A Hopeless Peace
Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 5:09 pmSEREKANIYE, Syria – Refugees returning from Turkey to homes in Serekaniye (Ras al-Ain) in war-torn Syria survey the destruction and shake their heads. Here, a family discards empty cans and bags of rotten food left by fighters inside a shattered building. There, a group of angry men points to bullet-holed doors and shattered glass strewn over what was once a living room, still in shock over the senseless destruction and looting in the predominantly Kurdish-populated city.
The refugees are returning following a fragile peace agreement signed last month between the Free Syria Army (FSA) and the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG), ending three months of intense fighting between two opposition militias that are on the same side of the two-year uprising to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Despite the ceasefire, Islamist groups within the FSA still want to continue the battle against the Kurds and the remaining Syrian forces in the north of the country.
Among the returnees Zacharia, a young English teacher from a rich family of entrepreneurs, stands bewildered and scratching his beard as he surveys the destruction around him. No one here has been left untouched by the fighting. Zacharia has joined the FSA as an activist, helping the militia with public relations and media statements. Sometimes, he translates for foreign journalists, and at other times he smuggles satellite phones from Turkey to the Syrian rebels.
The Kurdish political parties, for centuries oppressed by Syrian dictators, have opposed a military solution to the current conflict. With mainly peaceful pressure, they ousted Syrian regime soldiers from many Kurdish cities and took control of the civil structure. Then, the YPG militia was officially announced, as well as new Kurdish police forces. But the FSA largely regards the YPG as just the Syrian arm of the outlawed and militant Kurdistan Workers Party, which for decades has waged an armed struggle against Turkey for greater Kurdish rights.
As the self-proclaimed protection force for the Arab population of Serekaniye -- and undoubtedly attracted by the oil and gas riches of the Kurdish dominated al-Hasaka and al-Raqah provinces -- several hundred Islamist FSA fighters invaded Serekaniye in the fall of 2012, besieging the city for three months and forcing many residents to flee to Turkey for safety. But the Arabs, who have admitted to Turkish backing in their assault on the Kurds, failed to gain any real military success.
Ayhan Terfan, head of the hospital in the Turkish twin city Ceylanpinar, counted around 800 wounded civilians and fighters who managed to cross the border and get medical help at his facility.
The military stalemate, as well as the intervention of popular opposition figures like the Christian activist Michel Kilo, encouraged both sides to negotiate. A new peace agreement, signed February 17, calls on all foreign jihadists to leave the city, and mandates that all city checkpoints be manned jointly by FSA and Kurdish fighters. A new, joint civic council is charged with monitoring the agreement.
But both sides are pessimistic that the fragile peace will hold.
“How can we trust them?” Zacharia asks, noting that only weeks earlier both sides were trying to kill each other.
Abdul Wahab Kassem, the local leader of the Kurdish-socialist party PDPKS, voices similar distrust.
“The Free Syrian Army is not really free, they just follow orders from Turkey, which wants to prevent any Kurdish self-rule inside Syria,” he says, sitting opposite a portrait of his brother who died in fighting early last month. For many like him, the wounds of war are still too close and fresh.
For several days, joint patrols have been securing the outskirts of the town, whose population before the fighting numbered 55,000 people. But even these fighters do not trust in the peace deal.
The two main players on the FSA side are the Ayad al-Fahry and the Ahrar al-Jayeera brigades. Both are moderate Islamic regarding individual rights, though they do joint military operations together with the Jihads from Jabaht al-Nusra and deny the Syrian Kurds any right of self-determination.
“The agreement was signed between the military council of the FSA and the Kurdish groups. The individual groups in Ras al-Ain were not asked for their opinion,” complains Sheikh Hamad, commander of the Ahrar al-Jayeera brigade, which together with Ayad al-Fahry are the two main players who back the FSA and both oppose Kurdish self-determination.
These groups have built up their own individual financial networks to the Arabian Peninsula, receiving money from relatives and therefore financially independent from the FSA, and therefore nearly beyond the control of Syrian opposition.
“Financial freedom means freedom of thought,” explains Zakharia, with an ironic undertone.
Though both groups of fighters – or katibas – live in poor conditions, with several men sharing sleeping quarters, militarily they can act independently. The new Civil Council has only pushed these problems out to the surrounding villages.
If Ayad al-Fahry and Ahrar al-Jazeera had any say in what the FSA should do, they would advise an attack in the coming weeks on Qamishli, the largest Kurdish city in Syria with a population of hundreds of thousands.
The Islamist field commanders believe that if Qamishli were drawn into the war, the resulting vast destruction in the city would would force the Kurdish YPG militias to join them openly in a fight against Assad.
This thinking is shared by the legionaries from Iraq and other Islamist battlefields who fill the ranks of these katibas.
Every day, about 100 refugees return to their abandoned homes in Serekaniye, the town’s Kurdish name.
Shopkeepers sell cigarettes and gasoline, and once again there is the smell of freshly-made bread, as the bakeries fire up their rusty ovens again. Kurdish activists – and Turkish smugglers – help bring in new supplies daily, helping the town avert the kind of humanitarian disaster that other parts of the country are experiencing.
