• Syria’s Kurds and the Turkish border

    The news from Syria has been nothing but bad for several years now, but things have been particularly desperate in the last few days—since Turkish forces, with a green light from the American president, invaded the region of northern Syria that had been under autonomous Kurdish rule, as Rojava. (You can read an overview of the situation and what is at stake in this Guardian article: What is the situation in north-eastern Syria? —> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/09/what-is-situation-north-eastern-syria-turkey-kurds)

    Although I mainly work on refugee history these days, earlier in my career I was a Syria specialist, and I spent a lot of time researching the history of the area that Turkey has just invaded. The demarcation of the Syrian-Turkish border in the 1920s and 30s was crucial to the constitution of state sovereignty on either side of it. Turkey and Syria were newly established states, though they were quite different: Turkey was ruled by a nationalist government that had successfully fought off multiple invasions, while Syria was only nominally independent under French colonial ‘supervision’. What I was really interested in, though, was how these interconnected processes shaped the political identities of the people living in what became the northern Syrian borderlands. A lot of them were Kurdish, and the border made them a minority in a new Syrian nation-state.

    As a historian, I don’t have privileged knowledge about current events, and I’m feeling pretty helpless and hopeless about them. But if it’s helpful for anyone reading this to get some background on how this part of the world came to be divided between Syria and Turkey, and what that meant for Kurds living there, with permission from the publishers I’m making some of the things I’ve written on the subject freely available.

    First, here is a PDF of a chapter of my book (2011) on ‘The border and the Kurds’ (https://singularthings.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/chapter-4.pdf). It explains the impact that the demarcation of the border had on Kurds across the new Syrian nation-state. Right through the 1920s and 30s, Syria’s borders didn’t have much meaningful physical presence on the ground. But increasingly, the border as a line between two state jurisdictions made it a meaningful presence in people’s lives (and in people’s minds) nonetheless. The drawing of Syria’s borders tended to make all Kurds in the country—whether they lived in the borderlands or in Damascus—into one ‘minority’ community.

    Second, my article ‘Refugees and the definition of Syria, 1920-1939’ (2017) (https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtw048) argues that the arrival and settlement of refugees brought the geographical borders of Syria into much sharper definition, and accelerated the spread of effective state authority across its territory—as well as raising questions about whether Syrian national identity should be defined to include or exclude the incomers. Kurdish refugees from the new Turkish Republic were one of the three main groups of refugees entering Syria in this period, and the places that became Syrian included the areas that Kurds have governed autonomously for the last few years. The Turkish army’s invasion has prompted the Kurdish government to invite the Syrian regime back in.

    Finally, an older article in French, ‘Frontières et pouvoir d’Etat: La frontière turco-syrienne dans les années 1920 et 1930’ (2009) (https://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_REVUE=VING&ID_NUMPUBLIE=VIN_103&ID_ARTICLE=VING_103_0091#), written with my colleague and friend Seda Altuğ, goes into more detail on the process of how the border was drawn on the ground, and what role it played in the constitution of state authority on both sides. For Turkey, a national frontier was being created, that needed defending against local populations that were viewed as a threat (especially Kurds and Armenians) as well as against French imperialism. On the Syrian side, where the border was both a Syrian national and French imperial frontier, the situation was more complicated.

    https://singularthings.wordpress.com/2019/10/15/syrias-kurds-and-the-turkish-border
    #Kurdistan #kurdistan_syrien #Syrie #Turquie #frontières #Kurdes #histoire
    signalé par @isskein

  • Entretien avec Eugenia, secrétaire du Comité du Croissant-Rouge Kurde de Suisse [Heyva sor a Kurdistanê Swêsre : http://heyvasor.ch/fr/accueil/]. 20.10.2019.

