“We’ve been very clear that we won’t recognize any kind of autonomous or self-rule, semiautonomous zones in Syria”, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said this week. “Whole, unified, nonsectarian Syria, that’s the goal”.
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The opposition National Coalition warned in a statement against “any attempt to form entities, regions, or administrations that usurp the will of the Syrian people”. Kurdish groups were excluded from those talks in order to avoid angering Turkey.
Participants at a conference in Rmeilan raised a banner declaring that a “federal and democratic Syria is a guarantee of co-existence and brotherly relations between people”.
They likened the Kurdish declaration to the Islamic State jihadist group’s bid to carve out a self-styled “caliphate” from swathes of territory under its control in Syria and Iraq.
The announcement is also expect to complicated Syrian peace talks in Geneva, which Syria’s Kurds were not invited to, in line with Turkey’s wishes. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
The Kurds are estimated to be Syria’s biggest ethnic minority, making up around 10-15% of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.
The PYD’s armed wing is among the most effective fighting forces in Syria and has received support from the United States and Russian Federation. “I do not think that federalism will be announced formally before the YPG expels ISIS from other predominately Kurdish areas such as Azaz, Jarablus and Al-Bab north of Aleppo province”.
On the second day of talks in Geneva on Tuesday, opposition negotiators demanded that the government detail its thoughts on a political transition in Syria and said there had been no progress on freeing detainees.
Syria’s Kurds have dramatically strengthened their hold on northern Syria during the civil war, carving out territory as they battled to drive out Islamic militants and declaring their own civil administration in three distinct enclaves, or cantons, under their control: Jazira, Kobani and Afrin.
The declaration also complicates Syrian peace talks underway in Geneva. A lot of other groups in the area have a problem with that.
The Village Sun Times covered a Kurdish convention that took place in Rmeilan on Wednesday, in which the Kurds declared their claim on the region, stating that preparations to establish a federal system had been going on for a long time. Turkey’s government doesn’t want to embolden Kurdish separatists in the country any further; a lethal vehicle bombing in Ankara has been attributed to Kurdish terrorists. The government, that is the Syrian government, Turkey, the US, Russia, and the Syrian opposition all have rejected the declaration of federal independence. “We are committed to a federal system”, Khalil said.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday said federalization is one possible option in Syria if it is the will of the Syrian people.
Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that the future of Syria should be discussed in an inclusive dialogue involving all of the nation’s religious and ethnic groups.
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Assad’s multi-religious base and the largely secular Kurds distrust the Islamist-dominated opposition, and the opposition will not tolerate the continuation of Assad rule in any part of Syria, either in Damascus at the head of a federal government, or in the coastal region, where his Alawite supporters predominate.
