ROJAVA, BETWEEN ETERNAL CONFLICTS & BETRAYALS

Kurdistan

Today is one of the most difficult days to write a post. Last news talk about a Turkish invasion over Rojava in Kurdistan.

The Grandma is upset. How is possible to betray the Kurds again? How is possible to not help this community that has suffered all the negative effects of British colonization and eternal wars.

The Grandma could the opportunity of visiting Syria in 1999 after war (1994-1998). She visited Damascus and Aleppo, and she travelled to the north to visit the Syrian Kurdistan. She stayed in Rojava and met the Kurdish population, an ancient nation divided in four new nations after the British decolonization.

She arrived to Syria to study the legacy of the Templar Knights and she could visit the Krak des Chevaliers, also known as the Castle of the Kurds, a crusade castle.

Nowadays, she remembers this travel with a lot of sadness because the Kurds are going to be victims of their geographical situation and international interests that seem much more important than people and their cultures.

The Grandma wants to talk about Rojava and the Kurdish people who deserve our help and our support in these difficult moments.

More information: Kurdistan 24

The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), often referred to as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part.

While entertaining some foreign relations, the region is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any international state or organization. Northeastern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Turkmen, Armenians and Circassians.

The supporters of the region argue that it is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on a libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, claiming it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than outright independence.

Rojava

Some of the criticism against the region has included opposition to conscription, and claims of authoritarianism, ban on critical journalists, the promotion of an anti-capitalist ideology, Kurdification, and influence from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, commonly known as PKK.

Much of northern Syria is considered to be Western Kurdistan, in Kurdish Rojavayê Kurdistanê‎ or Rojava, one of the four parts of Greater Kurdistan, and parts of northeastern Syria are considered by Syriac-Assyrians as Gozarto, part of the historical Assyrian homeland.

On 17 March 2016, its de facto administration self-declared the establishment of a federal system of government as the Democratic Federation of Rojava-Northern Syria, in Kurdish Federaliya Demokratîk a Rojava-Bakurê Sûriyê‎.

The updated December 2016 constitution of the polity uses the name Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), in Kurdish Federaliya Demokratîk a Bakûrê Sûriyê‎.

Since 6 September 2018, the Syrian Democratic Council has adopted a new name for the region, naming it the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), in Kurdish Rêveberiya Xweser a Bakur û Rojhilatê Sûriyeyê‎, also sometimes translated into English as the Self-Administration of North and East Syria, encompassing the Euphrates, Afrin, and Jazira regions as well as the local civil councils in the regions of Raqqa, Manbij, Tabqa, and Deir ez-Zor.

More information: The Kurdish Project

The region's administration is sometimes also referred to as the Democratic Autonomous Administration (DAA).

The region lies to the west of the Tigris along the Turkish border and borders Iraqi Kurdistan to the southeast. The region is at latitude approximately 36°30' north and mostly consists of plains and low hills, however there are some mountains in the region such as Mount Abdulaziz as well as the western part of the Sinjar Mountain Range in the Jazira Region.

In terms of governorates of Syria, the region is formed from parts of the al-Hasakah, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and the Aleppo governorates.

Northern Syria is part of the Fertile Crescent, and includes archaeological sites dating to the Neolithic, such as Tell Halaf. In antiquity, the area was part of the Mitanni kingdom, its centre being the Khabur river valley in modern-day Jazira Region. It was then part of Assyria, with the last surviving Assyrian imperial records, from between 604 BC and 599 BC, were found in and around the Assyrian city of Dūr-Katlimmu.

Kurdish people

Later it was ruled by different dynasties and empires -the Achaemenids of Iran, the Hellenes who succeeded Alexander the Great, the Artaxiads of Armenia, Rome, the Iranian Parthians and Sasanians, then by the Byzantines and successive Arab Islamic caliphates.

Kurdish settlement in Syria goes back to before the Crusades of the 11th century. A number of Kurdish military and feudal settlements from before this period have been found in Syria. Such settlements have been found in the Alawite and north Lebanese mountains and around Hama and its surroundings. The Crusade fortress of Krak des Chevaliers, which is known in Arabic as Hisn al-Akrad (Castle of the Kurds), was originally a Kurdish military settlement before it was enlarged by the French Crusaders. Similarly, the Kurd-Dagh (Kurdish Mount) has been inhabited by Kurds for more than a millennium.

During the Ottoman Empire (1516–1922), large Kurdish-speaking tribal groups both settled in and were deported to areas of northern Syria from Anatolia. The demographics of this area underwent a huge shift in the early part of the 20th century. Some Circassian, Kurdish and Chechen tribes cooperated with the Ottoman (Turkish) authorities in the massacres of Armenian and Assyrian Christians in Upper Mesopotamia, between 1914 and 1920, with further attacks on unarmed fleeing civilians conducted by local Arab militias. 

More information: Smithsonian

Many Assyrians fled to Syria during the genocide and settled mainly in the Jazira area. Starting in 1926, the region saw another immigration of Kurds following the failure of the Sheikh Said rebellion against the Turkish authorities. While many of the Kurds in Syria have been there for centuries, waves of Kurds fled their homes in Turkey and settled in Syria, where they were granted citizenship by the French Mandate authorities. In the 1930s and 1940s, the region saw several failed autonomy movements.

