http://www.kerkuk-kurdistan.com/nuceyek.asp?ser=4&cep=1&nnimre=3496

Five Die as Syria Soccer Match Erupts Into Violence

Reuters

DAMASCUS, 12/3 2004 (Reuters) — Five people, including three children, were killed and more than 100 injured on Friday after fighting erupted at a premier league football match in the northeast Syrian town of Kameshli, hospital officials said.

At least three of the victims died in a stampede as panicked fans tried to escape the fighting, witnesses said.

State-run Syrian Radio reported the deaths as it began live coverage of the match, which was quickly called off.

Police surrounded the stadium and fired shots in the air, but it was not clear whether they had been able to stop the fighting. Officials were not immediately available for comment.

The hospital officials said four of the injured had bullet wounds, including an 11-year-old boy who had been shot in the stomach.

Witnesses said there were between 5,000 and 7,000 spectators at the match between Kameshli and nearby Deir al-Zour.

Visiting fans threw sticks and stones at the Kameshli supporters, witnesses said. "We had nothing to defend ourselves with because we were not expecting this, so we had to run and there was a stampede," one witness said.

One witness said visiting fans also shouted slogans that offended Syrian Kurdish supporters of Kameshli, a town near the Iraqi border that has a large Syrian Kurdish population.

Kurds make up some two million of Syria 's 17 million population. But Syrian officials avoid reference to Kurds as a distinct minority and stress the importance of national unity.

Hundreds dead and wounded in Qamishli

http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=272443&lang=e&dir=news

Israeli report: Syrian forces kill some 30 demonstrators

13-03-2004, 11:31

Syrian security forces on Friday killed some 30 people during violent clashes which started in a soccer game and later spread to demonstrations throughout the Kurdish regions in the country, the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz reported on Saturday. The report was published by Yossi Melman who enjoys close ties with Israel 's intelligence sources.

According to the report, the clashes commenced during a soccer match in the city of Qamshali , located near the Turkish border in a province populated mainly by Kurds. The local Jihad team, which has mostly Arab and Kurd players, was playing the Fitouya group from the city of Dir el-Zur, near the Syrian border with Iraq , when Fitouya fans started calling out "long live Saddam Hussein." The Jihad team responded with "long live Barazani" shouts, pertaining to one of the Kurdish leaders in Iraq . The game was part of the Syrian football league.

Clashes ensued between the two sides inside the stadium, which contained some 5,000 people at the time, and three children were trampled to death in the uproar.

Large police forces that were called to the scene were unable to quell the large crowd, and reinforcements that later arrived opened fire, killing some 30 people and inuring dozens.

"Riots prior to a scheduled football match on Friday between two Syrian teams led to a number of people killed and wounded among the fans," SANA reported late Friday. The riot police contained these events, the news agency added.

However, according to Haaretz, following the incident, large demonstrations spread to other towns in Syria 's Kurdish regions. During the protests, signs and slogans slamming Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime as well as the ruling Baath Party were shown.

Syrian loyalist forces, accompanied by tanks, were dispatched to the region, and a curfew was imposed in some areas. Efforts were also being made to calm the situation, the report added. 

13.03.2004  |  16h50  AFP 

14 morts lors de heurts entre police et kurdes

Un responsable d'un parti kurde syrien, Abdel Aziz Daoud, a indiqué samedi à l'AFP que quatorze personnes, dont trois enfants, avaient été tuées vendredi et samedi à Qamichli lors de heurts entre les forces de l'ordre et la population kurde de cette région du nord-est de la Syrie.

"Hier, neuf personnes ont été tuées et plus d'une centaine ont été blessées, lors d'une émeute avant" un match de football du championnat syrien à Qamichli, et "cinq autres sont mortes aujourd'hui sous les balles de la police anti-émeute" lors de manifestations pour protester contre les morts de la veille, a déclaré M. Daoud, secrétaire général du Parti démocrate progressiste kurde en Syrie.

Présent à Qamichli, où il a été joint par téléphone, M. Daoud a précisé que sur les neuf personnes tuées vendredi, six avaient été touchées par des balles tirées par les forces de l'ordre. Les trois autres, a-t-il dit, sont des enfants âgés de 10 à 15 ans tués dans la bousculade provoquée par cette fusillade qui a eu lieu dans le stade municipal de la ville.

Selon lui, "24 autres personnes ont été blessées par les balles" de la police dans les émeutes de samedi qui ont eu lieu à Qamichli (600 km au nord-est de Damas, à la frontière avec la Turquie) et dans deux autres localités des environs, où, a-t-il dit, plusieurs milliers de personnes s'étaient réunis pour crier leur colère.

Auparavant, un ex-deputé présent sur place, Abdel Hamid Darouiche, contacté par l'AFP, avait indiqué que sept personnes, toutes kurdes, dont trois enfants, avaient été tuées et plus de 100 autres ont été blessées vendredi à Qamichli.

De leur côté, plusieurs formations kurdes syriennes et des organisations de défense des droits de l'Homme avaient accusé, dans un communiqué, les forces de l'ordre d'"avoir tiré" la veille sur des supporteurs de l'équipe de football de Qamichli avant une rencontre opposant leur club à celui d'Al-Foutoua.

De son côté, la radio officielle, Radio-Damas, avait rapporté vendredi que trois enfants avaient été tués ce jour-là lors d'affrontements entre partisans des deux équipes de football, avant de faire état d'un quatrième mort.

Selon le communiqué publié samedi par les formations kurdes et des association de défense des droits de l'Homme, les supporteurs d'al-Foutoua ont défilé vendredi, avant le match, dans les rues de Qamichli en scandant de slogans hostiles aux dirigeants kurdes irakiens et en brandissant des portraits de Saddam Hussein.

Les affrontements ont ensuite dégénéré sur les gradins et les "forces de l'ordre sont intervenues et ont tiré" sur les supporteurs de l'équipe kurde, ajoute ce communiqué signé notamment par des partis kurdes comme le Rassemblement national démocratique de Syrie et le Parti du travail communiste en Syrie, et des ONG comme les Comités de défense des libertés démocratique et des droits de l'Homme en Syrie (CDDH).

Parlant sans plus de précisions de "dizaines de morts et de blessés", les signataires du communiqué ont appelé à la création d'une "commission d'enquête nationale" et ont exhorté les autorités à "punir sévèrement les auteurs du carnage de Qamichli", tout en exhortant la population kurde à "la retenue".

http://www.courrierinternational.com/afp/resultatDepeche.asp?id=040314175811.yzqqclbi

Scènes de désolation à Qamichli : des bâtiments publics toujours en feu

14/03/2004 - 18:58

QAMICHLI (Syrie), 14 mars (AFP) -

La ville de Qamichli, située à 600 km au nord-est de Damas, présentait dimanche un paysage de désolation et des flammes continuaient à s'échapper de bâtiments publics, incendiés lors d'émeutes kurdes qui ont fait 14 morts ces derniers jours, a constaté un correspondant de l'AFP.

Les entrepôts de blé de la ville, incendiés samedi et livrés aux pillards, étaient noir de suie, alors que des flammes, que des pompiers s'activaient à éteindre, continuaient à sortir par les fenêtres.

Les trois étages du bâtiment des douanes ont également été incendiés et les émeutiers ont brisé les vitres des fourgons à l'arrêt dans la gare centrale. Ils ont également pillé et saccagé des bureaux administratifs.

Qamichli se trouve à quelques kilomètres de la frontière turque.

Selon des témoins, les émeutiers ont retiré les drapeaux syriens des bâtiments officiels et ont hissé des drapeaux aux couleurs kurdes.

Dimanche soir, les rues de la ville étaient jonchées de détritus et de cannettes vides et des pylônes étaient à terre. Un portrait du président syrien défunt Hafez Al-Assad apparaissait criblé de balles.

Quelques rares magasins, notamment d'alimentation, ont ouvert dimanche mais la plupart des commerces ont gardé leurs rideaux baissés.

"Pendant quelques heures, la ville a été livrée aux pillards qui ont sévi au dépôt central de céréales, emportant tout ce qu'ils trouvaient, notamment des sacs de blé", a raconté un témoin, refusant de donner son nom.

Dimanche soir, la situation semblait calme dans la ville investie par les forces de l'ordre, qui n'ont pas imposé de couvre-feu. La circulation était très fluide, de rares voitures s'aventurant dans les rues.

Une réunion a eu lieu entre des "responsables kurdes" et le chef des services de sécurité de l'Etat, Hisham Bakhtiar, pour ramener le calme, a-t-on appris de source officielle, qui n'a pas précisé le nom de ces responsables.

Le général Bakhtiar leur a affirmé que "des mains étrangères tentaient de semer la sédition et l'instabilité en Syrie" et a appelé à l'"unité" au nom du président syrien Bachar Al-Assad, a-t-on ajouté de même source.

Les heurts de Qamichli ont commencé vendredi au cours d'un match de football. Selon plusieurs partis kurdes, des échauffourées ont débuté quand les supporteurs d'une des deux équipes ont défilé dans les rues de la ville en brandissant des portraits de l'ancien président irakien Saddam Hussein et en insultant les dirigeants kurdes irakiens.

Les affrontements ont ensuite dégénéré et les Kurdes accusent les forces de l'ordre d'avoir ouvert le feu, provoquant un bousculade au cours de laquelle trois enfants ont été piétinés.

Samedi, les manifestations de protestations ont tourné à l'émeute à Qamichli et Hassaké, siège du gouvernorat.

