There are about 2.5 million Kurds in Syria -or around 8 percent of the population — the Damascus regime never formally counts them for fear of acknowledging the size of their community. By some estimates, Kurds may be larger even than the ruling Alawite sect.
A new report by the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based foreign policy think tank, describes them as “the decisive minority” in the Syrian revolution. Their participation in a unified opposition that would be “in the interests of the U.S. for a stable and inclusive Syria and would boost the rapid overthrow of the Assad regime,” the report says. Of course this rethoric is familiar, since the world media transfered such articulations before Iraq War, carrying Barzani and Talabani demands for assisting U.S operations.
The importance of the Kurdish position has been marginalized in the mainstream opposition narrative of the Syrian revolt, despite the fact that some of the earliest demonstrations took place in the northeast where Kurds inhabit a strategic area bordering Turkey and Iraq. Even if it looks like the Syrian Leadership might have been given some promises for Kurdish rights, Syrian Kurds -without a coordinated leadership- are trying to guarantee an upper-hand.
The Kurds are a combative people. As a nation of more than 20 million with their own language and culture, they have defended their presence with fighting guerilla tactics for decades, in what is today the troubled borderland of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.
The Kurds have reasons enough to bide their time. When they rose against the Assad regime in widespread rioting in 2004, their short-lived revolt was met with disdain and even hostility from potential allies in the Arab opposition. This attempt, notably with a purpose of drawing media attention, was ill-fated and looked like an organized scene, to get the public opinion other than igniting a flame.
They now find themselves on the margins of an opposition movement dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab nationalists, two tendencies implacably opposed to recognizing Kurdish minority rights.
Worse still, from the Kurdish perspective, the Syrian opposition is being shepherded towards unity by Turkey, a country with a long history of fighting against a Kurdish origin terror organization (PKK). “The U.S. outsourced the task to Turkey,” tells Michael Weiss, a Syria expert and communications director at the Henry Jackson Society . “If the unity conference were hosted by the U.S., the Kurds would have been much happier.” On the other hand; Kurdish efforts trying to put U.S on the stage, might well have a negative effect on Turkish public opinion against its NATO partner and strategic ally in the region.
The main Kurdish opposition alliance — the Syrian Kurdish National Council or KNC — has been pressing for the past year for its Arab allies to recognize the Kurdish people and their national identity in a post-Assad constitution. If the Assad government fell, the Kurds would likely press for reparations for past forced “Arabization” of Kurdish land.
But the current talks on unity have hardly been felicitous. As recently as Monday night, Kurdish delegates in Istanbul obtained a copy of a “national pact,” penned by the Arab-dominated Syrian National Council (SNC), which contained “no single word” on the Kurds in Syria, according to a Kurdish activist familiar with the document.
Recent efforts by the U.S. and others to cajole the SNC into embracing the Kurds may have come too late, as President Assad seeks to re-impose his control.
The Kurds have at least one loyal ally — the leadership of Iraqi Kurdistan, the most peaceful and prosperous region of post-Saddam Iraq. Masoud Barzani, president of the region, has acted as the godfather of the KNC in Syria.
In his last US visit on April 2012, during a talk in Washington Institute, Mr. Barzani underlined the fact that, " Kurdish effort for Syria's stability and over-throw of the regime will have a price." saying that "if there will be war, and Kurdish blood is needed, West and US should be ready to pay what Kurds have been asking for, freedom and democratic rights..."
It is a partnership with a downside: the prospect of an alliance between an influential Iraqi Kurdistan and a possible autonomous Kurdish zone in Syria only serves to heighten Turkish fear about the unsettling effect it might have on its own Kurdish population.
As Syria’s Kurds debate their next move, they face divisions within their own ranks.
The Assad regime appears to have renewed its links with the cultish Kurdish Workers’ Party, the PKK, and is accused of employing a local offshoot of the PKK to crack down on other Kurds. Latest media reports indicate PKK moving about 2000 fighters from Qandil enclaves to northern Syria. Although it proclaims itself to be a pan-Kurdish movement, the PKK is essentially a Turkish-oriented movement that Damascus has in the past used as a cat’s paw in its relations with Ankara.
A number of moderate Kurdish leaders have been assassinated since the PKK affiliate attacked Kurds demonstrating against the Damascus regime.
There is no mystery in why the regime seeks to divide the Kurds, according to Heyam Aqil, London representative of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria that is prominent in the KNC. “Assad knows the Kurds are well-organized,” “If the SNC allied with the Kurds, other minorities would join.”
Syrian Kurds during a pro-democracy demonstration calling for political changes in Syria in Qamishli The term AZADI, written on the flag means Freedom.
The Kurds and their supporters claim it would be a tragedy if they were cut out of the Syrian equation. They also blink an eye to West's islamo phobia and play the good-old card that the Syrian Kurds are predominantly secular, western-oriented and embrace a pluralistic vision for a “new” Syria, in contrast to some other opponents of the Assad regime.
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