    Situation et actions du #Croissant-Rouge. Comprendre la tragédie là-bas et comment se solidariser depuis ici :

    Aide d’urgence. Quelques conseils et suggestions par Eugenia :
    _Parler, expliquer, sensibiliser, alerter et interpeller quant à la situation du Rojava.
    _Faire suivre ce lien au plus grand nombre
    _Si l’on peut et à sa mesure, procéder à un don et/ou devenir membre du Croissant-Rouge Kurde en Suisse


    http://libradio.org/?p=7190
    L’audio :
    http://libradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/CRK_Master.mp3

    #Kurdistan #Kurdes #conflit #Kurdistan_syriens #Turquie #guerre #audio #Rojava

    • Les Kurdes de Syrie ont commencé à payer le prix de la trahison de l’Occident. Une pluie de bombes s’est abattue mercredi après-midi sur les villes frontière, précédant de peu une offensive terrestre de l’armée turque et de ses alliés islamistes de Syrie. Le macabre décompte des victimes peut débuter. On imagine l’effroi qui a saisi les habitants du #Rojava déjà durement éprouvés par plusieurs années de guerre contre les djihadistes.

      Le tweet dominical de Donald Trump avait annoncé la trahison ultime des Etats-Unis. Mais l’offensive turque répond à une logique plus profonde. A force de voir l’Union européenne lui manger dans la main, à force de jouer sans trop de heurts la balance géopolitique entre Moscou et Washington au gré de l’opportunisme des deux grandes puissances, Recep Tayyip Erdogan a des raisons de se sentir intouchable. Lorsqu’en 2015 et 2016, il faisait massacrer sa propre population dans les villes kurdes de Cizre, Nusaybin, Silopi ou Sur, le silence était de plomb.

      L’offensive débutée hier, le sultan l’annonce de longue date, sans provoquer de réaction ferme des Européens. La girouette Trump a bon dos : en matière d’allégeance à Ankara, les Européens sont autrement plus constants.

      Il faudra pourtant stopper Erdogan. Laisser le #Kurdistan_syrien tomber aux mains des milices islamistes et de l’armée turque reviendrait à cautionner un crime impardonnable. A abandonner des centaines de milliers de civils, dont de très nombreux réfugiés, et des milliers de combattants de la liberté à leurs bourreaux. Ce serait également la certitude d’une guerre de longue durée entre la Turquie et sa propre minorité kurde, environ un cinquième de sa population.

      Plusieurs pays européens ont réclamé une réunion du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. Le signe d’un sursaut ? L’espoir d’un cessez-le-feu rapide ? Ou des jérémiades d’arrière-garde, qui cesseront dès que la Turquie aura atteint ses objectifs ?

      Comme souvent, la superpuissance étasunienne détient les cartes maîtresses. Et Donald Trump n’en est pas à son premier virage intempestif. S’il a donné son feu vert à Erdogan, le républicain se retrouve coincé entre les interventionnistes et les isolationnistes de son propre parti. Hier, le premier camp s’indignait bruyamment. Exerçant une pression redoutable pour un président déjà affaibli par le dossier ukrainien.

      Il faudra qu’elle pèse aussi sur les dirigeants européens. La solidarité avec le Rojava doit devenir une priorité du mouvement social et des consciences.

      https://lecourrier.ch/2019/10/09/il-faut-stopper-erdogan

    • Rojava : une guerre de classe !

      L’invasion du Nord de la Syrie par l’armée turque marque non seulement le retour à la pratique des guerres coloniales mais c’est aussi et surtout une riposte létale du capitalisme à toute initiative d’émancipation sociale et d’autonomie des peuples asservis...


      ... et on est tous bien obligés de constater que la soi-disant « construction européenne » reste immobile et impuissante devant des événements qui laissent malheureusement pressentir une catastrophe humanitaire.

      Comme si nous étions replongés à la veille de la deuxième guerre mondiale, avec le « Mourir pour Dantzig ? » de Marcel Déat publié à la une de « l’Oeuvre » le 4 mai 1939, qui n’était que la réaction d’un pacifisme dévoyé au « lâche soulagement » des « accords de Munich » donnant les mains libres à Hitler pour s’emparer du minerai de fer tchécoslovaque...

      Aujourd’hui où le sultan-dictateur Erdogan profite du dérangement mental du maître américain pour déclencher une guerre impérialiste, il ne s’agit pas de « mourir pour le Rojava » mais de sauver les Kurdes d’un massacre annoncé et programmé de longue date par le capitalisme ottoman qui redoute la contagion politique et sociale diffusée par le municipalisme libertaire du Rojava dont les idées, reprises par le PKK, seraient susceptibles de se répandre en Turquie même !

      Le rouleau-compresseur de l’armée turque est donc l’instrument d’une guerre de classe.

