KurdistanObserver.com
Ethnic Cleansing In
Syria: The Unseen Terror
Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria
July 13, 2007
While the world's attention is focused on the war in Iraq, the internal
Palestinian strife, the Israeli-Hamas confrontation in Gaza and the clashes
between the Lebanese army and Syrian supported Fatah al-Islam, scant attention
has been paid to developments inside Syria.
The regime of Bashar Assad has used this opportunity to re-launch the campaign
of ethnic cleansing in the Kurdish region of Hasakah. The Syrian press,
controlled by the regime, prevents access to the foreign press, and the abuses
of the Kurds have gone practically unreported. News of the ethnic cleansing is
arriving almost exclusively through letters and faxes from persecuted Kurds.
The champion of pan-Arabism, Egypt's former president Gamal
Abdel Nasser, was the first to consider the Arabization of Hasakah when he led
the United Arab Republic (UAR), a merger between Syria and Egypt that lasted
from 1958 to 1961. In 1959, the UAR began to settle Arabs in the Derrick area,
located on the west bank of the Tigris River. Nasser had hopes of transferring
1.5 million landless Egyptians to Hasakah and managed to establish at least two
villages populated by Egyptians.
According to Sherkoh Abbas, president of the Kurdistan National Assembly-Syria,
"The UAR was determined to inflict maximum damage on the Kurds because they were
viewed as agents of Israel. In 1960, the Syrian government issued a decree that
denied the Kurds the right of grazing livestock on their own land. As a result,
millions of livestock perished of starvation, causing the Kurds severe economic
hardship."
In 1961, agents of the UAR deliberately torched a movie theater in the Kurdish
city of Amude. Three hundred Kurdish students were forced into the theater to
watch a film on the Algerian Revolution. The doors were then locked and they set
the theater on fire. All 300 youngsters were burned alive.
When the UAR broke up, Syria was in a chaotic state for 18 months. By March 1963
the National Council of the Revolutionary Command (NCRC), led by a group of
leftist Syrian military officers, and civilian officials of the Baath party were
installed, taking over the executive and legislative functions of government.
As soon as the Baathists came to power, they announced a program of agrarian
reform, which ostensibly meant the confiscation of Kurdish land. The land would
be used to build the "Arab Belt" (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) and serve as
a buffer zone between Syrian Kurds and their brethren in Turkey and Iraq. "The
Baathists seized Kurdish lands in 1966 and continued to do so well into the
1970s and '80s," Sherkoh Abbas asserted, "In 1974, the regime of Hafez Al-Assad
created a buffer zone, ethnically cleansing the Kurds along the Turkish border
at a depth of 35 km. Now, his son Bashar Assad is doing the same by creating a
buffer zone along the Iraqi border to separate Syrian Kurds from Iraqi Kurds."
The Syrian security agencies in the Kurdish area have extraordinary powers. They
can confiscate, detain, torture and kill with impunity. The Syrian government
does not officially recognize the Kurds as being Kurds. Kurds are seen (and they
see themselves) as "second class Arabs." Harsh conditions in the Kurdish areas
of northeast Syria, in addition to the lack of infrastructure or employment
opportunities, has forced many Kurds to flee Syria and settle in Germany and
Scandinavia.
In March 2004, Kurds staged an uprising against the Assad
regime.
Syrian forces killed 85 Kurds, and thousands were imprisoned.
Determined to oppose further ethnic cleansing, the Kurds, who have now become
desperate, are ready to do battle with the regime.
The discovery of oil in the Hasakah region served as further
motivation for the Syrian regime to engage in their ethnic cleansing of Kurdish
areas. According to intelligence estimates, Syrian oil reserves will be depleted
in the near future, and the Kurdish region may be the target of future oil
exploration. Strategically, this may also increase Damascus' dependence on Iran
for energy supplies.
Asked to sum up the current situation in Syria, Abbas said, "In my view, the
Basher Assad regime is trying to complete the ethnic cleansing process by
isolating Syrian Kurds from Iraqi Kurds. It is intended to prevent future
support from Kurds in Iraq. Damascus seeks to revive its deterrence amongst the
Kurds by re-imposing the fear factor that evaporated during the March 2004
uprising. The Assad regime is employing pan-Arab nationalism in northern Syria
to shore up support among the Arab population by portraying the Kurds as agents
of America and Israel. Kurds, who comprise 20 percent of the Syrian population,
are tired of being victimized and are demanding their legitimate civil and human
rights."
