Kurdish conscripts: Syrian junta's 'Malgré nous'

The Domiz refugee camp, opened in northern Iraq, harbours some 50000 (60000, say some sources), Syrian Kurds who had to leave their country. "The camp is divided in two parts", are we explained. "One is for the families, the other for single men." It is in this second part, between two rows of tents provided by the UNHCR, that we meet several of them. Amongst the young single men here, they say, 70% are Matloubin, "wanted" - deserters. "I was to go to national service", say one, an electrical engineer. "I went to Iraq as soon as I could". For Kurds are, they are unanimous, used as cannon fodder by the military regime: sent to the most exposed fronts, on the most dangerous postings. "A friend of mine was killed in a car bomb attack in Damascus.", says the engineer. "He was manning a checkpoint, a dangerous job." "If there is a dangerous job, Kurds are sure to be sent in.", adds another man. In a tent, close by, a young man confirms. He made 13 months in the army before absconding: "I was sent in a shock troop on the Lebanese border to fight the rebels. I was machine-gunner in the commandos." Kurdish conscripts are detailed as reinforcement in areas which saw bitter fighting, to fill losses, by small groups. "No more than five", say Domiz's young men. "So they can not organise among themselves to escape." And to escape where, anyway? The territory under governmental control is dotted with control posts, checkpoints, road blocks, where soldiers check identities. "If you do not have papers, if they discover you are a Matloub, they take you on the side of the road and just kill you." "Sometimes", adds the engineer, "they pour petrol on the corpse and set fire to it in front of the post's soldiers. And the officer tells them:" now you know what will happen to you if ever you defect." This extensive net plays the same role than a spider web, destined to catch the deserters. It prevents the young Kurds to reach the town of Derik, in the east of Syrian Kurdistan, by where they can cross to Irak - after paying a tax to the PYD, the Syrian Kurd revolutionary party often presented as the PKK's Syrian branch. "We've been able to cross the border, but a lot of others are trapped inside Syria's Kurdish provinces. The army roadblocks prevent them to move from where they are. They are in danger to be caught in a search, or intercepted at a checkpoint, at any moment. If they are to perform their national service, they are sent on the front. But if they are Matloubin, they are killed immediately. No martial court, no military judge: a bullet in the head and that's it." The fate of those who did not desert is not better. The general feeling, amongst the Domiz refugees, is that their comrades, sent on the most dangerous fronts, will be killed sooner or latter, in combat by the Free Syrian Army, or shot by the officers. It is what says, in the tent, another Kurdish deserter, Ahmed, who served with the internal security ministry troops. "Any hesitation is seen as a sign of weakness. An unconditional support to president al-Assad is demanded from us. If we have qualms, if we do not obey the officers' orders - including shooting civilians - we are traitors. And if we arre traitors, we are dead." To get from the young soldiers a total commitment the officers push them to commit crimes. "We are encouraged to loot.", explains Ahmed. He admits he himself took part to lootings. "If you do not take part, you become suspect." His unit, he says, is involved in summary executions, of civilians and rebels. Compromised in the dictatorship's crimes the recruits, regardless of their actual support for the regime or their degree of involvement, do not have other option but to fight: they have no mercy to expect from the rebels. "We were once encircled in a house. The lieutenant ordered us to surrender. We refused. We fought, during three hours maybe, and at the end we escaped. It was the only thing to do." Moreover, continues Ahmed, he was one of the only few Kurds in his unit, made mainly of Alawites, president al-Assad's sect, regime loyalists. "Just by being Kurd, I was in danger." Outside the tent the others confirm. Even in peace time, the Syrian army was a dangerous place for Kurd conscripts. Kurds have been victims of the discriminatory policies by the successive Syrian governments since the 1960s. Policies which sometimes looked as attempts to culturally annihilate the Kurds, theorised by Mohammed Talib Hilal, a political police lieutenant in al-Jazeera province in 1960, who later became vice president. In 1963, a census deprived 120000 Kurds from their citizenship. (1) "We Kurds are second class citizens for the al-Ba'ath regime - when we are citizens (2)." says the engineer, who translates for the small group gathered outside. This institutionalised racism becomes persecutions in the army. All agree to say things worsened