      Alors est-il possible de tolérer que la Turquie soit encore membre de l’OTAN ?

      Par ailleurs, cette offensive ne va-t-elle pas profiter aux hordes barbares de l’ex califat DAESH pour se regrouper afin de poursuivre le djihad ?

      En 1871, l’armée prussienne qui assiégeait Paris, avait autorisé le passage de plusieurs divisions versaillaises pour qu’elles prennent les Fédérés à revers. Et ensuite, elle avait assisté, impassible, aux massacres de la Semaine Sanglante !

      Allons nous, aujourd’hui, rester indifférents à cette opération génocidaire ?

      Un crime contre l’humanité.

      https://blogs.mediapart.fr/vingtras/blog/111019/rojava-une-guerre-de-classe-0

  • Syria-Turkey briefing: The fallout of an invasion for civilians

    Humanitarians are warning that a Turkish invasion in northeast Syria could force hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes, as confusion reigns over its possible timing, scope, and consequences.

    Panos Moumtzis, the UN’s regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told reporters in Geneva on Monday that any military operation must guard against causing further displacement. “We are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst,” he said, noting that an estimated 1.7 million people live in the country’s northeast.

    Some residents close to the Syria-Turkey border are already leaving, one aid worker familiar with the situation on the ground told The New Humanitarian. Most are staying with relatives in nearby villages for the time-being, said the aid worker, who asked to remain anonymous in order to continue their work.

    The number of people who have left their homes so far remains relatively small, the aid worker said, but added: “If there is an incursion, people will leave.”

    The International Rescue Committee said “a military offensive could immediately displace at least 300,000 people”, but analysts TNH spoke to cautioned that the actual number would depend on Turkey’s plans, which remain a major unknown.

    As the diplomatic and security communities struggle to get a handle on what’s next, the same goes for humanitarians in northeastern Syria – and the communities they are trying to serve.

    Here’s what we know, and what we don’t:
    What just happened?

    Late on Sunday night, the White House said that following a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria,” adding that US soldiers would not be part of the move, and “will no longer be in the immediate area”.

    The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – the Syrian-Kurdish-led militia that until now had been supported by the United States and played a major role in wresting territory back from the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in Syria – vowed to stand its ground in the northeast.

    An SDF spokesperson tweeted that the group “will not hesitate to turn any unprovoked attack by Turkey into an all-out war on the entire border to DEFEND ourselves and our people”.

    Leading Republicans in the US Congress criticised President Donald Trump’s decision, saying it represents an abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria, and the Pentagon appeared both caught off-guard and opposed to a Turkish incursion.

    Since then, Trump has tweeted extensively on the subject, threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey” if the country does anything he considers to be “off limits”.

    On the ground, US troops have moved out of two key observation posts on the Turkey-Syria border, in relatively small numbers: estimates range from 50 to 150 of the total who would have been shifted, out of around 1,000 US soldiers in the country.
    What is Turkey doing?

    Erdogan has long had his sights on a “safe zone” inside Syria, which he has said could eventually become home to as many as three million Syrian refugees, currently in Turkey.

    Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said in August that only 17 percent of Turkey’s estimated 3.6 million Syrian refugees come from the northeast of the country, which is administered by the SDF and its political wing.

    Turkish and US forces began joint patrols of a small stretch of the border early last month. While Turkey began calling the area a “safe zone”, the United States referred to it as a “security mechanism”. The terms of the deal were either never made public or not hammered out.

    In addition to any desire to resettle refugees, which might only be a secondary motive, Turkey wants control of northeast Syria to rein in the power of the SDF, which it considers to be a terrorist organisation.

    One of the SDF’s main constituent parts are People’s Defense Units – known by their Kurdish acronym YPG.

    The YPG are an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK – a Turkey-based Kurdish separatist organisation that has conducted an insurgency against the Turkish government for decades, leading to a bloody crackdown.

    While rebels fight for the northwest, and Russian-backed Syrian government forces control most of the rest of Syria, the SDF currently rules over almost all of Hassakeh province, most of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces, and a small part of Aleppo province.
    How many civilians are at risk?

    There has not been a census in Syria for years, and numbers shift quickly as people flee different pockets of conflict. This makes estimating the number of civilians in northeast Syria very difficult.