Dimanche, le journal du parti au pouvoir, al-Baas, a accusé "des groupes" d'avoir répété des slogans "contraires à l'unité nationale" et "agressé les joueurs et le public, transformant le stade en un lieu de combats sanglants".

Les Kurdes de Syrie représentent environ 9% de la population du pays qui compte 18 millions d'habitants et affirment faire l'objet d'une "politique discriminatoire".

Outre la reconnaissance de leur différence culturelle par rapport aux Arabes, ils demandent à être traités comme des citoyens à part entière en revendiquant des droits politiques et administratifs "dans le cadre de l'intégrité territoriale du pays".

Quelque 200.000 d'entre eux qui vivent en Syrie depuis des générations n'ont pas la nationalité syrienne. Leur statut d'apatrides les prive des droits civils et civiques.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040314/wl_mideast_afp/syria_kurds_040314182648

Syrian authorities crack down on Kurdish unrest

Sun Mar 14, 1:26 PM ET

QAMESHLI, Syria (AFP) - Public buildings still burned in the northern Syrian city of Qameshli following riots in which at least 14 Kurds were reported killed in clashes with security forces, an AFP reporter saw.

Syrian authorities swiftly cracked down on the unrest over the weekend, branding it an attempt to destabilise the country as Washington prepares to impose economic sanctions on Damascus .

A tense calm hung over Qameshli, 700 kilometers ( 440 miles ) northeast of Damascus, and Hassake, 100 kilometers to the south, after two days of violence triggered by a football match.

In Qameshli, near the Turkish border, firemen were still trying to extinguish flames emerging from the windows of burned and looted grain warehouses.

The three-storey customs offices were burned out, the offices at the central railway station were sacked, the streets strewn with debris and a portrait of Syria 's late president Hafez al-Assad riddled with bullet-holes.

Witnesses said the rioters had torn down Syrian flags from the public buildings and hoisted Kurdish flags.

A few food shops were open but most stores were shut.

An official source said Syrian security chief Hisham Bakhtiar had told Kurdish leaders that "foreign hands were trying to spread sedition and instability in Syria " and called for unity in the name of current President Bashar al-Assad.

On Saturday, state television blamed "conspirators" who "were motivated by (foreign) ideas" for the unrest, rare in a country governed by the iron-fisted Baath party regime for the past 41 years.

At Hassake protests continued early Sunday, but were broken up by security forces, the city's assistant governor, Khaled Khodr, told AFP.

"Security forces this morning dispersed protestors who opened fire, without causing any casualties," he said.

Syrian Kurdish officials said 14 Kurds, including three children, were killed in the weekend rioting, but Nuri Brimo, a senior member of the Kurdish Democratic Union (KDU), put the toll at 16.

Brimo, on a visit to the northern Iraqi city of Arbil , said 13 were killed in Qameshli on Saturday, and another three during funerals for some of the victims in Amodi, a small town north of the city.

He said three Kurds were wounded as clashes continued Sunday in the town of Kobani .

Syria 's Kurdish minority numbers more than one million people, or nine percent of the population. They live mainly in the north on the border with Iraq , and at times have had tense relations with the Arab majority.

"It is a serious incident that will remain contained," said a Western diplomat posted in Damascus .

Resolution of the problems depends on internal factors and the Iraqi context, he said.

The Kurdish unrest follows a growing mobilization of Syrian activists demanding democratic reforms.

But most of the militants, and the Kurdish parties, still want a common front with the Syrian state to resist outside pressure and avoid anarchy in the country.

Since the fall of Saddam Huusein's Baathist regime in Iraq in April 2003, Syria finds itself in the cross-hairs of the United States , which has announced imminent sanctions against the country because of its hostile attitude toward the war in its neighbour.

The breakup of Iraq is the "main fear" of Syrian officials, who worry about the fallout in religious and ethnic tensions on their country, the Western diplomat said.

Syria sees the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq as a "red line," Assad said recently.

This fear is also shared by Turkey and Iran .

The clashes in Qameshli began Friday afternoon between rival football fans before a match when Syrian Kurds responded to insults with violence. Security forces opened fire to quell the unrest.

The Baath party newspaper, Al-Baath, said Sunday: "These groups repeated slogans against national unity, committed acts of aggression against players and the public, transforming the stadium into a bloody battlefield."

On Saturday, protests against the previous day's deaths spread to other areas of the region as well as to Damascus , where several demonstrators were wounded and others arrested in the western suburb of Dummar, Kurdish officials said.

Riot police were still deployed in force Sunday morning in the western suburbs and the southern Rukneddin district where many Kurds live.

In Brussels 60 Kurds were detained late Saturday after demonstrators tried to storm the Syrian embassy.

The Cairo-based Arab Organization for Human Rights condemned the Syrian security forces for "resorting to violence" amid the unrest, and called on pro-democracy groups to attend a meeting in Paris on May 8-9.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/03/13/381296-ap.html

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20040315.FIG0083.html

SYRIE Les troubles ont fait au moins quinze morts et une centaine de blessés

Damas réprime de violentes manifestations kurdes

Beyrouth : Sibylle Rizk

[15 mars 2004]

La Syrie a été le théâtre ce week-end de violentes manifestations kurdes qui ont fait au moins 15 morts selon des sources kurdes. L'agence officielle syrienne évoque des victimes, mais sans préciser le bilan de ce qu'elle qualifie d'«opérations de sabotage».

Déclenchés vendredi dans la ville de Kamechliyé, près de la frontière turque, à l'occasion d'un match de football qui a dégénéré, les troubles se sont étendus samedi et dimanche à toute la région kurde du pays ainsi qu'à Damas. L'explosion confirme les appréhensions des autorités syriennes qui, depuis la chute de Bagdad en avril dernier, craignent l'effet de contagion des revendications autonomistes des Kurdes irakiens sur la minorité kurde de Syrie.

Les autorités ont imposé un couvre-feu à Kamechliyé, Hassaké, et Amouda, les trois principales villes kurdes du nord-est du pays, ainsi que dans les quartiers kurdes de Damas. Mais, hier, alors que les forces de sécurité bloquaient les accès de certains bâtiments officiels, des jeunes protestataires ont continué de descendre dans la rue, dans la banlieue ouest de la capitale, cassant des installations publiques et s'en prenant à des symboles du pouvoir, a-t-on appris de sources informées en Syrie. La police anti-émeute était aussi déployée en force dans le quartier de Roukneddine, dans le nord de Damas, où vit une importante communauté kurde.

A Hassaké, où une mosquée et un local de police avaient été incendiés samedi, les forces de l'ordre ont dispersé une nouvelle manifestation hier. Par ailleurs, en Belgique, la police a interpellé une soixantaine de Kurdes qui manifestaient devant l'ambassade de Syrie, une quinzaine d'entre eux ayant tenté de pénétrer dans l'enceinte diplomatique. Les heurts ont débuté vendredi après-midi avant un match du championnat de football syrien qui devait opposer l'équipe locale de Kamechliyé, al-Jihad, au club al-Foutoua.

Supporters arabes et kurdes se sont affrontés violemment, les uns faisant l'apologie de Saddam Hussein, et les autres celle de George Bush et des leaders kurdes d'Irak. Trois enfants auraient été tués dans la bousculade, tandis que l'intervention de la police, qui a tiré à balles réelles, selon des sources kurdes, s'est soldée par six morts et une centaine de blessés. Les affrontements qui ont suivi ont fait d'autres victimes, portant le bilan à au moins 14 tués selon les Kurdes.

L'agence de presse officielle Sana a pour sa part annoncé la création d'une commission d'enquête chargée d'élucider les «actes de sabotage» perpétrés par des «conspirateurs» et dénoncé une «atteinte à la sécurité et à la stabilité du pays».

Ces incidents témoignent de la frustration des Kurdes qui représentent 9% de la population syrienne, mais sont privés de leurs droits culturels depuis l'arrivée du Baas au pouvoir il y a quarante et un ans. Afin de créer une ceinture arabe sur une profondeur de vingt kilomètres, le long de sa frontière nord-est, la Syrie avait expulsé des Kurdes de chez eux pour les remplacer par une population arabe. La nationalité syrienne a même été retirée à quelque 200 000 Kurdes, au motif qu'ils ne pouvaient justifier leur présence dans le pays depuis 1945.

En août 2002, alors que son père ne s'était jamais rendu dans la région kurde, Bachar al-Assad a effectué une visite à Hassaké en signe de bonne volonté. L'amorce de dialogue n'a toutefois pas porté ses fruits. «Le régime semble prêt à faire un geste, mais il est hors de question pour lui de donner le moindre signe de faiblesse», explique un analyste à Damas. Or la Syrie est actuellement soumise à des pressions sans précédent de la part de Washington qui la menace de sanctions imminentes.

Encouragés par la nouvelle donne régionale et la liberté de parole relative qui s'installe à Damas, les partis kurdes ont exprimé leurs revendications. Mêmes si, à l'exception de certains groupes expatriés, ils ne reprennent pas à leur compte la demande d'autonomie des Kurdes irakiens et se contentent de réclamer d'être considérés comme des citoyens à part entière, la réaction des autorités a été immédiate : plusieurs militants kurdes ont été arrêtés lors de manifestations précédant les émeutes de ce week-end. Car le régime redoute particulièrement la création d'un État kurde irakien qui menacerait l'intégrité du territoire syrien. Cette préoccupation a d'ailleurs rapproché Damas d'Ankara.