Under Syrian rule, policies of Arab nationalism and attempts at forced Arabization have been widespread in Northern Syria, to a large part directed against the Kurdish population.

The region received little investment or development from the central government and laws discriminated against Kurds owning property, driving cars, working in certain professions and forming political parties. Property was routinely confiscated by government loansharks. Kurdish language education was forbidden, compromising Kurdish students' education. Hospitals lacked equipment for advanced treatment and instead patients had to be transferred outside the region. Numerous place names were arabized in the 1960s and 1970s.

More information: Middle East 4 Change

In his report for the 12th session of the UN Human Rights Council titled Persecution and Discrimination against Kurdish Citizens in Syria, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights held that Successive Syrian governments continued to adopt a policy of ethnic discrimination and national persecution against Kurds, completely depriving them of their national, democratic and human rights -an integral part of human existence. The government imposed ethnically-based programs, regulations and exclusionary measures on various aspects of Kurds’ lives- political, economic, social and cultural.

Some women and children in Rojava

In many instances, the Syrian government arbitrarily deprived ethnic Kurdish citizens of their citizenship. The largest such instance was a consequence of a census in 1962, which was conducted for exactly this purpose. 120,000 ethnic Kurdish citizens saw their citizenship arbitrarily taken away and became stateless. Kurdish private schools were banned. This status was passed to the children of a stateless Kurdish father. In 2010, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated the number of such stateless Kurdish people in Syria at 300,000.

In 1973, the Syrian authorities confiscated 750 square kilometres of fertile agricultural land in Al-Hasakah Governorate, which was owned and cultivated by tens of thousands of Kurdish citizens, and gave it to Arab families brought in from other provinces.

In 2007, in the Al-Hasakah Governorate, 600 square kilometres around Al-Malikiyah were granted to Arab families, while tens of thousands of Kurdish inhabitants of the villages concerned were evicted. These and other expropriations was part of the so-called Arab Belt initiative which aimed to change the demographic fabric of the resource-rich region.

More information: The Conversation

In 2012, in the early stages of the Syrian Civil War, Syrian government forces withdrew from three mainly Kurdish areas, leaving control to local militias. Existing underground Kurdish political parties, namely the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Kurdish National Council (KNC), joined to form the Kurdish Supreme Committee (KSC) and the People's Protection Units (YPG) militia was established to defend Kurdish-inhabited areas in northern Syria.

In July 2012, the YPG established control in the towns of Kobanî, Amuda and Afrin, and the Kurdish Supreme Committee established a joint leadership council to administer the towns. Soon YPG also gained control of the cities of Al-Malikiyah, Ras al-Ayn, al-Darbasiyah, and al-Muabbada and parts of Hasakah and Qamishli.

Kurdish people

The political system of the region is based on its adopted constitution, officially titled Charter of the Social Contract.

The constitution was ratified on 9 January 2014; it provides that all residents of the region shall enjoy fundamental rights such as gender equality and freedom of religion. It also provides for property rights. The region's system of community government has direct democratic aspirations.

Regarding the status of different languages in the autonomous region, its Social Contract stipulates that all languages in Northern Syria are equal in all areas of life, including social, educational, cultural, and administrative dealings. Every people shall organize its life and manage its affairs using its mother tongue.

In practice, Arabic and Kurmanji are predominantly used across all areas and for most official documents, with Syriac being mainly used in the Jazira Region with some usage across all areas while Turkish and Circassian are also used in the region of Manbij.

More information: IDS Bulletin

The four main languages spoken in Northern Syria are the following, and are from three different language families:

-Kurdish (in Northern Kurdish dialect), a Northwestern Iranian language from the Indo-European language family.

-Arabic (in North Mesopotamian Arabic dialect, in writing Modern Standard Arabic), a Central Semitic language from the Semitic language family

-Syriac-Aramaic mainly in the Surayt/Turoyo and Assyrian Neo-Aramaic varieties (mainly Classical Syriac in writing), Northwest Semitic languages from the Semitic language family

-Turkish (in Syrian Turkmen dialect), from the Turkic language family

For these four languages, three different scripts are in use in Northern Syria:

-The Latin alphabet for Kurdish and Turkish

-The Arabic alphabet (abjad) for Arabic

-The Syriac alphabet for Syriac-Aramaic

Most ethnic Kurdish and Arab people in Northern Syria adhere to Sunni Islam, while ethnic Assyrian people generally are Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean Catholic, Syriac Catholic or adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East. There are also adherents to other religions, such as Yazidism. The dominant PYD party and the political administration in the region are decidedly secular and laicist.

More information: The Intercept

The Kurds had always had a bad time.

They were oppressed by the Ottoman empire.

Then, at the end of the First World War,

they were promised a homeland,

but the new Turkish state refused to give them any land,

while the British went and created the new state of Iraq

and sent aircraft to bomb the Kurds there into submission.

Adam Curtis