13 juillet 2007 | The Bulletin

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."