Taking a Look at Syrian Kurds

Sometime in late October 2013, as Syria’s civil war raged one, Muslim fighters captured the strategic town of Yarubiyah on the border between Iraq and Syria. The loss of Yarubiyah was a defeat for the Jihadist rebel groups attempting to overthrow the embattled dictator Bashar Al-Assad. However, their defeat did not come at the hands of Assad’s forces. In the midst of the civil war, a third party has fortified its stake in the future of Syria: the Kurds. Initially insisting on their neutrality at the outset of the conflict, the Kurds soon took control of a large swath of territory in Northern Syria. But after more than two years of fighting, the Kurds now find themselves defending against extremist rebel groups encroaching on their land. In this “civil war within Syria’s civil war,” the Kurds are, as one Kurdish fighter put it, “fighting America’s war on terror right here on the ground”.

But this struggle for autonomy is nothing fundamentally new for Syrian Kurds. Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the ensuing formation of the Syrian state, the Kurds of Syria have battled for recognition. It has been a battle not only for national self-determination, but also, at its core, for the most basic human rights.

Today, the Kurds are the largest non-Arab minority in Syria, with a population of roughly 1.7 million (10% of the Syrian population). The Kurdish population is largely Sunni, which is the dominant Muslim group in Syria. The country, surprisingly, has a relatively good history in terms of religious tolerance. Kurds speak their own language, Kirmanji, and are clustered in three main pockets in the north of the country - ‘Ain ‘Arab and Afrin along the northern border with Turkey, and Jazira in the northeast sandwiched ...

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...names replace the original names of Kurdish towns. The Syrian constitution, adopted in 1973, makes numerous references to fulfilling the goals of the “Arab nation,” and while it makes numerous references to the protections of the rights of citizens, it only acknowledges those who live in “Arab regions” as part of the nation.

Kurd Political Organization

In the face of this suppression, the Kurds founded a new political party, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS) in 1957. However, the Syrian government quickly cracked down and the party disintegrated in 1960, since then leaving the Syrian Kurds without any organized local leadership.

Growing Unrest

In the decade or so before civil war broke out in Syria, Kurds in the country were already beginning to aggressively advocate for better treatment.

During a football match in the of Qamishli in 2004