Last Thursday, two days after Syria entered its sixth year in turmoil, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and several allied groups met in the town of Rmeilan in Hasakah province and agreed to create three Kurdish-led autonomous areas under the umbrella of a federal system.
PYD politicians claimed their exclusion from the Geneva talks between the Syrian government and the Riyadh-based-opposition negotiating committee was the main motive behind the announcement. This unilateral move towards “federalism” however, looks more like an attempt at partition than administrative reform, and it is doomed to fail, so will any attempt to fragment Syria into ethnic and confessional entities.
First and foremost, a province or a collection of provinces cannot unilaterally announce the creation of a federal system and impose it on the rest of the country.
The PYD, a mere political party representing a fraction of Syria’s Kurds, cannot decide on its own, and on behalf of less than 10 per cent of Syrians (the Kurds), what the shape of future Syria will look like.
If Syria were to become a federal state, then this decision has to be unanimous, and it needs to be decreed by the people of Syria and whatever legislature is representing them.
And only in Damascus, the political capital of the country, can the proclamation of a new administrative form for Syria, whether federal or not, be made for the rest of the country to follow.
The federation announced in northern Syria is a political entity based on ethnicity, which is exactly the form of division Syrians must avoid both now and in the future.
Failed endeavour
The last time Syria was divided along ethnic and confessional lines was under the French mandate, and the endeavour failed miserably.
From 1920 until 1936, French colonials divided Syria into five states: Damascus, Aleppo, Greater Lebanon, a Druze state and an Alawite state. This “divide and rule” stratagem, which the French thought would guarantee loyalty from Syria’s minorities quickly backfired.
The Druze broke out in a rebellion that soon engulfed the rest of the country, and became known as the great Syrian revolt of 1925. The “Alawite state” followed suite. Led by Shaikh Saleh Al Ali, a Syrian folk hero, Alawite rebels bled the French colonial forces in guerilla warfare across the ridgelines of Syria’s coastal regions.
Damascus, Aleppo and Idlib erupted too. France left Syria two decades later, and four of the five states reunited in an independent and secular republic; only Greater Lebanon chose a separate path.
Even after five years of brutal conflict, and although the analysis might tempt simpler minds, the war in Syria is neither religious nor an ethnic one. And to claim that the conflict could only be resolved by partitioning the country, under the guise of federalism, into ethnic and confessional entities is utterly ridiculous.
Take for example the idea circulated by some think tanks that only the creation of a “Sunni entity” spanning Syria and Iraq would lead to Daesh’s defeat. Sunnis were always a numerical majority in Syria, but the country never became a religion-based state. The majority of Syrians, since independence, have favoured to live under a united republic, one that believes in a benevolent rather than a chauvinistic Arabism. This “Sunni solution” is a grave insult to all Muslims, because it sounds as if each and every Sunni is just a Daesh recruit waiting to happen when politically frustrated, which is obviously a preposterous notion.
A more sober look at the geopolitics of this newly born federal entity also reinforces the fact that it is doomed to fail. The north and northeastern regions of Syria are indeed rich in oil, agricultural production, especially cotton and oil, and are home to two hydroelectric dams. This entity, however rich in resources, is landlocked and surrounded by hostile forces. First of all, its eastern and western “cantons” are separated by almost 100 kilometres of territory held by Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). To its north, Turkey has militarised the border and declared the PYD a terrorist group even more dangerous than Daesh. To the east of Hasakah, a lifeline stretches to Iraqi Kurdistan, but there are serious political tensions between the leftist PYD and the conservative leadership of Iraqi Kurds. Daesh on its part controls the western and southern flanks of Hasakah and continues to attack it relentlessly. The Syrian foreign ministry condemned the unilateral announcement of a federal system and considered it null and void. The Syrian government’s bureaucracy is still in charge of Hasakah province and it’s authority, unlike that of the PYD, accords with international laws and norms. Finally, many major Arab tribes living in the territory of the federation has boycotted the Rmeilan gathering.
So to whom is the PYD going to sell wheat and oil, and under what legal mandate? How will this entity import its needs and support its people? Have they even established any form of monetary authority? What passports will its citizens use and how will they travel if the only airport within their territory is still administrated by the Syrian government? The fact that these questions remain unanswered shows how premature and miscalculated the PYD’s moves were.
Finally, the PYD should not bank on any support from international powers. Even though the United States has supported the PYD’s military arm (the YPG) in the fight against Daesh, it does not support partitioning Syria — at least in public statements. Russia immediately sided with its ally the Syrian government on this matter and also rejected the unilateral partition of the country by one group. The reasons why regional powers, Turkey and Iran above all, will vociferously oppose this ethnicity-based federal scheme in Syria are all too obvious.
The Kurdish effort in the fight against Daesh, which is a mortal danger to all Syrians, should be a natural inclination and not something that needs to be rewarded. And no matter the turmoil Syria is witnessing, no one group should unilaterally attempt to force a certain scheme on all Syrians. The Kurds are an integral part of Syria and the PYD must work to reinforce this fact, instead of attempting to carve out an unviable entity that will surely be united with the rest of the country sooner or later.
Fadi Esber is a research associate at the Damascus History Foundation, an online project aimed at collecting and protecting the endangered archives of the Syrian capital.