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040315/2004031510.html

In protest of al-Qamishli incidents, some 30 Kurds broke into the Syrian embassy in Brussels , detained
Syria-Belgium, Politics, 3/15/2004

News reports in Brussels said that the breaking in operation of the building of the Syrian embassy in the Belgian capital Brussels , carried out by a group of Kurds ended.

The reports said that the operation ended following negotiations between the Syrian ambassador, the Belgian police and the Kurdish demonstrators. The news reports continued that the police detained some 30 persons among those who broke into the headquarters of the embassy.

The said Kurdish group hoisted the Kurdish flag over the embassy's building and tore the Syrian flag and explained what it had done as a protest for what had happened in the Syrian city of al-Qamishli to the north of the country of incidents which claimed the lives of Kurds. A story denied by the Syrian government.

The Syrian ambassador Tawfiq Salloum who arrived at the embassy short time after the breaking in operation said that between 15 to 30 demonstrators were able to enter the garden of the embassy but did not say if they had entered the embassy.

He explained that " there is no problem with the Kurds in Syria , but on Friday there was a football game.. and a row took place between the fans of the two teams. He concluded "I am waiting for the results of the investigations carried out by the police, noting that he had asked the Belgian authorities to tighten security measures around the Syrian embassy.

In Damascus, it was announced the formation if an investigation committee on whether the persons who were described as conspirators were behind the clashes which took part in the northern part of the country, which Kurdish sources said resulted in killing some 14 Syrian Kurds during 36 hours.

The Kurdish sources had announced that confrontations erupted between the Syrian security forces and citizens from al-Qamishli city who were demonstrating during a funeral for several Kurds that were killed in acts of riots that took place during a football game and after it. The Syrian authorities denied the occurrence of killing during the dispersing of the demonstration and stressed that conditions are settled in the city.

People and medical sources said that the acts of riots which were carried out by Syrian Kurds in al-Qamishli on Saturday expanded to the cities of Amouda, Rass al-Ein and Hassaka and inflected also damages on buildings.

Witnesses said that the Kurds blocked the main road leading to the Dummar residential suburbs in Damascus and damaged several cars before they were dispersed by the riot-fighting police and detained several persons.

Sources close to the government said that certain Kurdish politicians "converted the case from a riot acts during a football game to a case of a political dimension," in remark to demands raised by some 200,000 Syrian Kurds who are not recognized as citizens.

A source said that the government was about to declare solution for the Kurds but the campaign propagated by the banned Kurdish groups banned this process.

To this effect, the Syrian daily al-Baath, mouthpiece if the ruling Baath party in Syria, said on Sunday that the clashes which took place on Friday and Saturday between the Kurds and the security forces in northern East part of the country are regretted and painful for the Syrians."

However, Kurds in Syria and other minorities in Syria assumed senior posts in the government and the army including the post of the prime minister in the mid of the 1970s. However, number of Kurds in Syria is estimated at 1.5 million of the country s total population estimated at 18 million.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/404906.html

16/03/2004 15:42

Assad loyalists said to have killed Kurds in Qahtaniya  

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent

As clashes continued Monday between pro-regime forces in Syria and the nation's Kurdish minority, loyalists of President Bashar Assad were reported to have committed acts of violence against Kurds in the Syrian city of Qahtaniya , killing a number of them.

Most of the Kurds in the city, where the some 2,000 Kurds comprise 10 percent of the population, were said to have fled Qahtaniya for a Kurdish town close to the Iraqi border.

Syria Monday sealed off its borders with Iraq after Iraqi Kurd fighters threatened to enter the country if violent clashes between security forces and their Syrian brethren were not brought to an end.

Other reports, from hospitals in the city of Qamishli on the Turkish border, where the riots began last Friday, indicated that some 400 Kurds who had been hospitalized for injuries sustained in the unrest, were expelled from the hospital in order to make room for Syrian soldiers to be housed there.

The internet site of the Kurdish party in Syria published video footage in which Syrian soldiers were seen going house to house in the course of the rioting.

Disturbances continued throughout the Kurdish regions in the north of the country, as an American delegation was sent in to try to stabilize the situation.

The American team travelled in secret from Iraq to the Kurd region in northern Syria following the several days of riots which came on the heels of a violent soccer game between a Kurdish-backed and a mostly Arab-backed team, Kurdish sources and Syrian exiles in Europe told Haaretz on Monday.

The information was also published on Kurdish websites in Europe .

The U.S. team, which includes intelligence officers, contacted senior officers in a Syrian delegation sent to the region by President Bashar Assad to negotiate with local leaders.

According to the sources, two U.S. helicopters arrived Sunday from Iraq to the city of Qamishli on the Turkish border, where the riots began.

The sources believe that the American delegation has warned the Syrian government that if the riots continue, the situation could get out of control and the Syrians will find it difficult to restrain the Kurdish militias in northern Iraq , who want to come to the aid of the Kurds in Syria .

According to Kurdish sources, isolated exchanges of gunfire continued overnight Sunday in several towns, but in general, the violence was diminishing. The sources claim that demonstrations continued in the city of Haleb and that 19 Kurds were killed during the exchanges of fire in the northern town of Hassake .

The sources said that Syrian security services were conducting mass arrests, claiming that some 2000 people have been detained in Damascus and Aleppo .

Kurdish sources said that in Damascus , almost every male Kurd over the age of 16 has been detained.

The legal advisor of the Paris-based National Council for Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Syria , George Sara, Sara claimed he could not determine the exact number of people killed during the riots, but that his organization estimated the number to be between 60 and 100. He expressed disappointment with the lack of coverage of the riots in the western media, but asserted that Kurdish media in Turkey began showing interest on Sunday.

Kurdish sources in Europe claim that in the city of Qamishli on the Turkish border, where the riots began, authorities are stipulating the release of 25 bodies from a hospital with the families conducting quiet funerals that will not again turn into political rallies.

Kurdish activists take over Syrian consulate

Some 60 Kurdish activists took over the Syrian consulate in Geneva on Monday, in what they said was an attempt to raise public awareness in the world to "the massacre of Kurdish civilians being carried out by Syrian army and police forces."

The Kurds agreed to leave the consulate after a few hours, with the intervention of Swiss police and a promise that a letter concerning their matter would be sent to the United Nations.

http://www.reuters.com/locales/newsArticle.jsp?type=worldNews&locale=fr_CA&storyID=4579965

16 Mar 2004 17:35  

Syrie/Le bilan des violences arabo-kurdes atteindrait 32 morts

CEYLANPINAR, Turquie (Reuters) - Le bilan des affrontements entre kurdes et arabes dans le nord de la Syrie s'est alourdi à 32 morts au moins après le décès de sept personnes, mardi, dans des heurts avec les forces de sécurité dont fait état l'agence de presse turque anatolienne.

Les violences ont débuté vendredi par des échauffourées lors d'un match de football à Kamechli, près des frontières turque et irakienne, et ont été signalées dans d'autres localités depuis. L'armée a été envoyée dans la région pour rétablir l'ordre.

Les forces de sécurité ont ouvert le feu mardi lors de rassemblements à Alep et Afrin organisés pour commémorer l'attaque à l'arme chimique contre les habitants kurdes de la ville irakienne d'Halabja par l'armée de Saddam Hussein, qui fit 5.000 morts le 16 mars 1988, rapporte l'agence anatolienne de presse en citant des sources locales.

Trois personnes ont été tuées à Alep, et quatre à Afrin, ajoute l'agence en parlant également de nombreux blessés. D'après les sources locales auxquelles elle se réfère, les tués sont des Kurdes.

De sources proches des milieux autorisés syriens, on estime que les incidents du match de vendredi ont été manipulés par des responsables kurdes à des fins politiques, allusion aux revendications de quelque 200.000 Kurdes syriens non reconnus à part entière comme citoyens.

Les Kurdes de Syrie sont environ deux millions, sur une population totale de 17 millions, mais Damas évite toute référence à une minorité distincte et insiste au contraire sur l'importance de l'unité nationale. Des Kurdes ont déjà occupé d'importantes positions au sein du gouvernement ou de l'armée.

"TOTALE HARMONIE"

"Des milieux mal intentionnés ont cru avoir trouvé l'occasion de donner l'allure d'une confrontation interethnique à une échauffourée entre les supporters de deux équipes de football", a déclaré mardi l'ambassade de Syrie à Paris.

"Il est certain que les fauteurs de ces troubles découvriront vite que la totale harmonie entre les diverses communautés et les différentes ethnies, en Syrie, est beaucoup plus forte et plus profondément ancrée dans les esprits et les coeurs qu'ils ne le pensent", a-t-elle dit dans un communiqué.

"Le gouvernement syrien (...) ne tolérera aucune atteinte à l'ordre public, à l'unité nationale et aux droits de ses citoyens de vivre en paix et en sécurité", a poursuivi l'ambassade en ajoutant qu'une commission avait été chargée d'enquêter sur "l'origine et les desseins des instigateurs".

D'après des habitants joints par téléphone de Turquie, un couvre-feu a été imposé dans la ville de Ras al-Aïn, près de la ville frontalière turque de Ceylanpinar, où cinq personnes ont trouvé la mort lundi dans des heurts.

Un dirigeant d'une tribu locale fait partie des victimes et 39 personnes auraient été blessées dans ces affrontements.

Dans la ville d'Ammouda, des groupes kurdes ont pris d'assaut un commissariat, dont un responsable a été tué ainsi que quatre policiers et un soldat, a-t-on ajouté de même source.

Les émeutes de Kamechli avaient déjà fait 14 morts et provoqué de nombreux dégâts.

