Assad's Fate in the Hands of the Kurds

Although they number 30 million, you rarely read of the horrific persecution against the Middle East's Kurds in the world's leading English language newspapers: No mention of the "plight of the Kurds", no mention of pogroms against the Kurds, no mention of "flotillas" bringing much needed aid to the Kurds, and no mention of efforts to purge the Kurds of their cultural identity.

The Kurds are to be found in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, and have long sought independence. Only in Iraq, following the First Gulf War and the imposition of a no-fly zone over Saddam's Iraq, were the Kurds able to establish some measure of self-governance.

This, however, may soon change.

In Syria Kurds total some 10% of the population. As observed in my prior blog entry, an unprecedented five-year drought in Syria has decimated farmlands, caused hundreds of thousands of persons to abandon their rural villages and migrate to Syrian cities, and has reduced three million people to extreme poverty. Kurd villages in particular have been hard struck by this disaster.

Although they have yet to join the protests that started in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, Damascus is becoming increasingly nervous about Kurdish intentions.

As reported in a CNN article entitled "Kurds in Syria 'waiting to take to the streets,' academic says" (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/03/24/syria.kurds/index.html?hpt=T2), a revolt is simmering:

"The Kurds, representing around 10% of the country's population, are 'ready, watching and waiting to take to the streets, as their cause is the strongest,' according to Robert Lowe, manager of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Largely concentrated along the borders with Turkey and Iraq in the northeast of the country, the Kurds have long been described as a repressed minority in Syria. Since the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, they have fought for an independent Kurdistan with fellow Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Their situation in Syria has been particularly difficult in the past five decades.

'They didn't have problems before this regime,' said Obeida Nahas, director of the Levant Institute, a London-based Syrian think tank. 'Now they are denied the right to speak or even write in their own language and are told to use Arab names.'"

Although the prospect of granting independence to the Middle East's 30 million Kurds poses a nightmare for Turkey, which also has a history of oppressing its Kurdish minority, it is high time that the Kurds be granted liberty and cultural freedom.