS. However, by all accounts, these groups were ineffective and often harbored radical anti-American sentiments. Up to that point, no one had seriously considered working with the YPG, as Turkey, an important NATO ally, saw the Kurdish group as no less a threat than the PKK, which the US also classifies as a terrorist group.
However, as ISIS grew and threatened to take Kobani, and Turkey and most of the Syrian opposition was unable or unwilling to fight the group, the Obama administration made the fateful decision to arm the YPG (and the YPJ) and aid it with airstrikes. The Kurdish forces also merged with a number of smaller pro-democracy Arab opposition militias. Together, they conquered a majority of ISIS’ ‘caliphate’ until 2019.
The 2014 decision, however, placed US interests in the region on a direct collision course with Turkey’s. After the YPG/YPJ and Arab forces – now rebranded the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – took control over a third of the country, Turkey began to involve itself in Syria in earnest. By 2016, it had organized disparate militias into what would become the SNC-linked Syrian National Army (SNA). It launched a full-scale invasion into northern Aleppo in order to prevent the Kurdish regions of Afrin and Kobani from being connected in 2016. Occupations of Afrin and Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain)/Tel Abyad followed in 2018 and 2019, respectively. In 2020, the Turkish army secured Idlib for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, formerly al-Nusra Front). These regions today are hotbeds of criminality.
Three-way impasse
The Turkish-backed opposition, the Syrian government, and the Kurdish-majority Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) have since then been frozen in conflict. The Syrian government cannot accept either Turkey’s or the US’ “occupation” of Syria. It wants to regain full control over the country, and continues to rule with an iron fist. The opposition as such has effectively ceased to exist. Today, the SNC and the SNA are entirely beholden to Turkish interests. The AANES demands political recognition from the government and an end to the occupation of Afrin and Sere Kaniye by Turkey. All parties are interlocked into a downward-spiraling economy, brought about by war and sanctions.
Twelve years after the Syrian people demanded democracy and freedom, there is little to signal that this will soon become a reality for most. A global Freedom House study from this year ranked Syria last out of 195 countries on civil liberties. No doubt, civilians are the freest under the AANES, but this area encompasses the least amount of people out of the three and is also most at risk of attack from outside forces. If it wants to survive, the model established in the northeast of the country needs to demonstrate to a majority of Syrians that it is more than merely the least bad option.