ANKARA APPELLE AU CALME

L'armée syrienne a envoyé des renforts pour tenter de calmer la situation. Des mesures de sécurité supplémentaires ont en outre été imposées du côté turc de la frontière.

Le ministre turc des Affaires étrangères Abdullah Gül a lancé un appel au calme.

"Tout le monde doit comprendre que ces troubles ne profitent à personne (...), ni aux Kurdes, ni aux Arabes, ni à la Turquie", a-t-il dit à des journalistes à Ankara.

Ankara a lancé de nombreux avertissements contre le renforcement de l'autonomie des Kurdes d'Irak, redoutant qu'elle n'alimente le sentiment national des Kurdes de Turquie, en lutte depuis plus de vingt ans contre le pouvoir central turc.

Mais l'adoption de la constitution provisoire irakienne le lundi 8 mars dernier a consacré le droit des Kurdes irakiens à l'autonomie dans les trois provinces septentrionales de l'Irak et fait du kurde l'une des deux langues officielles du pays.

Selon des sources gouvernementales iraniennes, des Kurdes iraniens ont manifesté cette semaine pour fêter la reconnaissance officielle des droits des Kurdes irakiens. Les rassemblements ont été marqués par des violences et 120 manifestants ont été interpellés, d'après un journal de Téhéran.

Les Kurdes, au nombre d'environ 30 millions selon les estimations les plus courantes, se répartissent entre la Syrie, la Turquie, l'Iran et l'Irak.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A8E8FFC0-0086-432A-AAAC-504781763AE2.htm

Syrian-Kurd clashes continue

Tuesday 16 March 2004, 15:39 Makka Time, 12:39 GMT 

Damascus warned those leading protests would be punished

Eleven people have been killed in fresh clashes between Arabs and Kurds in two towns in northeast Syria after weekend riots, according to local Syrian residents and Turkish security forces on Tuesday.

Syrian security forces imposed a curfew in the town of Ras al-Ain, near the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar , after five people were killed in fighting there on Monday.

Local Syrian sources contacted by telephone from Turkey said a senior member of a local tribe was among those killed. Thirty people were injured in the clashes.

In the town of Ammuda , Kurdish groups attacked a police station on Monday, killing a police chief, four police officers and a soldier, the sources added.

They said the Syrian military had sent additional forces to the region to calm the situation. Security measures were also increased on the Turkish side of the border.

Warnings

The latest fighting followed a weekend of Kurdish rioting which killed at least 14 people further east in the Syrian town of al-Qamashli, where a railway station, schools and public offices were badly damaged.

"The policy of the stick will only assist the plots of foreign forces which want to destabilise Syria and impose conditions on it" Anwar Bunni, human rights lawyer

The violence in al-Qamashli, an ethnically mixed town near the Turkish and Iraqi border, ended after Interior Minister Ali Haj Hammud flew to the area to take control and the authorities threatened those responsible with the "severest punishments".

State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli urged Damascus "to refrain from using increasingly repressive measures to ostracise a minority that has asked for a greater acceptance and integration into Syrian life."

Relations between Damascus and Washington are tense as the United States moves to impose new sanctions against Syria .

Rowdy sports match

The violence was triggered by a brawl and stampede at a football match in Qamashli and spread to several towns nearby.  

Sources close to government thinking said Kurdish politicians had tried to turn the match riot into a political issue, a reference to the grievances of about 200,000 Kurds not recognised as citizens.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Kurdish Syrians have been arrested since rioting broke out on Friday said human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni on Tuesday.

"We have a list of 300 people arrested around Dummar, in the western suburbs of Damascus , and reports of an unspecified number of arrests in the northeastern regions," Bunni said.

"The policy of the stick will only assist the plots of foreign forces which want to destabilise Syria and impose conditions on it," he warned, in reference to the threat of US sanctions.

Population simmering

Bunni said he had gone on Sunday to Dummar, where Kurds in the capital are concentrated, in an effort to calm local anger at the weekend events.

He said Dummar residents had taken to the streets, destroying a police car and electricity poles, and police anti-riot squads had been sent to the scene.

There are about two million Kurds in Syria 's 17 million population, but Syrian officials avoid reference to Kurds as a distinct minority and stress the importance of national unity.

Kurds and other minorities have held senior government and army positions.

On Monday, about 20 Kurds entered the Syrian consulate in Geneva in a protest over the deaths at the weekend.

Several dozen Kurds also forced their way into the grounds of the Syrian embassy in Brussels on Saturday during a protest apparently sparked by the unrest in Syria .

Reuters

http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/March/16n/Syrian%20religious%20leaders%20call%20for%20unity%20after%20riots.htm

Syrian religious leaders call for unity after riots

Jordan Times, Tuesday, March 16, 2004

HASSAKE, Syria (AFP) — Anti-riot police guarded public buildings in Hassake on Monday as shops reopened and calm returned to the northeast Syrian town shaken by Kurdish riots over the weekend during which a former MP said 19 people were killed and 150 injured. In public parks and the town's central square, Muslim and Christian leaders called for “national unity” and on the people to “bury sedition fomented abroad.”

An AFP correspondent in Hassake, 680 kilometres northeast of Damascus , said schools had reopened although attendance was reduced. No military checkpoints could be seen at the town entrances and identity checks were no longer being carried out. Rioting broke out on Friday during a football match at Qameshli, close to the border with Turkey to the north and Iraq to the east. Locals from Arab tribes in the region shouted slogans against Iraqi Kurdish leaders and brandished pictures of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Fighting spread to Hassake and the mainly-Kurdish frontier villages.

Rioting Kurds set fire to public buildings, which were empty on Friday, the normal day off in Syria . The three-storey customs headquarters in Qameshli was burnt out, along with warehouses and other public buildings.

Witnesses said the Syrian flag was pulled down from some buildings and Kurdish colours hoisted.

“Nineteen people have been killed and around 150, including members of the security forces, were injured during the troubles which took place Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the towns of Qameshli and Hassake, and the villages of Al Amodi and Al Darbassiya,” former MP Abdel Hamid Darwish told AFP.

A local authority member, who asked not to be named, said the unrest originally started in Qameshli and spread to Hassake.

“The troubles continued Sunday in Hassake where armed Kurds attacked Arabs in Al Salihe district, killing two of them. Around a dozen armed Kurds have been arrested by the security forces,” he said.

“But since Sunday afternoon calm has returned and the security forces are deployed in the two towns and nearby villages and have detained the authors of the troubles,” he added.

The official ruling Baath Party journal said on Monday that a commission of inquiry set up to investigate the causes of the riots had already started work.

It will “be charged with applying the law and punishing everyone who used arms against citizens and the country,” the paper said.

An estimated nine per cent of Syria 's population of 18 million are of Kurdish origin, concentrated in the northern region abutting Turkey and Iraq .

Around 250,000 Kurds living in Syria do not have Syrian nationality after being excluded during the last census, in 1962. They are obligated to do military service but have no civil or civic rights. But Kurds are largely integrated into Syrian society.

http://www.lexpress.fr/info/infojour/infos.asp?Titre=040317103051.64anmew1.txt&Rubrique=monde&1203

mercredi 17 mars 2004

Affrontements dans le nord de la Syrie : 17 tués kurdes en 24 h

La police syrienne intervient lundi à Hassaké après des heurts violents

© AFP Louai Beshara

QAMICHLI (AFP) - Les affrontements qui ont éclaté ces derniers jours dans le nord-est de la Syrie ont dégénéré, opposant ces dernières 24 heures des habitants kurdes et arabes, faisant 17 tués, tous des Kurdes, a affirmé mercredi un responsable d'un parti kurde interdit.

Ces informations n'ont pas été confirmées par les autorités syriennes. Ces affrontements, qui ont également fait plusieurs dizaines de blessés, se sont poursuivis dans la nuit de mardi à mercredi dans le nord du pays, notamment dans la région d'Alep, a précisé Machaal Timo, membre du bureau politique du parti de l'Union du peuple kurde (interdit).

Neuf Kurdes ont été tués dans les quartiers périphériques de la ville d'Alep (nord-ouest), ceux d'Asharafiyé et de cheikh Maksoud, six dans le village d'Ifrine (40 km à l'ouest d'Alep) et deux dans celui de Ras Al-Ayn (nord-est), près de la frontière turque, a-t-il affirmé.

Des troubles ont également eu lieu aux abords des villages frontaliers d'Amouda, Derik, Ain Diwar, Malkiyé, Derbassiyé, a-t-il ajouté.

Deux responsables de mouvements kurdes avaient fait état mardi de trois morts parmi les Kurdes dans la région d'Alep.

Les affrontements qui avaient éclaté vendredi dans la ville de Qamichli (600 km au nord-est de Damas), avaient dans un premier temps opposé Kurdes et forces de l'ordre.

Des villages kurdes ont été attaqués par des membres de tribus arabes qui se sont livrés à des actes de vendetta après que des Kurdes eurent tué des Arabes au cours du week-end dans la ville de Qamichli, selon M. Timo.

Il a indiqué que des responsables du gouvernement avaient tenu une réunion avec des notables des deux bords pour tenter de calmer la tension.

Les troubles ont commencé vendredi à Qamichli, où vit une importante communauté kurde, avant un match du championnat de football national, lorsque des partisans de l'équipe adverse ont lancé des slogans hostiles aux chefs kurdes irakiens et ont brandi des portraits du président irakien déchu Saddam Hussein.