But why exactly the town was pulled into the war is still an unanswered question for the likes of Kassem, the Kurdish politician: “Assad is in Aleppo and Damascus, but for sure he is not here,” he says.
The refugees are returning following a fragile peace agreement signed last month between the Free Syria Army (FSA) and the Kurdish Popular Protection Units (YPG), ending three months of intense fighting between two opposition militias that are on the same side of the two-year uprising to oust President Bashar al-Assad. Despite the ceasefire, Islamist groups within the FSA still want to continue the battle against the Kurds and the remaining Syrian forces in the north of the country.
Among the returnees Zacharia, a young English teacher from a rich family of entrepreneurs, stands bewildered and scratching his beard as he surveys the destruction around him. No one here has been left untouched by the fighting. Zacharia has joined the FSA as an activist, helping the militia with public relations and media statements. Sometimes, he translates for foreign journalists, and at other times he smuggles satellite phones from Turkey to the Syrian rebels.
The Kurdish political parties, for centuries oppressed by Syrian dictators, have opposed a military solution to the current conflict. With mainly peaceful pressure, they ousted Syrian regime soldiers from many Kurdish cities and took control of the civil structure. Then, the YPG militia was officially announced, as well as new Kurdish police forces. But the FSA largely regards the YPG as just the Syrian arm of the outlawed and militant Kurdistan Workers Party, which for decades has waged an armed struggle against Turkey for greater Kurdish rights.
As the self-proclaimed protection force for the Arab population of Serekaniye -- and undoubtedly attracted by the oil and gas riches of the Kurdish dominated al-Hasaka and al-Raqah provinces -- several hundred Islamist FSA fighters invaded Serekaniye in the fall of 2012, besieging the city for three months and forcing many residents to flee to Turkey for safety. But the Arabs, who have admitted to Turkish backing in their assault on the Kurds, failed to gain any real military success.
Ayhan Terfan, head of the hospital in the Turkish twin city Ceylanpinar, counted around 800 wounded civilians and fighters who managed to cross the border and get medical help at his facility.
The military stalemate, as well as the intervention of popular opposition figures like the Christian activist Michel Kilo, encouraged both sides to negotiate. A new peace agreement, signed February 17, calls on all foreign jihadists to leave the city, and mandates that all city checkpoints be manned jointly by FSA and Kurdish fighters. A new, joint civic council is charged with monitoring the agreement.
But both sides are pessimistic that the fragile peace will hold.
“How can we trust them?” Zacharia asks, noting that only weeks earlier both sides were trying to kill each other.
Abdul Wahab Kassem, the local leader of the Kurdish-socialist party PDPKS, voices similar distrust.
“The Free Syrian Army is not really free, they just follow orders from Turkey, which wants to prevent any Kurdish self-rule inside Syria,” he says, sitting opposite a portrait of his brother who died in fighting early last month. For many like him, the wounds of war are still too close and fresh.
For several days, joint patrols have been securing the outskirts of the town, whose population before the fighting numbered 55,000 people. But even these fighters do not trust in the peace deal.
The two main players on the FSA side are the Ayad al-Fahry and the Ahrar al-Jayeera brigades. Both are moderate Islamic regarding individual rights, though they do joint military operations together with the Jihads from Jabaht al-Nusra and deny the Syrian Kurds any right of self-determination.
“The agreement was signed between the military council of the FSA and the Kurdish groups. The individual groups in Ras al-Ain were not asked for their opinion,” complains Sheikh Hamad, commander of the Ahrar al-Jayeera brigade, which together with Ayad al-Fahry are the two main players who back the FSA and both oppose Kurdish self-determination.
These groups have built up their own individual financial networks to the Arabian Peninsula, receiving money from relatives and therefore financially independent from the FSA, and therefore nearly beyond the control of Syrian opposition.
“Financial freedom means freedom of thought,” explains Zakharia, with an ironic undertone.
Though both groups of fighters – or katibas – live in poor conditions, with several men sharing sleeping quarters, militarily they can act independently. The new Civil Council has only pushed these problems out to the surrounding villages.
If Ayad al-Fahry and Ahrar al-Jazeera had any say in what the FSA should do, they would advise an attack in the coming weeks on Qamishli, the largest Kurdish city in Syria with a population of hundreds of thousands.
The Islamist field commanders believe that if Qamishli were drawn into the war, the resulting vast destruction in the city would would force the Kurdish YPG militias to join them openly in a fight against Assad.
This thinking is shared by the legionaries from Iraq and other Islamist battlefields who fill the ranks of these katibas.
Every day, about 100 refugees return to their abandoned homes in Serekaniye, the town’s Kurdish name.
Shopkeepers sell cigarettes and gasoline, and once again there is the smell of freshly-made bread, as the bakeries fire up their rusty ovens again. Kurdish activists – and Turkish smugglers – help bring in new supplies daily, helping the town avert the kind of humanitarian disaster that other parts of the country are experiencing.
But why exactly the town was pulled into the war is still an unanswered question for the likes of Kassem, the Kurdish politician: “Assad is in Aleppo and Damascus, but for sure he is not here,” he says.