    The IRC said in its statement it is “deeply concerned about the lives and livelihoods of the two million civilians in northeast Syria”; Moumtzis mentioned 1.7 million people; and Save the Children said “there are 1.65 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in this area, including more than 650,000 displaced by war”.

    Of those who have had to leave their homes in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and Hassakeh, only 100,000 are living in camps, according to figures from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Others rent houses or apartments, and some live in unfinished buildings or tents.

    “While many commentators are rightly focusing on the security implications of this policy reversal, the humanitarian implications will be equally enormous,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, and a former high-ranking Obama administration aid official.

    “All across Northern Syria, hundreds of thousands of displaced and conflict-affected people who survived the horrors of the… [IS] era will now face the risk of new violence between Turkish and SDF forces.”
    Who will be first in the firing line?

    It’s unlikely all of northeast Syria would be impacted by a Turkish invasion right away, given that so far the United States has only moved its troops away from two border posts, at Tel Abyad (Kurdish name: Gire Spi), and roughly 100 kilometres to the east, at Ras al-Ayn (Kurdish name: Serê Kaniyê).

    Depending on how far into Syria one is counting, aid workers estimate there are between 52,000 to 68,000 people in this 100-kilometre strip, including the towns of Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn themselves. The aid worker in northeast Syria told TNH that if there is an offensive, these people are more likely, at least initially, to stay with family or friends in nearby villages than to end up in camps.

    The aid worker added that while humanitarian operations from more than 70 NGOs are ongoing across the northeast, including in places like Tel Abyad, some locals are avoiding the town itself and, in general, people are “extremely worried”.
    What will happen to al-Hol camp?

    The fate of the rest of northeast Syria’s population may also be at risk.

    Trump tweeted on Monday that the Kurds “must, with Europe and others, watch over the captured ISIS fighters and families”.

    The SDF currently administers al-Hol, a tense camp of more than 68,000 people – mostly women and children – deep in Hassakeh province, where the World Health Organisation recently said people are living “in harsh and deplorable conditions, with limited access to quality basic services, sub-optimal environment and concerns of insecurity.”

    Many of the residents of al-Hol stayed with IS through its last days in Syria, and the camp holds both these supporters and people who fled the group earlier on.

    Last week, Médecins Sans Frontières said security forces shot at women protesting in a part of the camp known as “the annex”, which holds around 10,000 who are not Syrian or Iraqi.

    The SDF also holds more than 10,000 IS detainees in other prisons, and the possible release of these people – plus those at al-Hol – may become a useful bargaining chip for the Kurdish-led group.

    On Monday, an SDF commander said guarding the prisoners had become a “second priority” in the wake of a possible Turkish offensive.

    “All their families are located in the border area,” General Mazloum Kobani Abdi told NBC News of the SDF fighters who had been guarding the prisoners. “So they are forced to defend their families.”

    https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/10/08/syria-turkey-briefing-fallout-invasion-civilians
    #Syrie #Turquie #guerre #conflit #civiles #invasion #al-Hol #Kurdistan #Kurdes #camps #camps_de_réfugiés
    ping @isskein

    • Il faut stopper Erdogan

      Les Kurdes de Syrie ont commencé à payer le prix de la trahison de l’Occident. Une pluie de bombes s’est abattue mercredi après-midi sur les villes frontière, précédant de peu une offensive terrestre de l’armée turque et de ses alliés islamistes de Syrie. Le macabre décompte des victimes peut débuter. On imagine l’effroi qui a saisi les habitants du #Rojava déjà durement éprouvés par plusieurs années de guerre contre les djihadistes.

      Le tweet dominical de Donald Trump avait annoncé la trahison ultime des Etats-Unis. Mais l’offensive turque répond à une logique plus profonde. A force de voir l’Union européenne lui manger dans la main, à force de jouer sans trop de heurts la balance géopolitique entre Moscou et Washington au gré de l’opportunisme des deux grandes puissances, Recep Tayyip Erdogan a des raisons de se sentir intouchable. Lorsqu’en 2015 et 2016, il faisait massacrer sa propre population dans les villes kurdes de Cizre, Nusaybin, Silopi ou Sur, le silence était de plomb.