Les forces de l'ordre ayant ouvert le feu sur les supporteurs kurdes, les troubles ont alors tourné à l'émeute et des manifestants ont saccagé et brûlé des édifices publics et ont fait descendre le drapeau syrien pour hisser les couleurs kurdes.

Au cours du week-end, les affrontements avaient déjà fait 19 morts et 150 blessés, selon des informations de diverses sources kurdes.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040317/ap_on_re_mi_ea/syria_kurdish_riots_6

At Least 8 Dead in Syria Kurdish Clashes

Wed Mar 17, 2:07 PM ET 

DAMASCUS, Syria - The latest clashes between security forces and Kurds in northern Syria have left at least eight people dead, a Kurdish politician and a witness said Wednesday.

The deaths from Tuesday's violence raised to at least 24 the number of people who have died in recent fighting among Kurds, police and members of Syria 's Arab majority.

The Syrian government, which has not issued any casualty figures since Kurdish clashes with police began before a soccer game Friday, did not confirm the report.

Ahmed Qassem of the Democratic Kurdish Party in Syria said two Kurds and three police officers were killed Tuesday in a riot in Aleppo , Syria 's second-biggest city, while a third Kurd was hospitalized and died of his injuries Wednesday.

Aleppo is 200 miles north of the capital, Damascus .

Two other people were killed in a riot in Afreen, 40 miles north of Aleppo , witness Othman Mohammed said.  

Qassem said both riots began as Kurdish demonstrations to commemorate the anniversary of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s deadly 1988 poison gas attack on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja .

In Aleppo , security forces opened fire on hundreds of Kurds who were marking the anniversary of the Iraqi attack, which killed thousands of people, Qassem said. The Kurds fought police with knives, sticks and stones, but it was not clear how the violence started.

Kurds in Aleppo have marked Halabja's anniversary in previous years by standing in silence for five minutes. But on Tuesday, Qassem said, the Kurds resisted when the police tried to disperse them immediately after the five minutes.

Police fired in the air, the demonstrators responded by throwing rocks and sticks, and then police began firing into the crowd, Qassem said.

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/040318/2004031801.html

Some 17 Kurds killed, confrontation increases pressures in Syria
Syria , Politics, 3/18/2004

Syrian Kurdish sources said that the confrontations between the Arab citizens and the Kurds developed during the past 24 hours in the north east part of the country and this resulted in killing 17 persons all of them Kurds, so as number of killings since the eruption of the clashes on Friday reached 36, according to the same sources.

Member of the political bureau of the Kurdistani people's federation party, which is banned in Syria , Mashaal Timo, said that the confrontations continued on Tuesday evening in the northern part of the country especially in Aleppo area.

He indicated that 9 Kurds were killed in the two suburbs of al-Ashrafeyah and al-Sheikh Maqsoud in the city of Aleppo , while other 6 were killed in Ifrin to the west of Aleppo , besides two others in Raas al-Ein near the border with Turkey .

Timo added that the confrontations also prevailed the suburbs of the towns of Amouda, Dereik, Ein Dewar, al-Malekeyah and al-Derbaseyah which border Turkey .

Since last Friday, violent confrontations have taken place between the Kurds and the security forces started in al-Qamishli city before a football match was converted into acts of riots when supporters of the rival team chanted slogans against the Iraqi Kurds leaders and carried the pictures of the toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

In the second day demonstrations of protests converted into acts of riots and these clashes in certain times took the form of confrontations between Kurds and Arab tribes that resulted in hundreds of wounded and detainees as well as damaging a train station, schools and government offices in the north east of the country.

The governor of al-Hassaka, Salim Kabboul, said that five Syrian Arabs were killed in north- east Syria since the eruption of the riots acts with the Kurds on march 12.

In withstanding these acts of unrest, the Syrian official departments announced opening investigations. The Syrian authorities denied ethnic tensions to be behind the problem blaming riot makers of having foreign links and political intensions.

http://www.swissinfo.org/sfr/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=4804883

19 mars 2004 23:41

Damas libère plusieurs centaines de Kurdes après des émeutes

DAMAS - Les autorités syriennes ont libéré 500 à 600 Kurdes arrêtés au cours d'émeutes qui ont éclaté la semaine dernière dans le nord et le nord-est du pays. Plusieurs centaines de personnes restent toutefois détenues, ont annoncé vendredi des représentants kurdes.

«Nous demandons la libération des autres», a déclaré Kheir al-Deen Mourad, membre du Parti de la gauche kurde, selon lequel 2000 personnes se trouvent toujours sous les verrous.

Interrogé jeudi, un haut responsable du gouvernement syrien a indiqué, sans dévoiler leur nombre, que les détenus seraient relâchés rapidement, une fois le calme revenu. «Seuls ceux qui ont enfreint la loi sont détenus pour être présentés à la justice», a-t-il ajouté.

Un trentaine de personnes, des Kurdes pour la plupart, ont trouvé la mort dans les émeutes qui ont éclaté vendredi à l'issue d'un match de football à Kamechli, près de la frontière turque, avant de s'étendre à d'autres localités du nord de la Syrie.

Plusieurs centaines de Kurdes ont défilé vendredi dans les rues de Doummar, faubourg de Damas, pour manifester leur attachement à l'unité nationale et dénoncer les violences, rapportent des témoins. Sur les 17 millions de Syriens, deux millions appartiennent à la minorité kurde.

192337 mar 04

SDA-ATS

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,114681,00.html

Syrian Kurds Calm Down After Week of Riots

Friday, March 19, 2004

DAMASCUS — Fires still burned on the outskirts of Qamishli on Friday, eight days after the start of Kurdish-Arab riots that spread to three other north Syrian towns and killed 25 people.

Faisal Youssef, an executive of the Progressive Kurdish Party, said the city, 450 miles northeast of Damascus, was returning to normal, but local Kurdish groups have canceled their celebrations to mark Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year, which falls on Sunday.

The festivities, which usually feature bonfires and folk dancing, will not take place "to prevent infiltrators from undermining historic relations between Kurds and Arabs," Youssef said Thursday by telephone.

Kurds in Syria , Iran , Turkey and Lebanon and Iranians mark Nowruz (search) on March 21 every year. The feast, which symbolizes purification of the soul, dates back to the pre-Islamic religion of Zoroastrianism (search).

Clouds of smoke that could be seen in neighboring Turkey rose from barns of fodder set alight last weekend during the riots, Youssef said.

The violence began March 12 with a brawl between supporters of two teams in a soccer stadium in Qamishli. One team had many Kurdish players, the other had Arab players. The fighting continued the next day when Kurds went on the rampage during a funeral for the riot victims, and it spread to Hasakah, 50 miles southwest of Qamishli.

On Tuesday, Kurds battled Arab policemen in Syria 's second-biggest city, Aleppo (search), 200 miles north of Damascus , and the nearby town of Afreen .

The government has blamed the violence on what it calls "mobs and opportunists" that have been influenced from abroad.

In the government's first report on casualties, Syrian Interior Minister Ali Hammoud said Thursday that 25 people were killed in the violence.

Speaking at a news conference in Damascus , Hammoud said there were attempts to "sow sedition" and that authorities had to take "decisive" measures after efforts to end the trouble peacefully failed.

The United States has criticized the Syrian government's handling of the riots.

"Citizens of Kurdish descent have been protesting the lack of equal rights and, in the ensuing violence, the authorities have not only killed and injured demonstrators, but also clamped down hard on normal life in cities where there's a Kurdish majority," U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.

It is thought that the Kurds, whom the Syrian constitution does not recognize, may have been inspired by the political rise of Kurds in neighboring Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein last year.

Kurds comprise about 1.5 million of Syria 's 18.5 million people and live mostly in the underdeveloped provinces of Qamishli and Hasakah.

A Syrian rights group, the Committees for the Defense of Democratic Liberties and Human Rights (search), called on the government Thursday to release all political prisoners, "particularly those who were detained recently" in the Kurdish rioting.

An estimated 250 Kurds have been detained since the violence began.

http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=511639

Kurds vent deep anger with Syrians 

Neil MacFarquhar/NYT NYT

Wednesday, March 24, 2004 

QAMISHLY, Syria A larger-than-life statue of the late president, Hafez al-Assad, which once towered over a central traffic circle here, stands hidden beneath a blue and red striped canvas tarpaulin to hide the fact that anti-government protesters knocked off its head, residents say.

In the nearby town of Malkiya , two gilded plaster busts of Assad and his son, President Bashar Assad, the main decor inside a local culture center, were also decapitated and the building torched.

Someone scrawled " Kurdistan " in bright red spray paint across an interior wall of the gutted water authority building there, too.

Violent anti-government protests by Kurds demanding minority rights that have erupted over several days this month have left in their wake a toll of blackened government buildings, schools, grain silos and vehicles across a wide swath of northern Syria .

"What happened did not come out of a void," says Bishar Ahmed, a 30-year-old Kurd whose cramped stationary shop sits next to a cluster of blackened official buildings in Malkiya.

"The pressure has been building for nearly 50 years," Ahmed said. "They consider us foreigners, we have no rights as citizens."  

Clashes between soccer fans from rival teams March 11 triggered the sudden spate of violence, which officially left 25 people dead and dozens wounded. But the tinderbox of raw emotions that the riots laid bare universally shocked Syrians and left government officials painting a sinister picture of foreign-inspired plots to partition the country.

Local officials suggest that the Kurds were motivated by agent provocateurs who infiltrated from Iraq .