dramatically after the Qamishlu riots, in mid March 2004. Brawls between Arab and Kurd football supporters in this Kurd town on the Turkish border deteriorated in riots. Police fired live ammunitions on the Kurdish demonstrators, the army entered the town and conducted house to house searches. There was no less than 35 dead accounted for. "There was more" says the engineer, with his friends approving. "Some people were killed after the riots. Kurdish soldiers, who refused to fire at the crowd. They were tortured to death, killed by the army itself. I know of three of these cases." Since, the persecutions against Kurdish recruits intensified. Issa has done his military service, but when the Syrian revolution turned in a war, he was called again - he is a Ihtiad, "called again" - but he went to Iraq. "If we speak Kurdish in the army, we are investigated by the battalion's political officer. We can be sent in jail. And then, it can end badly." Issa tells the story of another Kurdish conscript, who was in the army at the same period than him. "He was beaten to death, probably while in cell. His corpse was given back to his family, they were said in died during training." But who was he? The list of young Kurds killed in these circumstances is a long one. In December 2009 Abdulbaqi Yussef, a PYKS, a Syrian Kurd political party, politburo member, was explaining that since 2004 about forty Kurdish recruits had died during their national service. "Eleven during 2009 alone.", did he say then. "These barracks violence are not organised. But they reflect the climate of racist violence prevailing in the Syrian army against Kurds. Since 2004 the al-Ba'ath's official propaganda made us, Kurds, the target of the Arab nationalism at the core of the regime's ideology. Kurds and their political parties were shown as separatists, a threat to the Syrian Arab nation." But with the civil war, the situation changed. To avoid the opening of a second front in the eastern provinces, and so having to fight both a Syrian insurgency and the Free Syrian Army, president al-Assad's military junta withdrew its troops in Syrian Kurdistan in its barracks. It is now the PYD and its militia which is controlling the Kurdish provinces, establishing there, are saying its critics, a totalitarian regime and keeping the Kurds to join the uprising, for the benefit of the dictatorship - accusations the PYD denies, saying it fought the regime and had to face heavy police repression since its creation. "The regime has avoided to enter in conflicts with the Kurds from the start of the uprising.", was saying Roni, a representative in Europeof the Syrian Kurd Azadi party. Listen this: towards the end of 2011 a relative of mine took part to a demonstration in Afrin and was arrested with five or six other Kurds. He was identified as an organiser. They were terrorised. They thought they would be tortured. But instead they were lectured, made to sign some paperwork, promised they would never do it any more, and were let out, free. They could not believe it. But as they were going out the police station they saw a police truck, full with Arab demonstrators, arrested at the same demonstration. They had been beaten so severely they were unconscious. Several looked dead. Do you understand? By treating the Kurds differently the dictatorship makes a difference between us and the Arab opposition, to which is shown no mercy. It so wants to create resentment and animosity against us, to have us looking as collaborators to the eyes of the FSA, to have the rebels turning on us, and to let the Kurds no other choice than to join the war at the regime's side." It is what are living, on an individual scale, the Kurds sent in the Syrian army, made to fight for a government they hate. Isolated in combat groups under the orders of officers who do not hesitate to shoot their own soldiers if they show any sign of weakness, they have to fight to the bitter end, just to survive. "The officers had a say.", says Ahmed "They were saying to us: "In front of you is your father, behind you is your brother. You must kill one of them: choose!"." We tell to the young Kurds the dilemna of the "Malgré nous" in France during the second world war, young Alsatians forcibly conscripted in the Third Reich armies and sent on the Eastern front, sometimes under SS uniform - which meant an immediate execution if ever they were captured by the Red Army or the partisans. The engineer nods approvingly: "It is our story. It is what we are living, now." (1) http://www.usip.org/publications/kurds-syria-fueling-separatist-movements-region http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/11/26/syria-end-persecution-kurds (2) – In 2010 a presidential decree granted citizenship to the Kurds who had been deprived of it, often because they were children of those victims of the 1963 census. But these new citizens became so entitled to national service.