      L’offensive débutée hier, le sultan l’annonce de longue date, sans provoquer de réaction ferme des Européens. La girouette Trump a bon dos : en matière d’allégeance à Ankara, les Européens sont autrement plus constants.

      Il faudra pourtant stopper Erdogan. Laisser le #Kurdistan_syrien tomber aux mains des milices islamistes et de l’armée turque reviendrait à cautionner un crime impardonnable. A abandonner des centaines de milliers de civils, dont de très nombreux réfugiés, et des milliers de combattants de la liberté à leurs bourreaux. Ce serait également la certitude d’une guerre de longue durée entre la Turquie et sa propre minorité kurde, environ un cinquième de sa population.

      Plusieurs pays européens ont réclamé une réunion du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. Le signe d’un sursaut ? L’espoir d’un cessez-le-feu rapide ? Ou des jérémiades d’arrière-garde, qui cesseront dès que la Turquie aura atteint ses objectifs ?

      Comme souvent, la superpuissance étasunienne détient les cartes maîtresses. Et Donald Trump n’en est pas à son premier virage intempestif. S’il a donné son feu vert à Erdogan, le républicain se retrouve coincé entre les interventionnistes et les isolationnistes de son propre parti. Hier, le premier camp s’indignait bruyamment. Exerçant une pression redoutable pour un président déjà affaibli par le dossier ukrainien.

      Il faudra qu’elle pèse aussi sur les dirigeants européens. La solidarité avec le Rojava doit devenir une priorité du mouvement social et des consciences.

      https://lecourrier.ch/2019/10/09/il-faut-stopper-erdogan

    • #Al-Hol detainees attack guards and start fires as Turkish assault begins

      Camp holding thousands of Islamic State suspects thrown into ’chaos’, says Kurdish official

      The Turkish assault on northeast Syria has prompted Islamic State group-affiliated women and youth in al-Hol’s camp to attack guards and start fires, a Kurdish official told Middle East Eye.

      Kurdish-held northeastern Syria has been on high alert since the United States announced on Sunday it would leave the area in anticipation of a Turkish offensive.

      Over the three days since the US announcement, chaos has broken out in the teeming al-Hol camp, Mahmoud Kro, an official that oversees internment camps in the Kurdish-run autonomous area, told MEE.

      Some 60,000 people suspected of being affiliated or linked to the Islamic State (IS) group, the majority women and children, are being held in the camp.

      “There are attacks on guards and camp management, in addition to burning tents and preparing explosive devices,” Kro told MEE from Qamishli.

      The status of al-Hol’s detainees has been a major concern since Turkey began making more threats to invade northeast Syria this year.

      In the phone call between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump on Sunday that precipitated the United States’ pullout, the US president pressed his Turkish counterpart on the fate of foreign IS suspects in Kurdish custody, MEE revealed.
      ‘Targeting our existence as Kurds’

      Turkey launched its assault on northeastern Syria on Wednesday alongside its Syrian rebel allies, aiming, it says, to push the Kurdish YPG militia at least 32km from the border.

      Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the outlawed PKK militant group.

      However, the YPG is a leading component of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia, which has been Washington’s principal partner on the ground in the fight against IS.

      SDF fighters guard al-Hol, but Kro said the Turkish attack would draw them away to join the battle.

      “Any war in the region will force the present forces guarding the camp to go defend the border,” he said. “This will increase the chance of chaos in the camp.”

      Kro said that the administration in al-Hol has not made any preparations for a war with Turkey because the SDF’s priority is protecting northeast Syria and Kurds.

      “In terms of preparations, our first priority is protecting our region and existence,” he said. “The Turks are targeting our existence as Kurds to the first degree.”

      Some officials from the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the SDF, agree with Kro’s assessment that the detainees in al-Hol could get out.

      “If fighting breaks out between the SDF and Turkey, security at prisons will relax and prisoners could escape,” Bassam Ishak, the co-chair of the SDC in the US, told MEE ahead of the offensive.

      Meanwhile, SDC spokesman Amjad Osman said, as other Syrian Kurdish officials have, that a Turkish attack on northeast Syria would negatively affect the continuing war on IS in the country.

      “We are committed to fighting terrorism,” he told MEE. “But now our priority is to, first of all, confront the Turkish threats. And this will have a negative effect on our battle against Daesh,” using the Arabic acronym for IS.

