Kurdistan forces are liberating Western Kurdistan

[kurdimemin_diako]

thanks all of you for your great updates

dastan xoshbe

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GIRKE LEGE, Syria, Aug 24 2012 (IPS) - The smuggler wants 200 dollars but Jewan negotiates him down to 100. That’s still a lot for this 26-year-old Syrian Kurd, but he can hardly wait to cross the border to Syria from Iraq. It’s been three years since he last saw his family.

Those were difficult days in Syria. “I was arrested and tortured for 27 days for belonging to a university youth organisation,” the young Kurd recalls as he follows the smuggler at night.

“I was freed after my parents paid 2,000 dollars to a police officer. I fled to Lebanon and I finally arrived in the Iraqi Kurdistan region via Turkey.”

This IPS reporter met Jewan at the sensitive point where the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Syria meet. The point is 450 kilometres northwest of Baghdad, 550 km southeast of Ankara and 800 km northeast of Damascus.

Spread across Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, stateless Kurds number about 40 million. About half live on Turkish soil. Between two and four million Kurds live in north-east Syria. Syria was carved out of the Turkish Ottoman Empire less than a century ago.

After a wave of protests in late July, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad loosened his grip on Syria’s Kurdish region. Local Kurdish leaders now claim control over half their territory, including the border posts with Iraq’s Kurdish Autonomous Region. It is to this region that Jewan was returning.

A few minutes later we are dazzled by flashlights of the peshmerga – the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s military forces. Neither Jewan nor his guide seem to pose a threat, so we are finally allowed to walk towards a light a few hundred metres away. Apparently, that is the first checkpoint on the Syrian side.

In the middle of the dark, halfway across ‘no man’s land’, they come across a pick-up van with its engine on and lights off. The driver and his companion introduce themselves as “PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) fighters” – a guerrilla group fighting against Turkey since 1984.

“We have to wait here, somebody else is coming,” explains one of the fighters with an assault rifle over his shoulder. A few minutes later, a line of men come out from the dark to load bags and boxes on to the pick-up truck.

“That’s all I have,” says Asma, about 50, pointing to her bag in the front seat of the van. “The day I left Syria I swore I wouldn’t be back until my Kurdish land was ruled by its own people.

“I fled my house across this very same stretch of land 32 years ago, literally giving the breast to my little daughter. She won’t be able to see her birthplace because she died two years ago, fighting against the Turkish army in the mountains.”

Rafik has been waiting for hours at a point further down the road to pick up his brother Jewan.

“The way back home is safe, you needn’t worry about anything,” he reassures Jewan. They greet one another with one kiss on the left cheek and three on the right one, the local custom.

There are no reliable figures yet on the number of Kurds returning to Syria. Some said they were returning for only a short while because of the new relative stability of this region where the Kurds now seem in charge.

There’s hardly any traffic on the road, occasionally lit by fire columns alongside. “Many of these lands were ours but the Assads – Syria’s ruling family – gave them to Arab families from the south of the country,” says Jewan. “This area is also rich in gold.”

The coming of the Ba’ath party to power in 1963 led to an Arabisation policy that worked against the Kurds in Syria, the country’s second biggest ethnic group.

Kurdish language was prohibited, and many Kurds were even denied Syrian citizenship. Some Kurds were deported, and Arab settlements established in Kurdish areas.

Today the Kurdish colours – green, red and yellow – are sprayed over walls and murals. The Kurdish flag flies at the entrance of Girke Lege, 35 kilometres from the Iraqi border and 15 km from the Turkish one, suggesting that the situation has changed substantially in the past months.

“The area is fully under our control,” claims one of the fighters manning the checkpoint at the eastern entrance of Girke Lege.

Democratic Union Party (PYD) president Saleh Muslim told IPS from an undisclosed location that Syrian Kurds have not negotiated any truce with the Bashar al-Assad government. “We’re Syria’s second ethnic group and Damascus simply doesn’t want another front with the minorities in his territory.”

Many believe that the Syrian regime is using the threat of a self-ruled Syrian Kurdish region to widen the conflict with Turkey.

Girke Lege is very unlike the images of destruction in Damascus. Kurdish music plays out loud from shops and teahouses. The brand new headquarters of one of the Kurdish political parties working underground for decades, are open well after midnight. Against all odds, Kurds have seemingly found new freedom in the current scenario.

“I had heard about all this but I still cannot believe what I’m seeing,” says a jubilant Jewan after he buys something with Syrian currency for the first time in three years – a kilo of pastry for his family.

His mother can barely contain the tears when she hugs her son again. His arrival has doubtless taken her by surprise, but neither was Jewan expecting to meet his relatives from Damascus.

“We arrived here a few days ago. Our district was being heavily pounded from both sides so we couldn’t stay there any longer,” says Marai, his uncle.

“Twenty years ago we moved from here to Damascus in search of a better life,” adds Alian, Jewan’s aunt. “Today it’s us who do not know when we will go back.”

http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/08/syrian-c ... for-kurds/

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http://ciwanekurd.net/index.php/2012-02 ... 4-16-58-41

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On the main road to the northern Syrian town of Afrin, armed men stand beneath green, red and yellow Kurdish flags, welcoming truckloads of their displaced Arab neighbours.

