Kurds want lands they control in Syria to become federation under Damascus

Written on March 17th, 2016 in politics Comments Off

… reports – Published on RT, March 16, 2016.

Kurdish-controlled autonomous areas in northern Syria are expected to declare a federal system, local media and RT’s sources on the ground have said. The conference to declare the federation of three Western Kurdistan enclaves will be in Rmelan.

Barzan Iso, a Kurdish journalist, has confirmed the news to RT. “Now the conference has just started in Rmelan, about 200 representatives of Rojava have joined [the event]. They represent different ethnicities and nationalities. There are Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Syriacs, Turkomans, Armenians, Circassians and Chechens,” he told RT on Wednesday. “Also we have representatives from the Syrian democratic forces, YPG, women defense units.”

“This conference is supposed to announce a federation as a political project for Rojava region in northern Syria,” Iso added.

A newly established system would see the autonomous cantons in Syria Kurdistan (Rojava) replaced … //

… Exclusion from Syria peace talks:

The move comes in the wake of the Syrian Kurdish PYD party being left out of peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the Syrian civil war.

The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia has proved to be an effective participant in the military campaign against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in northwestern Syria.

The exclusion is in line with the wishes of Turkey, which sees the party as an offshoot of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara is currently battling in southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, and Iraq. If the Federal System of Northern Syria goes ahead, it is likely to set off alarm bells in Ankara.

However, Moscow has strongly insisted that the Kurds be invited to upcoming peace talks, suggesting that leaving them out could endanger Syria’s territorial integrity. Staffan de Mistura, the UN envoy to Syria, has also said the Syrian Kurds deserve a spot at the negotiating table in Geneva.

“The second round of inter-Syrian talks is underway in Geneva, but Syrian Kurds were not invited. It means that the future of Syria and its society is decided without Kurds. In fact, we are pushed back into a conservative, old-fashioned system which does not fit well with us,” Rodi Osman, the head of Syrian Kurdistan’s office in Moscow, told RIA Novosti. “In light of this, we see only one solution which is to declare the creation of [Kurdish] federation. It will serve the interests of the Kurds, but also those of Arabs, Turks, Assyrians, Chechens and Turkomans – all parts of Syria’s multinational society.

“Given the complicated situation in Syria, we would become an example of a system that may resolve the Syrian crisis,” Osman added.

In turn, Syria’s UN representative Bashar Jaafari said that talks were hampered by the “absence of half or two-thirds of all the opposition,” with the lack of representation rendering the format of the talks “very weak.”

(full text).

Links:

The Next Disaster: Islamic State Expands as Libya Descends into Chaos, on Spiegel Online International, by Christoph Reuter, March 16, 2016 (Photo Gallery): With two separate governments waging war against each other, Libya is crumbling. Islamic State is taking advantage of the turmoil to put down roots in the country. The US is weighing intervention;

Age of Austerity: Capital, the Financial Crisis and the State in Canada, on The Bullet, Socialist Project’s E-Bulletin No. 1233, by Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman interviewed by Robin Chang, March 16, 2016;

Colonialism via Data, Sensors, Genes, Neuroscience, on Dissident Voice, by John Stanton, March 16, 2016: in 2007 I wrote and presented a conceptual paper to an international studies group in Portugal. The subject matter was, generally, the use of Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience (ECN) to manage humanity. That paper would eventually finds its way, remarkably, into Rebecca Costa’s seminal The Watchman’s Rattle …;

Das Vierte Reich: Unterwerfung der Völker durch die Europäische Union, 45.43 min, von News 23 vom 17. Dez 2013s: till und heimlich während die Menschen Tag für Tag nichts ahnend zur Arbeit gehen und ihren Beitrag zur Erhaltung dieses Herrschaftsprinzips leisten, errichten unsere Volksvertreter eine alles umfassende und unaufhaltsame Diktatur welche alles in den Schatten stellt was wir bisher kannten;

… and this:

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