The failure of the Syrian Kurdish parties at the time of the Revolution

By Mohammad Rasho:

The struggle of the Kurdish parties in Syria is in vain, and didn’t quite live up to the level of the challenges faced by the Kurdish people in Syria.

Because of the ongoing civil war, some Kurdish parties tried to increase their mass base through the liberal Coordinating groups (Altenseekiet) but these Altenseekiet, run by youth volunteers, suffered splits due to the intervention of parties who tried to impose traditional modus operandi that didn’t really fit the Revolutionary Youth.

When these parties failed to take control of the ‘political street’, they proceeded to develop their foreign relations. But their concept of foreign relations wasn’t a mature one. Instead of foreign relations on the basis of mutual respect and interests, a dependency relationship came to be accepted by Kurd politicians as all the party leaders became mouthpieces for non-Syrian leaders. This was another cause of the failure of the Kurdish political movement.

In a desperate attempt to rally the strength of the Kurdish parties, they founded the National Council of Kurds in Syria. But, after a year and a half of absurd activity, this has disastrously failed to develop a single Kurdish voice, due to several factors, including: the Council has acted on the basis of serving other interests only; there was neither a vision nor a national sense; the exclusion of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has wide popularity; the settlement of many of the party leaders outside Syria; the lack of a clear political vision, slow performance and reactions to urgent events…

This means that the Council was a failure in every sense of the word. After the Kurdish leaders knew that their council had died, they wrapped it up and pumped some life into it through the introduction of the PYD, with all its bodies and institutions, which seized half the seats. And thus was established the Kurdish Supreme Council.

The influence of the PYD has become dominant on all the other parties. It was the only armed party on the Supreme Council and thus popular committee forces were formed, nominally belonging to the Supreme Council, but ideologically affiliated to the PYD.

With the growing influence of the PYD, a rival was established, by direct request of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The ‘Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria’ (PDKS) was established as a ‘political democratic union’. Despite the short life of this union, we can see that it has also failed. It has incompatible ingredients, with each of its four parties planning to achieve financial gains at the expense of the others, and with all the party leaders resident in Iraqi Kurdistan and absent from events on the ground in Syria.

It seems that the leaders of the Kurdish parties will kill the hope in Kurdish people’s hearts; and since they obey orders from abroad, they will never have a patriot feeling, but will just be customers of the outside world.

Mohammad Rasho is a Kurd from Efrin-Syria, politically independent, interested in the Syrian political issues in general, specialist in Kurdish issues and parties.

Copyright © 2012 Kurdistantribune.com