They wave through pick-up trucks carrying women and children, granting them passage to Afrin, where a rare safety prevails thanks to a delicate Kurdish balancing act that has granted the population a first taste of autonomy.

The checkpoint is a bold signal of just how radically life has changed for the Kurdish population in the north of the country since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime began in March last year.

The men running the post speak openly in Kurdish, and some sport yellow vests featuring black stencils of the face of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK.

Ocalan is reviled as a terrorist in Turkey where he is serving a life jail sentence for his leadership of a bloody uprising launched in the southeast in 1984.

But in Afrin his picture hangs on walls and in shops, and his face appears in women's lockets.

The change is the result of an understanding the Kurds have reached with both the Syrian government and the rebel forces.

State troops have withdrawn from the region, but a token security facility, complete with an untouched portrait of Assad hanging from its facade, remains in Afrin.

"They don't move outside of the building," says 50-year-old Fathy, who helps man the checkpoint. "They call if they need bread or water and we deliver it to them."

The rebel army is also banned from entering the region unless they are unarmed and in civilian clothes.

"They come to Afrin because our shops and markets are open, they buy food and other supplies. But no one is allowed to enter with weapons."

The only weapons allowed into what the Kurds here refer to as Western Kurdistan are under the authority of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD.

Turkey has accused the group of being a front for the PKK, which the United States has warned must be denied a safe haven in the region.

But while Fathy admits that some of the weapons used to protect the area come from the PKK, he and other residents insist the group is not present in the area.

"As Kurds, of course we would like to invite them here, but we know that the Arabs and the international community believe that the PKK are terrorists, so we would not let them come here now. And the PKK respects that," says Khaled, a 27-year-old Kurd who defected from the Syrian army earlier this year.

Inside Afrin, the regime's departure has allowed Syria's Kurds to experience a first hint of long-awaited self-rule.

At a newly-established cultural centre, a 67-year-old who gives his name as Mr. Jangvar is teaching a class of Kurdish woman to read and write their once-banned language.

One-by-one, they stand and haltingly repeat the eight vowel sounds of the language.

"The Kurdish people were banned from reading and writing Kurdish language, so we learnt person to person in secret," Jangvar says. "When someone was found with a Kurdish book he was jailed and tortured."

The centre also offers lessons on Kurdish history, poetry and music, all available for free.

In the director's office, a picture of the Kurdish poet Ehmede Xani hangs opposite the picture of Ocalan.

"He's one of our most important poets," Khaled says. "His poems are seriously, truly wonderful."

For Arif Sheikhu, a member of the loose coalition of Kurdish parties and town councils that now oversees the region, this new-found autonomy is the result of a decades-long struggle that stands apart from the current uprising.

"The Syrian revolution complements our fight for our legitimate rights, but even if the uprising stops -- and I don't believe it will -- our revolution will continue," he says.

Since the regime pulled back, the area's 365 towns and villages have all formed their own local councils, with a regional committee of 400 members available to consider matters that affect the area as a whole.

"Forty percent of the committee is women," Sheiku says proudly.

"Women in our society have full freedom. They can do whatever men can do, they can wear what they want, do what they want, be what they want."

Despite his pride in the autonomous system set up in the region, and his unabashed admiration for Ocalan, Sheiku is careful to make clear that Syria's Kurds are not seeking independence or a state.

"We are first and foremost Syrians," he says. "We want a self-administered system for Syrian Kurds, and democracy for the whole of Syria."

"We look at the Iraqi Kurdish model as outdated. All states are a form of oppression," he adds.

At 60, Sheiku has spent decades waiting for Kurdish autonomy, but he says he always believed it would come one day.

"It didn't come as a surprise. It took blood, fighting, organisation and many years. But now that we have it, we will protect it very carefully."

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=54026

[talsor]

USA and British forces are stationed in Turkey , Jorden and Israel getting ready to take control of stock piles of chemical weapons when the regime falls .

[alan131210]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg4XPRvTCtU&feature=g-all-u&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1   

[alan131210]

[alan131210]

kurds partying in Efrin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOD4jvQGnXM&feature=g-u-u&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1   

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg4XPRvTCtU&feature=g-all-u

I watched the interview on aljazeera yersterday. Kak salih is a very smart man. He speaks perfect arabic. His answers were straight forward and he looks like a good leader.

[alan131210]

True except that he does not respect Qazi mahamad and Mustafa Barzanis flag for Kurdistan which also represnts millions of Kurds .

Basically the Kurdish flags we see been waved in WK is from supporters of KNC as PYD supporters only wave their own version of Kurdish flag which only THEY use.

I also think the title should be changed now , how does "western Kurdistan status" sound !!??

[alan131210]

ŞOREŞA AZADIYÊ LI ROJAVA LI EWROPA JÎ HEWLDANÊN PIŞTGIRIYÊ DIDOMIN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_UUvNlf3-0&feature=g-all-u&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1   

[Rando]

I also think the title should be changed now , how does "western Kurdistan status" sound !!??

great idea!

[brendar]

True except that he does not respect Qazi mahamad and Mustafa Barzanis flag for Kurdistan which also represnts millions of Kurds .

Basically the Kurdish flags we see been waved in WK is from supporters of KNC as PYD supporters only wave their own version of Kurdish flag which only THEY use.

I also think the title should be changed now , how does "western Kurdistan status" sound !!??

Good title!

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