"They came from outside the country, from the east, and they have been paid in U.S. dollars supplied by Bremer and his gang," said Ahmed Al-Salah, an employee of a torched government feed storage warehouse in Qamishly, 640 kilometers , or 400 miles , northeast of Damascus . He was referring to L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the chief American administrator in Iraq .

For their part, Kurdish residents claim the government responded to what they call peaceful protests with massive violence as an excuse to say Syria remains far too unstable to introduce the kind of democratic reforms that are helping their brethren in Iraq .

"We want democracy like the others," said Hoshiar Abdelrahman, another young shopkeeper in Malkiya, 100 kilometers east of Qamishly. "The whole world is like one big ball now, nothing can be hidden from us."

After the first few demonstrators were killed, Kurdish areas throughout the region were bubbling over with years of repressed grievances, locals say. In Malkiya, for example, a town of one and two-story buildings, the tide of angry voices at the Saturday market eventually led to a mass march on city hall. As the crowd approached, security officers opened fire, killing a 17-year-old and a 20-year-old man, and wounding tens of others, residents said.

The government version is that the Kurds starting torching buildings first and the government fired on them to protect its property.

"If we were attacked by an Israel missile we would respond with all means possible," said Salim Kabul, the governor of Hassakeh province. "So what do you expect when we are attacked from inside?"

In notably abbreviated remarks to visiting reporters, the governor put the death toll in his province at 20 dead, including 14 Kurds and six Arabs, among them two policemen. Kurds say they suspect the toll is far higher, but they don't know how many because scores of young men have been detained.

The grievances of some of the roughly 2 million Kurds among the 17 million Syrians are etched onto the landscape here. Fields of wheat stretch to the horizon, interrupted periodically by gigantic, praying-mantis like oil pumps and cramped mud brick villages.

The area produces much of the country's oil as well as two of its prime agricultural products - wheat and cotton, residents say, and yet they get little in the way of development money. Instead they complain that for the past four decades the government has been slowly moving more and more Arabs into the area, trying to create a belt about 16 kilometers wide and some 265 kilometers long to sever them from their ethnic kin in Iraq and Turkey.

Village and even mountain names have been Arabized and the Kurdish language banned, although most families teach it at home. Worse, thousands upon thousands of Kurds are denied citizenship. (Kurdish groups say more than 200,000; the government says 100,000.)

"My grandfather was born here, yet my father is considered a foreigner, I am a foreigner and my three-year-old son has no nationality," said Abdelrahman, the shopkeeper.

He cannot register his son, his car or his shop in his name, he said, and both he and his wife's identification cards read "Single" because their marriage is not recognized.

The New York Times

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B142D426-802E-4A99-B630-46D86F7D4830.htm

Syria detains up to 2000 Kurds

Sunday 28 March 2004, 19:51 Makka Time, 16:51 GMT 

Kurds make up nine percent of Syria 's population

Syria has continued to arrest Kurds in the wake of deadly riots earlier this month, raising the number behind bars to more than 2000, the head of a banned Kurdish party said on Sunday.

The secretary general of the Kurdish Progressive Democratic Party, Abd al-Aziz Dawud, also said security officials had threatened even harsher measures in a meeting with Kurdish leaders.

"Instead of calming things down and showing themselves to be more flexible, Syrian security officers have threatened to take repressive measures and arrest more people," Dawud said in a statement.

The statement followed a meeting between Kurdish leaders and the security services on Saturday in Hassake, more than 500km north of Damascus .

"These security officials issued these threats knowing full well that the number of detained Kurds has passed 2000," he said.

Clashes

Authorities informed the Kurds last week of the release of around 600 of their people, but Dawud said at the time that another 1500 were still detained in Hassake and Aleppo provinces where the clashes took place.

"Instead of calming things down and showing themselves to be more flexible, Syrian security officers have threatened to take repressive measures and arrest more people"Abd al-Aziz Dawud, Secretary general, Kurdish Progressive Democratic Party

Kurdish leaders said 40 people were killed in the six days of clashes which broke out on 12 March. An official toll put the number of dead at 25.

The trouble broke out at a football match in Qamishli, 600km north of Damascus , when Arab tribesmen taunted Kurds with slogans against Iraqi Kurdish leaders and brandished portraits of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Syrian officials have accused foreign infiltrators of being behind the unrest, but Dawud cited growing resentment, including discrimination against Kurds in universities and the military.

The roughly 1.5 million Kurds in Syria make up about nine percent of the population, and live mostly in the north.  

AFP

Published: 2004/04/07 10:32:04 GMT

Syria urged to free riot Kurds

The human rights organisation Amnesty International has called on Syria to release Kurds detained during last month's violent riots.

"Hundreds" of Kurds are being held at unknown locations, incommunicado and without charge, Amnesty said.

It called for an independent inquiry into the riots which left 25 dead and injured hundreds in five days.

The unrest was sparked by a soccer match brawl on 12 March, between fans of teams supported by Arabs and Kurds.

It spread quickly from the northern town of Qameshli , near the border with Turkey and Iraq , to other towns.

The incommunicado detention... puts detainees at greater risk of torture or ill-treatment
Amnesty statement

The Syrian government has not revealed how many people were detained following clashes between demonstrators and troops.

Kurdish leaders said last month that hundreds of people had been released from custody, but that hundreds of others were still being held.

In its statement on Tuesday, Amnesty International said: "The incommunicado detention at unknown locations of many hundreds of Syrian Kurds is of serious concern, not least as it puts detainees at greater risk of torture or ill-treatment," the statement said.

"Unless they are to be charged with recognisably criminal offences and brought to trial without undue delay, they should be released immediately,"

The group also urged the Syrian authorities to establish how friction at a soccer match escalated into such violence.

Syria has about two million Kurds among its population of 17 million.

Story from BBC NEWS:
© BBC MMIV

Kurds Say Homes Raided by Syrians

By ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press Writer

April 7, 2004 , 10:19 PM EDT

BEIRUT , Lebanon -- Syria has arrested dozens of Kurds in nightime raids of homes in the country's northeast, Kurdish officials said Wednesday.

The arrests followed clashes between Syrian security forces and Kurdish rioters last month that killed 25 and wounded more than 100. Hundreds of Kurds were arrested following that unrest.

"Syrian authorities have not stopped their nighttime raids, arrests, and oppression of safe Kurds in their homes, continuing the policy of persecution against the Kurdish people," Abdel Baki Youssef, leader of the Kurdish Yekiti Party, said in a statement that was faxed to The Associated Press in Beirut.

Syrian officials could not be reached for comment.

Youssef said the arrests included four Kurdish schoolchildren, aged 12 and 13, taken from their school in Qamishli, 450 miles northeast of Damascus . He said they were sent to a prison in Hasakah, 50 miles southwest of Qamishli.

Youssef claimed another Kurd, 26-year-old Hussein Hamak Nasso, died overnight Wednesday after being tortured in prison in the northern town of Afreen . He said Syrian security forces prevented Nasso's family from holding a funeral and forced them to bury him secretly in their presence.

Up to 40 people may have been arrested in Hasakah province in the past two days, Abdel Hamid Darwish, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party in Syria , said from Qamishli.

On Tuesday, human rights watchdog Amnesty International urged Syria to begin an independent judicial inquiry into last month's clashes, to end repressive measures against its Kurdish minority, and release "hundreds" of Kurds held without charges.

The Syrian constitution does not recognize Kurds, who make up about 1.5 million of Syria 's 18.5 million people and live mostly in the underdeveloped northern provinces of Qamishli and Hasakah.

The clashes between Kurds and Syrian police began March 12 with a brawl between supporters of rival soccer teams before a match in Qamishli. The next day, Kurds went on the rampage during a funeral for the riot victims, and the violence spread to nearby areas.

The government blamed the five days of violence on "mobs and opportunists" influenced from abroad.

It is not known how many Kurds were detained in the unrest. More than 400 were released last month, but many are thought to be still in custody.

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

Syria urged to free riot Kurds

The human rights organisation Amnesty International has called on Syria to release Kurds detained during last month's violent riots.

Trouble started after a football match and quickly spread

"Hundreds" of Kurds are being held at unknown locations, incommunicado and without charge, Amnesty said.

It called for an independent inquiry into the riots which left 25 dead and injured hundreds in five days.

The unrest was sparked by a soccer match brawl on 12 March, between fans of teams supported by Arabs and Kurds.

It spread quickly from the northern town of Qameshli , near the border with Turkey and Iraq , to other towns.

The incommunicado detention... puts detainees at greater risk of torture or ill-treatment
Amnesty statement

The Syrian government has not revealed how many people were detained following clashes between demonstrators and troops.

Kurdish leaders said last month that hundreds of people had been released from custody, but that hundreds of others were still being held.

In its statement on Tuesday, Amnesty International said: "The incommunicado detention at unknown locations of many hundreds of Syrian Kurds is of serious concern, not least as it puts detainees at greater risk of torture or ill-treatment," the statement said.

"Unless they are to be charged with recognisably criminal offences and brought to trial without undue delay, they should be released immediately,"

The group also urged the Syrian authorities to establish how friction at a soccer match escalated into such violence.

Syria has about two million Kurds among its population of 17 million.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3607059.stm

Published: 2004/04/07 10:32:04 GMT

© BBC MMIV

Kurds Say Homes Raided by Syrians

By ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press Writer

April 7, 2004, 10:19 PM EDT

BEIRUT , Lebanon -- Syria has arrested dozens of Kurds in nightime raids of homes in the country's northeast, Kurdish officials said Wednesday.

The arrests followed clashes between Syrian security forces and Kurdish rioters last month that killed 25 and wounded more than 100. Hundreds of Kurds were arrested following that unrest.

