“How are the Kurds doing?”
Since last Summer, with American support, Syrian Kurds have swept across the Northern Border of Syria with Turkey, all the way from the Iraqi border, to the Euphrates River, leaving only a 50-60 mile corridor be tween them and the isolated Kudrish Canton of Afrin.
In the process, they cut Raqaa off from easy access to Turkey. When (as seems likely), the Kurds close this last corridor (probably this month), ISIS in Syria will be cut off from their main source of supply and reinforcements. ISIS is lucky if they can smuggle a felafel through Kurdish checkpoints - they don’t fool around.
Politically, the Kurds in Syria are different from the Kurds in Iraq. The two main Kurdish parties in Iraq (KDP, PUK) are pretty pragmatic on economics, even though they had socialist platforms in their early decades (somewhat to draw Soviet support). The main Kurdish militia in Syria (YPG) is affiliated with a hard Left political party - essentially the same as that of the PKK Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey - often called cult-like or Maoist. A bunch of Kurdish forces collaborated to liberate Sinjar (home of the Yazidis - ethnic Kurds) - KDP, YPG, and PKK.
The Syria Kurds share a strong sense of Kurdish nationalism with those in Iraq (and Turkey and Iran). They all share a common vision of an independent Kurdistan, composed of pretty well identified future Cantons of historically Kurdish homelands - although they disagree strongly on who will run it.
The Kurdish areas of Northern Syria include three historically Kurdish Cantons - Afrin in the West, Kobane in the center, and Jazira in the East. The Syrian Kurds are strongly motivated to join these areas into a continuous area they call Rojava (West Kurdistan). They want independence or functional autonomy (like the Kurds in Iraq) for Rojava.
The Syrian Government is against independence, and formally opposed to autonomy. For now, a Kurdish buffer zone with Turkey is essential for the Syrian regime. In the end, most Kurds probably anticipate the Assad Regime and the Russians will turn on them when they don’t need them anymore. That is the history of the Kurds and their neighbors. The old Kurdish saying goes, “Turks, Persians, Arabs; our only friends are the mountains”.
The worse things stay between the Turks and the Russians, the better they will be between Russia and the Kurds. Kurds (especially the Barzani-run KDP Party out of Erbil, Iraq), have been pretty masterful in playing the power broker among the many shifting groups. They are able to gain support from the Americans and the Russians, the Israelis and the Iranians. It is not uncommon to find a Kurd who speaks three or four languages fluently.
Turkey is strongly opposed to the Syrian Kurds establishing a Kurdish safe haven along their border. The PKK guerrillas in Turkey (essentially the same political movement as the YPG Kurds in Syria) have run a long terrorist insurrection inside Turkey, killing 30-40 thousand Turks - dwarfing the scale of the IRA in England, for example.
Erdogan in Turkey consolidated power by jailing the top brass of the military for several years, but recently they have been released, after apparently having agreed that the Kurds were the real enemy.
Thank you for the great insight.
All commentary is greatly valued.