In the midst of the current revolutionary chaos in Syria, there is a clear voice of reason that seeks to create a free Syria that is democratic, Western-oriented and federal in structure. That voice belongs to Sherkoh Abbas, President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, and his allies in the Syrian Democratic Coalition.
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton met late last year with members of the Syrian National Council; these members in exile are considered to be the opposition leaders by the Obama administration. Unfortunately, most of them were found to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Sherkoh Abbas and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, formidable leaders of the Syrian democratic and secular opposition, were snubbed by Clinton.
Sherkoh Abbas was compelled to leave his native Qamishli, Syria back in the 1980s because he criticized the Hafez Assad regime. Abbas subsequently came to the US as a student and received advanced degrees in Technology, Engineering, and Business.
As Abbas sees it, the current situation can only lead to a civil war between the regular Syrian army, which represents the Alawis and their associates, and the Free Syrian Army composed of Sunni-Arab officers and soldiers. The Kurds, he maintains, are caught between these warring armies without an army of their own. He fears that the Kurds will be the principle victims of the unleashed violence, since the Kurds are also the largest minority. According to Abbas, “The free world has a moral obligation to protect the Kurds of Syria not only because we have been victimized and have been throughout the 20th Century, but because we are natural allies of the West, sharing such values as tolerance and acceptance of minorities, and belief in an open and free democracy.”
Asked to opine on what he would like to see in the near future for his Kurdish people: an autonomous region in Syria; joining the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq – which borders the Kurdish region in Syria; or perhaps an even larger Kurdish state, Abbas said, “The Kurdish people, in all parts of Kurdistan, seek the right to form an independent Kurdish state. We can only achieve this cherished goal with the help of the western democracies, and first and foremost the U.S.”
Unlike the Palestinian Arabs who squandered numerous opportunities to assert their self-determination as a “people,” (in 1938, the Arabs of Palestine rejected the Peel Commission plan for the division of Palestine into a larger Palestinian state and a much smaller Jewish state. In 1947, they rejected the UN Partition Plan, and they have made a mockery of the 1993 Oslo Accords). The Kurds, a truly distinct people, with their own language and culture, have been cheated out of an autonomous and independent Kurdistan promised to them by the victorious allies (Britain and France) in the Treaty of Sevres (August 10, 1920). The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne replaced the Treaty of Sevres, as the new nationalist Turkey under Kamal Ataturk re-conquered Anatolia and the land that was to have been the Kurdish state.
If an independent Kurdish state is unattainable at this juncture, Abbas would be satisfied with a “democratic and federal system in Syria” in which the Kurdish people would have the right to create their own institutions, and disseminate their cultural heritage – which has been forbidden and outlawed by the “Arabizing” Assad dictatorships. The Kurds reject the legitimacy of the Assad regime and, parenthetically, the Ba’athist influence on the political life of Syria in general and Kurds in particular.
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