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Wars
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A
YPG fighter fires at ISIS forces [photo by Jonathan Spyer]
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Kobani, Syrian Kurdish Region
With Syrian presidential elections scheduled for June, the incumbent
and shoo-in for reelection, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, is
campaigning on the promise that 2014 will be the year in which military
operations in Syria end. However, the situation in northern Syria,
exemplified by the conflict in the canton of Kobani, an area stretching
from the Turkish border to south of Kobani city, and from Tell Abyad in
the east to Jarabulus in the west, casts doubt on Assad's optimism.
Kobani is under Kurdish control, but cuts into a larger section of
territory controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a jihadist
organization. ISIS aims to hold a clear, contiguous area stretching from
Syria's border with Turkey into western Iraq, where it controls territory
in the provinces of Ninewah and Anbar. The existence of the Kurdish
canton of Kobani interferes with this plan, and since March ISIS has
launched daily attacks against positions held by the Kurdish People's
Protection Units (YPG) at the edges of the enclave. The Kobani situation
offers a window into the Syrian conflict, a fragmented reality where in
large parts of the country the regime is little more than a memory, and
well-organized rival militias representing starkly different political
projects are clashing. Last month, I traveled to the Kobani enclave,
entering from the Turkish border with Kurdish smugglers. The road was
short but perilous—a sprint toward the border fence in the dark and a
rapid, fumbling climb over it.
Kobani was the first of three cantons established by the Kurdish
Democratic Union party (PYD) since the Assad regime withdrew from much of
northern Syria in the summer of 2012. There are two other such enclaves:
the much larger Jazeera canton to the east, which stretches from the town
of Ras al-Ain to the border with Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and
the smaller area around the city of Afrin further west. In all three of
these areas, the PYD has set up a Kurdish-dominated autonomous
administration. The intention of the Kurds is to consolidate their
independent government and eventually to unite the three cantons.
In the meantime, however, the stark reality of siege conditions in the
Kobani canton was immediately apparent to me. The main electricity supply
had been cut off, with only intermittent power from hastily rigged-up
generators. The water supply, too, had been interrupted, and the local
Kurdish authorities were busy digging wells in the hope of reaching
natural springs located deep underground.
Yet for all this, life in the city functions in a way closely
resembling normality. The two hospitals in the city lack medical
equipment and medicines, but they are open. "We are improvising, we
are innovating, and we are not dying," a doctor told me at Ayn
al-Arab hospital
in Kobani city. The school system is functioning, too, and in northern
Syria at present these are no small achievements.
The Kurdish enclaves are almost certainly the most peaceful and
best-governed areas in Syria. However, the Kurds are aware of the
precariousness of their achievement. Ali, a member of the Kurdish Asayish
paramilitary police, told me that "Assad doesn't want to open
another front now. But if he finishes with the radical groups, then he'll
come for us, inevitably." In the meantime, as one PYD official said,
"We take a third line, neither with the regime nor with the Free
Syrian Army. We hope in the future to unite all the cantons. We accept a
role for the Arabs, so we don't see a problem with this. And right now,
we have one goal—keeping out ISIS."
The PYD's "democratic autonomy" project in northern Syria
put it on a collision course with ISIS, which is trying to lay the basis
for an Islamic state run according to its own floridly brutal
interpretation of sharia law. The resulting conflict then is not
simply about territory, or who will rule northern Syria; it is also about
how this land will be ruled.
Mahmoud Musa, a Syrian political analyst and a refugee from the town
of Jisr al-Shughur, told me that "there are three serious and
well-organized forces in Syria today—the Assad regime, ISIS, and the
Kurds." The last two regard themselves as at war with the regime. In
reality, the rival mini-states they have carved out of a fragmented Syria
are mainly in conflict with each other.
ISIS has emerged as one of the strangest and cruelest of the many
political-military movements now active in Syria. I spoke with a young
Kurdish man named Perwer who had spent a week in ISIS captivity. He was
arrested at the Jarabulus border crossing, while returning to Syria from Istanbul.
First detained by members of another Islamist unit, the Tawhid Brigade,
he was then handed over to ISIS and kept for five days in one of the
movement's jails in Jarabulus town, just west of the Kobani enclave.
Perwer related that a Kurdish man who had been caught raising the YPG
flag in a village near the border with the Kurdish enclave was tortured
to death. He also noted that among his fellow prisoners were Arab
residents of Jarabulus held for drinking wine. They too were tortured.
The Kurdish prisoners were regularly insulted and called apostates by the
ISIS guards, who came from a variety of countries. Copies of the Koran
were handed out to the Kurdish detainees, and the days in their crowded
cell were broken up by prayer sessions, in which ISIS would seek to
instruct their Muslim captives in what they regard as the correct method
of Muslim prayer.
ISIS's mini-state reaches from the edges of Kobani to deep inside
western Iraq. I visited the frontlines on the eastern edge of the Kobani
enclave, where the positions of the YPG and ISIS push up against each
other. In Tell Abyad, the two sides are camped in abandoned villages,
where the ruined landscape has a slightly lunar quality. Eyewitnesses
told me that ISIS forced the villagers to leave when the fighting began.
Young fighters of the YPG moved carefully around their positions in the
abandoned village, ever mindful of the presence of ISIS snipers. In
places, the two sides are less than 500 meters apart. ISIS favors mortar
fire by night and sniping by day. This has taken a toll on the male and
female fighters of the YPG. Around 80 of them have died since the
fighting erupted in March. Many more ISIS men, however, have been killed
in their wild and uncoordinated attacks.
