Joy And Trepidation: What Worries The Syrian Kurds After Assad’s Demise

-Analysis-

QAMISHLI — I tried hard to stay awake that night when, earlier this month, the Syrian opposition seized the city of Homs. Just like every Syrian, I was waiting and hoping to hear the voice of a fellow journalist announce the fall of the regime. Finally, my body failed me and I surrendered to sleep, only to be awakened by the voice of my daughter getting ready to go to kindergarten.

The first thing I did when I woke up was to look at my phone, where I found a message from Gabriel Moshe, a former political prisoner and leader in the Assyrian organization.

“Congratulations for the freedom of the Syrian people, Assad is gone, gone forever,” he wrote on a WhatsApp group for the Peace and Freedom Front organization.

I wandered around the neighborhoods of Qamishli after the fall of Bashar al-Assad — together with a strange mix of people who otherwise had plenty of intellectual, political, partisan and/or personal differences.

In the streets and main squares of Qamishli, we rejoiced and danced, waving our flags and symbols of the revolution.

But some details were bound to contain our joy.

We, a group of young Kurds, wondered where this moment would fit in with the suffering of not only the past 14 years of civil war, but the injustices of more than half a century.

Certainly, no one regrets the end of the Assad era, except maybe those who lived happily under tyranny. And our own Kurdish people‘s collective ordeal across the region has always received support from ordinary Syrians.

But the questions remain legitimate: Why was that joy unleashed in our hearts somehow tempered by doubt?

​Concerns about the future

We also asked ourselves how Assad managed to escape justice and punishment for so long. Who will rule Damascus now? And in all the uncertainty, what will be the fate of the Kurdish cause and of our people’s rights?

With these and other questions, one thing was certain: more hardships lie ahead.

Still, we must contribute to finding the best way ahead for our newly liberated nation. Syrians are divided into different sects, parties and entities. There must be a comprehensive identity framework that unites Syrians.

With the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the rules of the game have changed. The new de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, head of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, has offered many signals that he plans to cut off ties with al-Qaeda or other radical Islamist groups.

​The question of political Islam

Another question, then: Is it reasonable for the rule in Syria to turn to political Islam?

Despite reassuring messages spread among the Kurds, Ismailis, Druze, Christians and others, our fears remained legitimate, especially since we live east of the Euphrates, in Syria’s food basket, within an economically devastated country. And we are now controlled by a new military force that will not be content with just a share of the “spoils” of natural resources.

Is there a way to establish a joint Kurdish delegation?

Also tempering our joy is the nature of the leadership we have among Kurds in Syria. The Autonomous Administration behaves as if it is the party that brought down the regime and provided all the necessary means for its downfall; or as if it did not conflict with the Syrian opposition, or never accused anyone who disagreed with it of being traitors!

Of concern to us is the way Kurds would act in this crisis. Is there a way to establish a joint Kurdish delegation based on the national rights of the Kurdish people? Or will the Autonomous Administration carry on with its strange and unreasonable proposals and vague pronouncements about the brotherhood of peoples, and so on?

Our greatest fear lies in the Kurdish geography, in case fighting broke out between Sharaa’s HTS and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which would ultimately be a signal for Turkish drones to be released on our people.

​The ISIS camp

We Kurds are also thinking about the enclave in Syria that some call “the most dangerous place in the world”: al-Hawl camp, a kind of “statelet” of 50,000 prisoners from ISIS fighters and families in SDF detention centers. Those fighters pose a vital and existential threat to American strategic national security in the region. They are, to put it plainly, the greatest threat to America, Syria, the Kurds, and humanity.

With all the blood that has been shed in Syria, it is not easy to convince everyone

We are counting on the new American administration to find solutions for this, and other risks in Syria. Until then, we can only wonder what will be done with this historic opportunity for us as Syrians to prove our right in managing our country, a country that was never made up of only one religion or ethnicity.

With all the blood that has been shed in Syria, reassuring people takes more than a few convincing sentences about coexistence and a single destiny — it takes a lot more than that.

The story of a single homeland starts with a collective identity, the rights of sub-identities, granting powers to parties, and forming administrations or governments that are linked to the federal capital.

It also begins with the certainty that generations have watched their deprived parents grow old chasing after their national and patriotic rights. And we want that chase to end, once and for all.