Apr 9 2011
DAMASCUS – The scale of reforms sweeping through Syria is significant, and worth watching in detail. For one month, unprecedented tension has gripped the country as demonstrators took to the streets demanding a basket of political and economic reforms.
Such demonstrations – although constitutionally guaranteed – are unheard of Syria, a country ruled since 1963 by emergency law, imposed by the Ba’ath Party. Among other things, the demonstrators have demanded the lifting of this law, the end of arbitrary arrests, greater political freedoms, a general amnesty, and a law allowing for political pluralism and ending one-party rule.
Additionally, they have demanded a clampdown on corruption, the sacking of the Naji al-Otari cabinet (in place since 2003), firing certain governors, and solving the Kurdish problem. The government responded on March 25, via President Bashar al-Assad’s advisor Bouthaina Shaaban, who promised to deal with “all of the above”.
A committee has been established, charged with preparing a legal document for the lifting of martial law “before April 25”. Scores of political prisoners were released, including prominent woman activist Souheir al-Atasi, along with those arrested in recent events in the southern town of Daraa, where more than 80 people were killed, according to rights groups. The Otari cabinet was indeed sacked, and authorities promised a political party draft law will be online soon, open for discussion and debate among Syrians.
Once that is done, the law will be ratified by parliament, perhaps ahead of the parliamentary elections next summer, which are expected to be free and democratic – regardless of what majority they bring to the chamber. When the law comes into effect, it will challenge, and eventually drop, Article 8 of the constitution, which designates the Ba’ath as “leader of state and society”.
The pre-set quota of the Ba’ath party will be need to be lifted in both government and parliament alike, hinting that the new cabinet of prime minister-designate Adel Safar will be a caretaker one, given that its strategic posts will be held by the Ba’athists. Non-Ba’athists, after all, make up a sizeable percentage of Syria’s population, explaining why they would welcome reducing then ending the party’s role, which has dominated their lives for 48 years.
Other symbolic gestures came hand-in-hand with these reforms, like sacking the governors of Daraa and Homs, two Syrian cities that witnessed large and angry demonstrations in the past two weeks. Prominent human-rights activist Haitham al-Maleh, who was released from jail only weeks ago, was quoted at length in the Ba’ath Party newspaper al-Ba’ath on Thursday, explaining why martial law should be lifted immediately.
To think that the official organ of the Ba’ath would ever mention such a loud and high-profile critic of the regime is in itself an impressive feat. However, Syrian activists used social networking sites to call for nationwide demonstrations Friday.
The ex-Kurdish problem
The most groundbreaking of these measures was a presidential decree on April 7, granting citizenship to approximately 300,000 Kurds in the eastern Hassake governorate – defusing a problem that has dominated Syrian politics since August 1962. Then, during the pre-Ba’ath era of president Nazem al-Qudsi, 20% of Syria’s ethnic Kurds were deprived of citizenship after a controversial census took place, inflicting permanent damage on the Kurdish community.
The Qudsi government came into power when Syria had just dissolved its union with Egypt in September 1961, and was coming under daily fire from president Gamal Abdul Nasser, who accused the new leaders of Damascus of being opponents of Arab nationalism.
To prove their Arab zeal, Syria’s new leaders passed decree number 93, stripping about 120,000 Syrian Kurds of their citizenship. The argument of the authorities in 1962 was that the census was aimed at identifying “alien infiltrators” in Syria; those who had illegally crossed the border from Turkey. Kurds had to prove that they had lived in Syria at least since 1945, or lose any claim to citizenship.
Oil fields were discovered in Qarah Shuk in 1956 and in Suwaydiyah in 1959, both Kurdish districts, perhaps explaining why the government of Qudsi was worried about Kurdish influence in 1962. This explains why nearly 40% of all the confiscation of land that took place from 1960 onwards (the start of official socialism in Syria) targeted the al-Jazeera region, which is inhabited by Kurds.
The census was rigged, and led to reported Kurdish “unrest” in Syria which exploded in 2004 when bloody demonstrations rocked the town of Qamishly, leaving many dead people and hundreds behind bars.
In March 2005, Assad released 312 Kurds arrested during the disturbances of 2004, promising to grant them Syrian citizenship. Although this was again promised in the 2005 Ba’ath Party Congress, nothing serious was done about it, namely because Syria had too much on its plate, engaged in a cold war with the George W Bush administration and combating a rising anti-Syrian trend in Lebanon.
Ahmad Barakat of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Progressive Party spoke then to the Christian Science Monitor, saying, “Our problem is very different from that of the Kurds in Iraq. Their aim in Iraq is to get a state of their own. But in Syria, we just want our culture and freedom as Syrian nationals.”
The Kurds, who make up 10% of Syria’s 21 million population, are not oppressed, rather they form a well-respected minority. They had one problem: citizenship. Apart from these “unregistered” Kurds, whose plight was resolved on Thursday, the Syrian Kurds are first-class citizens.
In 1920, Abdul Rahman Yusuf, a Damascene Kurd, was senior adviser to the Syrian government, while his son was governor of Damascus in 1949. Also in 1949, Syria’s first military president, Husni al-Za’im, was a Kurd, as was Adib al-Shishakli, a Kurd from Hama who ruled in 1951-54.
Two prime ministers, Husni and Muhsen al-Barazi (in 1941 and 1949), were Kurds. Khalid Bakdash, the veteran leader of the Syrian Communist Party, was also a Kurd, and he became a member of parliament in 1954 because of his Kurdish roots. It was the Kurds of Damascus, rather than the views of Karl Marx, that won him a seat in parliament. Syria’s former Grand Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro, the highest Muslim authority in Syria, who held office from 1966 until his death in 2004, was a Damascene Kurd. Assad tried sending off that message by making a visit to the Hassake region in August 2002, where Kurds are densely populated, promising them reforms and pledging to upgrade their living conditions. Assad was the first Syrian president to visit the Kurdish districts since president Husni al-Za’im (a Kurd) in 1949.
A similar visit took place by the Syrian leader in March 2011. Shortly afterwards, his advisor congratulated them on the Nowroz Kurdish holiday, amid reports that next year, Assad promised that it would become “a national holiday” for all Syrians. The holiday, for long suppressed, was allowed to happen publicly in 2011, amid high festivity, and given prime coverage on state-run Syrian TV.
Sami Moubayed is a university professor, political analyst, and Editor-in-Chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.