MESOP FOCUS : Crisis Group Slams ‘Heavy-Handed’ PYD Rule in Rojava

By Harvey Morris RUDAW – 10-5-2014 – The report urged the PYD to decrease its heavy reliance on its own military and the Assad regime, and instead broaden its support base among both Kurds and non-Kurds.

LONDON – The ability of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) to secure Kurdish rights in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) was challenged this week in a report that blasted the dominant movement in the region for shunning its natural allies in favor of an alliance of convenience with the Damascus regime.

A 24-page study by the International Crisis Group (ICG) acknowledged that the PYD’s armed wing was the strongest military force in its strongholds in Western Kurdistan. But it said the movement’s rise was largely illusory and could be attributed less to its own prowess than to its links with other regional forces, including the regime of Bashar Assad.

The Brussels-based organization also said that the PYD’s heritage as an offshoot of Abdullah Ocalan’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had encumbered the party with a rigid, authoritarian culture that was out of tune with popular expectations.

The negative report came in the same week that international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders accused the PYD of disrespecting freedom of speech and arresting journalists in Syrian Kurdistan.

“Heavy-handed governance prompts at best grudging acquiescence from a constituency whose younger generation, particularly, appears to aspire to something different,” according to the authors of the ICG report.

They said the PYD’s competition for dominance with would-be allies, most importantly the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, had created popular disenchantment and fatigue.

“This has left room for regional powers — notably Turkey and Iran — to manipulate the various sides in pursuit of their own interests,” the report said. “Barzani is on good terms with Ankara and Washington, so the PYD has few allies other than Damascus, Iran and, to an extent, the Nuri al-Maliki-led government in Baghdad.”

The report noted the PYD’s 2013 proclamation of a transitional administration in Rojava, but said it was unclear whether this was a first step toward stability and the Kurdish aspiration for national recognition, or merely a respite while the civil war focused elsewhere.

The PYD’s suspected collaboration with the Assad regime, which continued to maintain a light if firm presence in areas controlled by the Kurdish party, had also taken a toll on its popularity, the report said. Although the regime had relinquished control over state buildings and other assets to the PYD, it continued to control and distribute state resources without which the Rojava project would wither.

The report acknowledged the PYD’s success in fending off jihadi militants, which it described as the single most important reason for the Kurds’ waxing fortunes. It also acknowledged that, for its supporters, the PYD represents the kernel of future Kurdish self-rule.

For its opponents, however, it was seen as “an empty shell, a tool of the regime.”

The report urged the PYD to decrease its heavy reliance on its own military and the Assad regime, and instead broaden its support base among both Kurds and non-Kurds, as well as the more pragmatic strands of the Syrian opposition.

It also needed to diversify its relations with foreign powers. A more balanced relationship would lessen the ability of outsiders to take advantage of communal tensions to push their own agendas.

The PYD should also devise a strategy, along with other local movements, to replace the regime as a provider of services and ensure Rojava’s access to resources.

“These steps would also require that other Kurdish parties, Syrian opposition factions and Turkey reverse their non-engagement policy with the PYD and work constructively with it to find practical solutions,” the report concluded.

“There probably will come a day when Kurds, like others in Syria, will need to make hard compromises with a successor power structure to define and enshrine a new political order,” it said.

“But that day is far off,” it added. “Today, the tasks before Syria’s Kurds are more basic: overcoming internal divisions, clarifying political demands and consolidating local governance. These might be less inspiring, but they are, if anything, no less vital.”
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