*Kurdish PYD accused of heavy handed rule in Syrian Kurdista

[Shirko]

*October 18, 201**3*

*Syrian Kurdistan*,— The militant Democratic Union Party (PYD) is strangling all political and intellectual life in Syria’s Kurdish regions [Western Kurdistan], Adulhakim Bashar, the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria (Al-Parti), said in unusually candid comments.

“Even the Baath regime isn’t doing what the PYD is doing. The Baath regime has given more freedom to politicians and intellectuals than the PYD does,” Bashar told Rudaw in an interview.

“During the Baath regime there was only one prison in each city,” said Bashar.“ But now, under the PYD, there are several prisons in each city and all the prisoners are Kurds,” he claimed. 

Over the past two-and-a-half years, the PYD has been the dominant Kurdish force in Syria. Some believe its strength lies in its close relations with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and clandestine connections with the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

In July last year, the Syrian regime withdrew most of its security and armed forces from the Kurdish areas to fight rebel groups in other parts of the country. In turn, the PYD filled the vacuum with its own armed People’s Defense Units (YPG).  
  
“Al-Parti is much stronger than the PYD,” said Bashar. “It is true that the PYD has more armed forces, but we have stronger social organizations and more supporters.”

Bashar said that the PYD does not even allow his party’s Kurdish newspaper to be distributed in Syrian Kurdistan, or Rojava.

At the outset of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Bashar was appointed the first president of the Kurdish National Council (KNC), an umbrella organization of more than 10 Kurdish groups.

Bashar, who is now based in Erbil, said that he cannot return to Rojava, “Because there is the risk that I will be killed.”

Last year, all Syrian Kurdish parties, including the PYD, signed an agreement in Erbil to form a united fighting force to control and protect all Kurdish areas against any attack. But according to Bashar, the PYD has violated the terms of the deal.

“The PYD refused to accept a united force and insisted that our fighters join their forces as mere fighters and that all decisions to start or stop a war would lie with the PYD,” said Bashar. “I believe that in Rojava a civilian revolution will begin against the PYD,” he added.

PYD leaders have in the past accused other Kurdish and Arab opposition groups of maintaining ties with neighboring countries and of trying to implement a foreign agenda in Syria.

Meanwhile, the YPG fighters are still locked in daily clashes with jihadist fighters of al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusrah.

“In 25 days we had six rounds of talks with the PYD and we only had two points of disagreement with them,” said the Al-Parti leader. “But after each round the PYD came back with a new set of conditions. From this we deduced that the PYD doesn’t really want to talk.”

Bashar said that the Kurds want federalism in Syria, and that the KNC is willing to debate such a possibility should the Assad regime decide to grant the Kurds this right.

“But the PYD is asking for democratic self-rule, which is a strange thing in political terminology,” he said. “In politics, there is such a thing as autonomy.”

Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, rudaw.net
 
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[Anthea]

As always the wants and needs of the Kurdish people born and bred in Western Kurdistan are ignored - while other groups fight to take control over the indigenous Kurds

F***ING B*****DS THE LOT OF THEM

Most of the Kurdish groups now fighting in Syria are fighting for power for THEMSELVES - not for the indigenous Kurdish people who are losing families and friends - and being killed by EVERY other group in Syria