"Syrian authorities have not stopped their nighttime raids, arrests, and oppression of safe Kurds in their homes, continuing the policy of persecution against the Kurdish people," Abdel Baki Youssef, leader of the Kurdish Yekiti Party, said in a statement that was faxed to The Associated Press in Beirut.

Syrian officials could not be reached for comment.

Youssef said the arrests included four Kurdish schoolchildren, aged 12 and 13, taken from their school in Qamishli, 450 miles northeast of Damascus . He said they were sent to a prison in Hasakah, 50 miles southwest of Qamishli.

Youssef claimed another Kurd, 26-year-old Hussein Hamak Nasso, died overnight Wednesday after being tortured in prison in the northern town of Afreen . He said Syrian security forces prevented Nasso's family from holding a funeral and forced them to bury him secretly in their presence.

Up to 40 people may have been arrested in Hasakah province in the past two days, Abdel Hamid Darwish, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party in Syria , said from Qamishli.

On Tuesday, human rights watchdog Amnesty International urged Syria to begin an independent judicial inquiry into last month's clashes, to end repressive measures against its Kurdish minority, and release "hundreds" of Kurds held without charges.

The Syrian constitution does not recognize Kurds, who make up about 1.5 million of Syria 's 18.5 million people and live mostly in the underdeveloped northern provinces of Qamishli and Hasakah.

The clashes between Kurds and Syrian police began March 12 with a brawl between supporters of rival soccer teams before a match in Qamishli. The next day, Kurds went on the rampage during a funeral for the riot victims, and the violence spread to nearby areas.

The government blamed the five days of violence on "mobs and opportunists" influenced from abroad.

It is not known how many Kurds were detained in the unrest. More than 400 were released last month, but many are thought to be still in custody.

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

HERALD SUN

Syria arrests more than 1000 Kurds
From correspondents in Damascus
12apr04

SYRIAN authorities have arrested more than 1000 Kurds as part of a continuing campaign against the Kurdish minority, a Syrian human rights group claimed today.

It was the second report in less than a week of an alleged clampdown on Kurds in Syria since last month's clashes between Syrian security forces and Kurdish rioters in which 25 were killed and more than 100 wounded.

In a statement faxed to foreign news agencies in Damascus today, Aktham Naisse, the chairman of the Committees for the Defence of Democratic Liberties and Human Rights in Syria , said "arbitrary daily arrests" were still continuing against Kurdish women and men.

More than 1000 Kurds have been arrested and many of them were tortured, he said.

Naisse said two Kurds, Firhad Mohammad Daoud, 21, from Qamishli in north east Syria , and Hussein Hmak Nassom 22, from the northern town of Afreen , died under torture in prison.

The statement claimed that a number of Kurds were dismissed from Syrian universities for participating in last month's demonstrations.

Syrian officials could not be reached for comment.

Faisal al-Youssef, a member of the political bureau of the Kurdish Democratic Party, said that daily arrests of Kurds have been conducted since last month. He also reported the deaths of the two Kurds in detention.

On April 7, the Kurdish Yekiti Party claimed that Syrians authorities conducted raids in north-eastern Syria and arrested dozens of Kurds.

The March clashes between Kurds and Syrian police began with a brawl between supporters of rival soccer teams before a match in Qamishli. The next day, Kurds went on the rampage during a funeral for the riot victims, and the violence spread to nearby areas.

In his statement today, Naisse called for an immediate halt to "terrorist and illegal practices" against the Kurds, warning that such practices would "further complicate the situation and increase unrest" among Syria 's various ethnic groups.

He said the introduction of swift democratic reforms would help deal fairly with the issue of the Kurds' rights in Syria .

Kurds comprise about 1.5 million of Syria 's 18.5 million people, live mostly in the underdeveloped provinces of Qamishli and Hasakah and occasionally complain of being marginalised in Syria .

Syria and other Iraqi neighbours with large Kurdish minorities are concerned Kurds in their countries may be inspired to become more assertive because of the political rise of Kurds in neighbouring Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein last year.

Syria releases 27 Kurdish youths
Monday 24 May 2004 1:41 PM GMT

Many of Syria 's 1.5 million Kurds say they lack basic rights

Syrian authorities have released 27 Kurdish youths, aged 13 to 17, who were among hundreds of people arrested during ethnic clashes in northern cities in March.

Anwar al-Buni, a lawyer of the Human Rights Association of Syria, said on Monday their release was ordered by Juvenile Court, to which they had been referred after their arrest.

Adult detainees were referred to State Security Court , which tries political cases. 

Nearly 2000 Kurds were rounded up during the March clashes between Kurdish rioters and Syrian security forces that left 25 people dead and more than 100 injured. Many of the detainees since have been released. 

The clashes erupted following a brawl at a soccer match in the northeastern city of Qamishli and later extended to Hasaka, capital of the northern Hasaka province. The two cities have large Kurdish communities. 

Al-Buni said the charges against the youths had included damaging public property, fomenting riot, harming national sentiments, confronting policemen and directing insults and abuse at Syrian authorities.

'Positive move'

He called their release "a positive move" and urged authorities to transfer other detainees to ordinary courts, instead of the State Security Court , and to stop all kinds of political detentions. 

Decisions of the State Security Court , set up in line with Syria 's 1963 emergency law, cannot be appealed and the cases often are heard by military personnel rather than civilian judges. 

Syrian Kurds long have complained they lack basic rights, and that the areas of northern Syria where they live are neglected by the government.

About 1.5 million Kurds are among Syria 's 18.5 million population. More than 10% of them, about 160,000, are denied Syrian citizenship.

AP

You can find this article at:
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Asia Times, 05-04-08

US designs on Syria 's Kurds
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - One of the overriding fears in the Middle East is how Kurds might be manipulated by outside forces to create havoc in the region, as has happened before.

On May 29, 1945, while the French were trying to topple the Syrian government, they bombed Damascus and ignited violence in the Hay al-Akrad neighborhood of the Syrian capital, where the city's Kurds resided.

The French told the Kurds that acting prime minister Jamil Mardam Bey had fled to Jordan , spreading a rumor that president Shukri al-Quwatli had been killed, leaving Syria in chaos. It was now up to the Kurds to take matters into their own hands, the French said. The Kurds quickly took to the streets, occupying police stations, destroying government offices, and raising the Kurdish flag to replace the Syrian one. They were calmed, and brought back to order by Mardam Bey.

The event, which took place exactly 60 years ago, explains how easily some Kurds can be incited to cause trouble. The story, mentioned in the memoirs of Mardam Bey, was confirmed by an observer of the events of 1945, but challenged by a Kurdish gentleman who said, "Absolutely untrue. An officer in the Syrian army, who was a Kurd, called on us to carry our weapons, and to defend Shukri al-Quwatli."

This shows the degree of division in Syria over the Kurdish issue, with some insisting to denigrate the Kurds as separatists who have no loyalty to Syria , and others insisting that they are a part of the Syrian identity, just like any Syrian Arab, who shaped Syria 's history and culture over the centuries, and are Syrian nationalists at heart. The truth, another camp argues, is somewhere in between.

The de-Syriafication of 1962
Nothing shows this division better than the violence that rocked Syria in March 2004, conducted, once again, by some - but not all - Kurds, and generally believed in Syria to be the dirty work of the US . The event led to the killing of some Kurds and to the arrest of hundreds.

In March this year, President Bashar Assad released 312 Kurds, all arrested during the disturbances of 2004, promising to grant Syrian citizenship to 300,000 Kurds who were stripped of it in 1962.

Currently, 25,000 Kurds are unregistered in Syria , and another 225,000 are registered as "foreigners" with no Syrian passports but red IDs, granted by the Ministry of Interior. They have restrictions on travel, marriage and owning property. Exaggeration in the Western media says that they are discriminated against at schools, in hospitals and in government employment and wages. In July 1996, the Syrian government told Human Rights Watch that the number of Kurds with such status was only 67,465.

Assad today wants to be nice to the Syrian Kurds, fearing that inspired by the autonomy and grand concessions, they are gaining in Iraq , they will make similar demands for autonomy in Syria . The truth is that the Kurds of Syria are very different from those of Iraq . They want citizenship, not autonomy.

Ahmad Barakat, of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party, confirmed this to the Christian Science Monitor, saying, "Our problem is very different from that of the Kurds in Iraq . Their aim in Iraq is to get a state of their own. But in Syria , we just want our culture and freedom as Syrian nationals."

The US media, however, and some US-backed Kurdish activists, in Syria and abroad, insist on marketing a story of Kurdish plight, unrest and separatism in Syria , claiming that the Syrian Kurds are oppressed and deserve autonomy, just like their Iraqi counterparts. Many see this as part of a grand US smear campaign against Damascus .

The London-based al-Hayat published an article on April 3 saying that Syria "was putting the last touches on a law that will give citizenship to roughly 300,000 Kurds". Most of them had come to Syria in the 1920s, fleeing persecution in neighboring Turkey . Everybody who came to Syria during the French Mandate, Kurdish, Armenian, etc, were given Syrian nationality as a part of France 's plan to create diversity in Syria . Nobody was turned away between 1920 and 1946.

These Kurds had their citizenship revoked in August 1962 during a highly controversial census conducted under president Nazim al-Qudsi, a civilian pre-Ba'ath leader of Syria . The Qudsi regime came to power when Syria dissolved its merger with Egypt in September 1961, and was coming under daily fire by president Gamal Abd Nasser, who accused the new leaders of Damascus of being opponents of Arab nationalism.