In Jarabulus on the western side, the frontline villages are still
inhabited. Some of the local Arab clans are backing ISIS. A sort of de
facto mini-transfer of populations has taken place in the area, largely,
though not solely, along ethnic lines. I met a couple of Sunni Arabs
among the ranks of the YPG fighters. There are also Kurdish volunteers
among the ISIS men, including some commanders. They hail mainly from the
villages of Iraqi Kurdistan, in particular from the Halabja area. Yet
these details aside, it is clear the main dynamic of the conflict in this
area is ethnic and sectarian, with Kurds faced off against Sunni Arab
Islamists. The attitude of the YPG fighters to their ISIS enemies
combines a certain contempt for their military prowess, with a sort of
fascinated horror at their savage practices.
"They outnumber us, often. But they lack tactics," said
Surkhwi, a female fighter and the commander of the Kurdish fighters in
the village of Abduqli. "We think many of them take drugs before
entering combat, and they attack randomly, haphazardly. They desecrate
bodies of our fighters, cutting off heads, cutting off hands. They don't
respect the laws of war," Surkhwi told me. "We also know that
ISIS look at us women fighters as something not serious, because of their
Islamic ideology. They think that if they are killed by a woman, they
won't go to paradise."
The YPG fighters themselves, meanwhile, are clearly experienced and
well trained. While interviewing one YPG commander, Nohalat Kobani, I had
the chance to witness his troops in action. The position in the village
of Haj Ismail where we were conducting the interview came under attack
from small arms fire as we were talking. I followed the YPG fighters as
they raced to their positions to return fire. The coordination and
discipline were impressive. The YPG blasted back at the ISIS position,
500 meters away, with rifles and a medium-caliber machine gun. After a
while, the shooting from the other side stopped. Nohalat Kobani, a large,
corpulent man and a veteran PYD activist, was amused and unperturbed by
the incident. We recommenced our interview as soon as the shooting
stopped.
I met two ISIS fighters in an apartment in Kilis in the south of
Turkey, two days after the skirmish at Haj Ismail. It was strange to be
sipping tea and smoking with men whose comrades had been shooting at me a
short time earlier. It was also fascinating to gain an insight into the
appeal that ISIS has managed to exercise over some Syrians, and the way that
the movement views the situation in northern Syria.
Both men were Syrians. Abu Muhammad was clean-shaven and wearing a
black tracksuit. Abu Nur sported a short beard. I remarked to my contact
afterwards that I would never have taken them for Islamists. He told me
that ISIS men customarily shave their beards and adopt western dress when
entering Turkey from Syria, so as to avoid the attention of the Turkish
security services and police.
Abu Nur outlined his reasons for joining the organization. He had been
a member of the Northern Storm militia, a notoriously corrupt
non-Islamist militia group that had controlled the Bab al-Salameh border
crossing from Turkey. The incident that had compelled him to leave
Northern Storm and join ISIS, he said, was Senator John McCain's visit to
Bab al-Salameh in the spring of 2013. Abu Nur explained that he is
suspicious of foreign governments using Syrians for their own ends, so
when fighting began between ISIS and Northern Storm in his hometown of
Azaz, he joined ISIS, which laid waste to his former colleagues in the
subsequent weeks. He had stayed with ISIS, he told me, because it
"imposes sharia, acts against criminals and robbers, and has
no contact with any foreign government."
When I asked Abu Muhammad about ISIS's practice of cutting off hands
and heads as lawful punishments, he told me that "the media have
exaggerated this. In certain areas they cut hands off, in others
not," he said. "We have tried our best to apply sharia
law. Of course there have been some mistakes."
ISIS has recently carried out a strategic retreat in parts of northern
Syria, which in some ways resembles the earlier redeployment by the
regime. In January of this year, under pressure from other rebel
brigades, ISIS began to withdraw its fighters from Idleb and much of
Aleppo provinces, concentrating them in its Raqqa stronghold and further
east. Abu Mohammed explained the reasons for ISIS's redeployment.
"If there are powers against me, I have to retreat and protect my
back. And perhaps in the future I will return again."
ISIS rules over large swaths of western Iraq's Anbar and Ninewah
provinces, where its fighters are engaged in an insurgency against the
government of Nuri al-Maliki, who has been employing sectarian tactics
against the Sunnis. So there is a strategic logic to ISIS contracting its
forces and drawing down in northwest Syria. The problem for the Kurds is
that the Kobani enclave falls within the area that ISIS still seeks to
dominate.
Abu Muhammad expressed the matter clearly: "The YPG wants to
establish a Kurdish state. This is completely unacceptable. We want the
caliphate, something old and new, from the time of Mohammed. The
Europeans created false borders. We want to break these borders."
Still, ISIS's plan to destroy the Kobani canton is unlikely to
succeed. The Kurdish administration and its militia are capable and well
organized, and will continue to defend the enclave's borders with weapons
and supplies smuggled from across the Turkish border. There are veterans
of the Kurdistan Workers' party war against Turkey advising the PYD on both
civil and military matters. They appear more than able to stave off ISIS,
and to continue to develop the institutions of their autonomy.
Bashar al-Assad may please himself with the farce of elections, but
the wars within wars, competing worldviews, and irreconcilable projects,
in northern Syria are testimony to the fact of the country's
fragmentation. They reflect also the rapid change still underway in the
Middle East, as old ideas and regimes contract and fade, and new
contenders for power make war among the ruins.
Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research
in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
Related
Topics: Kurds, Radical Islam, Syria | Jonathan Spyer This
text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an
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