Isis Rears Its Head in Ayria and Iraq Again
Syria's Kurds Wanted Autonomy. They Got an Endless War.
The Kurds of northeastern Syria dreamed of establishing an democratic, multiethnic and gender-equal utopia. Instead, their breakaway region has been engulfed in conflict since its creation.
QAMISHLI, Syria — Suad Shukri arrived early i morning last week to visit her son's grave. An hr later, the pocket-size cemetery would be thronged by thousands of mourners burying 12 fighters from a Kurdish-led force who were killed battling the recent Islamic State assail on a prison house in northeast Syria.
But for the moment, she had the identify — its hundreds of graves adorned with plastic flowers — almost to herself. Her son, Eli Sher, was too killed fighting ISIS, but that was 6 years ago near the Syrian city of Raqqa. He had joined a Kurdish militia when he was 13 and by the time he died at 16, he was already a veteran fighter.
"This is our life," Ms. Shukri said of this vulnerable corner of the Middle East.
Not long subsequently the commencement of Syria'southward civil war 10 years agone, the Kurdish minority that dominates the country's northeast set an autonomous region as an experiment in multiethnic, gender-equal self-dominion. Simply always since, the Kurds have been engulfed in a seemingly countless war, subject field to the whims of their more powerful neighbors, most notably the authorities of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus and Turkey to the north.
The latest threat is a familiar one — the Islamic Land.
The terrorist group reared its head again recently, three years after the main military ability in this region, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces or S.D.F., drove the militants from the final patch of their cocky-declared caliphate in Syria and Republic of iraq with the assistance of a U.Due south.-led military coalition.
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On Jan. 20, Islamic State suicide bombers and gunmen attacked a prison house in the city of Hasaka in an attempt to free some four,000 suspected ISIS fighters held in that location. The city is part of the autonomous region, and the Due south.D.F., backed by U.S. military might, fought for almost two weeks earlier it regained control.
The attack was viewed as a sign of an ISIS resurgence in the surface area. But days after it was put down, the U.S. staged a daring commando raid on another part of northern Syria that ended in the death of the Islamic State leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
President Biden, in announcing the successful performance, singled out the Southward.D.F. for praise, calling the force "essential partners," without proverb whether they had played a role in the raid.
Still, despite a close military partnership with the Usa that has lasted for years, the Syrian Kurds confront a precarious hereafter.
Prototype
The autonomous region, encompassing roughly the third of Syria east of the Euphrates River, was created in 2012, breaking abroad from Syrian government control later on the showtime of an uprising against Mr. Assad's authoritarian rule the previous twelvemonth. In i of the nigh complicated battlefields in the world, U.S. forces share space in the region with Russian troops allied with the Assad government, allowed in by the Due south.D.F. as protection confronting a Turkish incursion.
In this uneasy coexistence, major cities in the region are split between Syrian government control and local control. Residents who written report or work in the government-controlled territory line upwards at a checkpoints, waiting to be allowed through. But many are besides afraid of arrest to venture in that location.
The Kurds call the region Rojava, which means "the W." Information technology is an allusion to western Kurdistan and a longstanding but seemingly unattainable dream of an independent state that would stretch over the Kurdish areas of Syrian arab republic, Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
All those countries have historically oppressed their Kurdish populations, and the more 25 million Kurds who alive in them are considered the world's largest indigenous group without a country. In Syria, they business relationship for upwardly to 10 per centum of the population of eighteen million.
At least 55 pct of the roughly 4.half dozen million people live in the democratic region are Kurds, co-ordinate to the regional administration. But there are also large numbers of Arabs and Assyrian Christians, along with smaller populations of Turkmen, Armenian, Circassian and Yazidi minorities.
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"In Syria and Iraq, at that place were sectarian wars," said Abdul Karim Omar, the caput of the Kurdish region's international relations department. Within his own region, he said, "nosotros have maintained social peace and coexistence."
The regional administration relies on a network of multiethnic, multireligious councils. Each major committee is headed past both a woman and a homo. Women play a prominent role equally fighters, including on the front lines.
While some are not as strong in reality as on newspaper, those steps to ensure diversity and gender equality are a far cry from near countries in the Middle Due east.
Notwithstanding in its brusk life, the Kurdish-led region has faced persistent security and economical threats from nigh all sides, including from the Syrian government and Iraqi Kurdish neighbors to the east. But it is Turkey that looms the largest.
Exterior the office building where Mr. Omar tries to craft policy for a region that has political autonomy only is not recognized past any government, the lights of the Turkish city of Nusaibeen twinkle across a high wall a few hundred yards away.
Prototype
Turkey, which has battled Kurdish militants at home for decades, invaded areas held by the Syrian Kurdish-led forces to push button them back from the border. Turkey considers the S.D.F. a security threat because of its links to a Kurdish guerrilla movement that has been fighting an insurgency against the Turkish country for decades.
The functioning was endorsed past President Donald J. Trump, who withdrew U.S. forces from some Kurdish-led areas after a phone telephone call with the Turkish president. This immune Turkey's Syrian proxies to move in.
The Iraqi Kurds accept close economical ties with Turkey, and terminal month the dominant Kurdish party in Iraq closed the Iraqi Kurdistan region's border with the Kurdish-led region in Syria. That left shops on the Syrian side empty of sugar and other staples.
On a contempo day, long lines of people shivering in the winter cold waited with jerrycans to buy kerosene exterior fuel stations. At checkpoints, choking plumes of black smoke ascent from burning tires set alight past security forces to keep warm.
Mazlum Kobani, the head of the region'south security forces, blamed Turkish pressure level for the Iraqis' closure of the border, which included stopping exports of oil sold by the Kurdish-led region in Syria to Iraqi Kurds — a principal source of revenue.
"We are both Kurds," Mr. Kobani said of his Iraqi Kurdish neighbors, "and nosotros must help each other out. Just they have interests with Turkey." The security principal, who is on Turkey's nigh-wanted list, spoke from a base he shares with U.S. forces. He chose the location to deter Turkey from launching a drone strike to kill him.
Paradigm
During the war with ISIS years ago, the Southward.D.F. struck up a critical partnership with the U.S.-led military coalition that was battling the militants in Syria and Iraq. The militia was considered the most potent basis strength when it came to fighting the extremist grouping.
The prison assail in January drew the U.S. military back into the fight, and escalated into the well-nigh intense urban clashes with ISIS in the three years since the end of the caliphate.
Mr. Kobani told The New York Times that after the prison assail, the 700 U.S. troops in his region are no longer plenty.
"If you ask me, I would say we need more American troops," he said.
All told, the S.D.F., which currently has between eighty,000 to 100,000 fighters, says it has lost about 13,000 members in the state of war to drive ISIS out of the region since 2014. In the recent prison battle, 43 Due south.D.F. fighters were killed.
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These days, armored fighting vehicles with American flags waving drive along the highways, trying to keep out of the way of Russian forces with the aid of deconfliction measures that entail providing advance notice of each other's movements.
The Syrian Kurds are under little illusion though that they tin count on the U.Due south. to protect them in the long run. The only affair for certain in this corner of Syrian arab republic seems to be that its hereafter depends about entirely on forces across its control.
At the cemetery in Qamishli on Wednesday, one thing did seem sure — that in this militarized society, a new generation would take up the fight.
Jeyan Hassary, xvi, had come with her friends to mourn the 12 expressionless fighters. She already knew what she wanted to do with her life.
"My dream is to carry the guns of my grandfather and uncle to avenge their blood," she said.
Sangar Khaleel contributed reporting.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/07/world/middleeast/syria-kurds.html
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