To prove their Arab zeal, Syria 's new leaders passed decree number 93, stripping about 120,000 Syrian Kurds of their Syrian citizenship. The argument of the authorities in 1962 was that the census was aimed at identifying "alien infiltrators" in Syria ; those who had illegally crossed the border from Turkey . Kurds had to prove that they had lived in Syria at least since 1945, or lose any claim to Syrian citizenship. The census was rigged, and led to the fiasco of Kurdish "unrest" in Syria , which exploded in 2004.

The Kurdification of trouble in 2004
The chronology of the disturbances that took place in 2004 is difficult to believe. Presumably, Kurds clashed with Syrian Arabs in the town of Qamishli , 600 kilometers northeast of Damascus , on March 12. Reportedly, the Syrians provoked them by chanting anti-Kurdish slogans and raising photos of Saddam Hussein, to remind the Kurds that it was the ex-Iraqi dictator who had gassed them to death in Halabja in 1988.

This provocation was very had to believe since no Syrian with the right mind would dare ignite such tension, and praise Saddam so publicly in a country falsely accused by the US of having supported him. The truth is that there was no provocation in the first place, and in fact the soccer match that the media talked about as having fueled the fight never happened. The Kurds came to the stadium, attacked the Syrians, then accused them of foul play.

Maybe had the match occurred, then a clash between soccer fans would have led to violence, giving a more reasonable scenario. Reportedly, the Kurds began chanting praise of Jalal Talabani, who one year later (on April 6) became president of Iraq , Masoud al-Barazani, and George W Bush.

As the Syrians fought back in self-defense, police broke up the mob, killing 14 people in the stampede. Violence spread like a forest fire throughout Syria , with Kurds attacking Aleppo University , small towns in northern Syria , and the Dummar district in Damascus . They burned automobiles, smashed billboards, attacked public property, and in one case, tried to set a hospital ablaze.

In Ayn al-Arab, a town 500km from Damascus , they destroyed police headquarters, ransacked the Ba'ath Party office, and demolished garbage trucks. As police retaliated, more deaths occurred, and according to then-Syrian interior minister Ali Hammud, a total of 25 people were killed (six of them in Aleppo ). More shocking than the violence were the protests that took place in Belgium , where Kurds demanded an end to the "Qamishli massacre", offering to donate blood to the wounded and claiming that Syria was letting them die of their injuries.

Yes, people died in Qamishli, and yes some innocents might have been killed, but there was no "massacre" in Syria in 2004. The police did their job in keeping order. The Kurds, who make up 8.5% of Syria 's 17 million, are not an oppressed group in Syria . The Syrian Kurds, who currently number nearly 1.5 million, are a well-respected minority. They have one problem: citizenship. Apart from these "unregistered" Kurds, whose plight will be shortly resolved, the Syrian Kurds are first-class citizens.

It would be madness to mirror their story to the plight of the Kurds of Iraq. Salaadin, the most celebrated warrior in Arab and Muslim culture, who is highly glorified in Syrian history, television and schools, was a Kurd. In 1920, Abd al-Rahman Yusuf, a Damascene Kurd, was senior adviser to the Syrian government, while his son Sa'id was governor of Damascus in 1949.

Also in 1949, Syria 's first military president, Husni al-Za'im, was a Kurd, as was Adib al-Shishakli, a Kurd from Hama who ruled in 1951-54. Two prime ministers, Husni and Muhsen al-Barazi (in 1941 and 1949), were Kurds. Khalid Bakdash, the veteran leader of the Syrian Communist Party, was also a Kurd, and he became a member of parliament in 1954 because of his Kurdish roots. It was the Kurds of Damascus, rather than the views of Karl Marx, that won him a seat in parliament.

Syria 's Grand Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro, the highest Muslim authority in Syria , who held office from 1966 until his death in 2004, was a Damascene Kurd. Ali Buzzo, a prime Kurdish leader of the 1950s, was a many-times minister of interior, agriculture and justice. The list of prominent Kurds in Syrian government and society could go on and on, but these are just a few names to prove the Syrian argument.

The Kurds were not only active in the political life of Syria , but had their own political environment. In 1957, one of the earliest Kurdish parties was founded in Syria , called the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, loyal to Iraq 's Kurdish leader, Mullah Mustapha al-Barazani. It was a replica of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq , echoing its same program and objectives. It called for recognition of the Kurds as an ethnic group in Syria , and more government attention to their districts, which were economically underdeveloped.

Its activities were greatly suppressed by the pan-Arab regime of Nasser, who became ruler of Syria in 1958, and its members were persecuted. In 1965, two years after the Ba'ath Party came to power in Syria , the Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party was founded, supported by Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which was founded in Damascus in 1975. The Progressive Party is currently headed by Abd al-Hamid Darwish, who became a member of the Syrian Parliament in 1992.

Other prominent parties are the Kurdish People's Union Party and the Kurdistan Workers Party, headed by Abdullah Ocelan. Everybody in Syria remembers only too clearly that it was because of Ocelan's residence in Damascus that Syria nearly went to war against Turkey in 1998. He had been given asylum in Syria , along with members of his party fleeing the Turkish dragnet, by president Hafez Assad. When he left Damascus , Ocelan was arrested by Turkish authorities, and Kurds went into frenzy in Turkey and Europe, protesting violently and setting themselves ablaze to pressure Turkey not to have him executed.

Back then, the Syrian Kurds did not protest or create any disturbances, so why should they rise in fury in 2004? Syria not only supported Ocelan, but Talabani as well, who founded his PUK in Syria, and worked in the underground against Saddam using a Syrian passport that he only recently returned to Syrian Vice President Abd al-Halim Khaddam, "with gratitude". Both Talabani and Barzani, two of the strongest men in Iraq today, enjoyed excellent relations with Damascus . Damascus had a common enemy with them in Saddam, and used them to create havoc for the Saddam regime throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

The point is that the Kurds had no real reason to riot in Syria in 2004. They are well represented in government, in the commercial community, and in the arts. They have their schools, are free to use their language among one another, and have their own political parties, which although not licensed, number 14.

Yet the vibrations in Iraq have had their effect on Syrian Kurds, and created shock waves in Damascus . The fact that the Kurds succeeded in preserving their autonomy in Iraq , and making their language official next to Arabic, undoubtedly influenced the Syrian Kurds to demand similar privileges.

Today, the Kurds have 75 seats in the Iraqi National Assembly, preceded only by the Shi'ite List of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim. They have secured the presidency for themselves, with Talabani becoming the first Kurdish president of Iraq . In addition, they are demanding that 25% of oil revenue be allocated for them, in addition to annexing Kirkuk , an oilfield, to their territories. More alarming is their demand to keep the peshmerga, their famed militia, armed, to defend Kurdistan Iraq .

This makes the disarming of any other militia in Iraq virtually impossible, since other groups would feel threatened by an armed Kurdish militia, which would be supported by Talabani. The US , wanting to add further pressure on Syria , gave the Kurds the needed nudge to riot and demand similar status in 2004. Assad tried to appease them by making a visit to the Hasake region in Syria , where they are densely populated, promising them reforms and pledging to upgrade their living conditions.

Assad was the first Syrian president to visit the Kurdish districts since president Husni al-Za'im (a Kurd) did in 1949. The state has promised to invest in eastern Syria , where the Kurds are located, and the reform plan is expected to be announced during Turkish President Ahmad Cesar's visit to Syria next Wednesday.

The Syrian regime, pan-Arab by Ba'athist rhetoric, cannot forget that the Kurds of Iraq allied themselves with the US from 1974 onward to topple the Ba'athist regime of Saddam. Back in 1974, Henry Kissinger encouraged the Kurds to riot, in order to drain the energy of the Iraqi army and divert Baghdad 's attention from supporting Syria 's "steadfastness" front against Israel .

Kissinger fanned flames of conflict in Iraq , and was very generous with the Kurds, prompting Mustapha al-Barazni to send him expensive rugs as a token of appreciation, and a gold necklace for his bride on the occasion of Kissinger's marriage in March 1974.

According to Patrick Seale, the veteran journalist specialized in the Middle East, some Kurds had gone to Israel for training in sabotage attacks as early as the 1950s (see Assad: Struggle for the Middle East p 243). Seale adds that Rafael Eitan, who was Israeli chief of staff from 1978-82, also once visited Kurdistan Iraq .

The scandal, among Kissinger's numerous endeavors, was revealed during the Watergate investigations in 1976, in what became known as the Pike Report. The testimony said that Kissinger had armed and financed the Kurds to dissuade Iraq from "adventurism", such as coming to the aid of Syria . The report adds, "Our clients, who were encouraged to fight, were not told of this policy."

The Kurds were never intended to win, only to weaken Iraq , and materialize US interests in the Middle East . Wishful hawks in the US administration want a similar scenario today, hoping Syria will persecute its Kurds, as Saddam did in 1998, to use it against Bashar Assad.

The Kurdish problem is yet another dose of pressure on Damascus . Assad failed them and refused to act in a similar manner that would give the US more reason to confront Syria . He enjoys unanimous support from the people of Syria in this particular measure. Everyone is calling on him to be firm and diplomatic in dealing with the Kurdish issue, to appease the disgruntled Kurds and end their plight once and for all, in order to avoid their deviance, since national unity is one thing that Syrians (thousands of Syrian Kurds included) have always boasted of having. History is yet to prove if granting them citizenship will help bring calm to Syria and put an end to the Kurdish issue in the country.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.