      However, Turkey has bristled at the suggestion that the camps and fight against IS will be endangered by Ankara’s offensive.

      “This blackmail reveals the true face of the YPG and demonstrates how it has no intent of fighting against IS,” a Turkish official told MEE.

      Some residents of northeast Syria are already starting to flee. Many fear yet another war in the country that is still dealing with the conflict between government and rebel forces, and lingering IS attacks.

      Osman stopped short of saying the SDF would pack up and leave al-Hol. However, it will be hard for the group to keep holding the Syrian, Iraqi and international detainees during such a war, he said.

      “We are trying as much as possible to continue protecting the camps,” Osman said. “But any attempt to drag us into a military battle with Turkey will have a dangerous impact.”

      https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/al-hol-detainees-attack-guards-and-start-fires-turkish-assault-begins
      #ISIS #Etat_islamique #EI

  • Guns, Filth and #ISIS: Syrian Camp Is ‘Disaster in the Making’

    In the desert camp in northeastern Syria where tens of thousands of Islamic State fighters’ wives and children have been trapped for months in miserable conditions with no prospects of leaving, ISIS sympathizers regularly torch the tents of women deemed infidels.

    Fights between camp residents have brought smuggled guns into the open, and some women have attacked or threatened others with knives and hammers. Twice, in June and July, women stabbed the Kurdish guards who were escorting them, sending the camp into lockdown.

    Virtually all women wear the niqab, the full-length black veil demanded by ISIS’s rigid interpretation of Islam — some because they still adhere to the group’s ideology, others because they fear running afoul of the true believers.

    The Kurdish-run #Al_Hol camp is struggling to secure and serve nearly 70,000 displaced people, mainly women and children who fled there during the last battle to oust the Islamic State from eastern Syria. Filled with women stripped of hope and children who regularly die before receiving medical care, it has become what aid workers, researchers and American military officials warn is a disaster in the making.
    Image

    The daily ordeals of overcrowded latrines and contaminated water, limited medical care, flaring tensions between residents and guards, and chronic security problems have left the residents embittered and vulnerable. A recent Pentagon report that cautioned that ISIS was regrouping across Iraq and Syria said ISIS ideology has been able to spread “uncontested” at the camp.

    It is impossible to know how many of the women are ISIS believers, and many have publicly disavowed the group. But a stubborn core of followers is menacing the rest with threats, intimidation and, occasionally, violence, aid workers and researchers who have interviewed Al Hol residents said.

    The result is something more like a prison than a camp, a place where security concerns often overwhelm humanitarian ones — which only heightens the danger, according to aid workers and researchers who described conditions there to The New York Times.

    “Living in conditions that are difficult and being surrounded by people who are highly radical — is that conducive to deradicalization?” said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking who researches Syria and Iraq, and who has visited the camp twice recently.
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    “This is a place that can possibly radicalize someone, but certainly doesn’t help deradicalize anyone,” she added.

    Yet few have been able to leave.

    The Iraqis face being ostracized for their ISIS associations or sent to detention camps if they return to Iraq, which has been executing people accused of being ISIS members in what watchdogs and journalists have called sham trials. The Syrians may not have homes to go back to.

    And the roughly 10,000 foreigners from at least 50 other countries are largely unwanted at home.

    The Kurdish authorities overseeing the camp have pleaded for the non-Syrians to be allowed to return to their own countries, saying they are not equipped to detain them indefinitely. But only a few countries, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, have repatriated their citizens on a large scale, with the occasional exception of a few young children whom Western governments have agreed to take back.

    “They’re in no man’s land. They’re in limbo,” said Sara Kayyali, a Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch who visited the camp earlier this year. “They’re stuck in the desert in a camp that’s not equipped for their needs, with children who grew up in the worst possible conditions, only to get to a place where things are, if possible, even worse.”

    Adding to their frustration, the women have little information about where their ISIS fighter husbands are. Authorities at first told them that they would be reunited with their relatives or at least be allowed to speak to them, but little has come of that promise, partly because contact is seen as a security risk.

    “I’m struggling to reconcile the two things, wanting to look at them as displaced people and human,” said Dareen Khalifa, an International Crisis Group analyst who has visited the camp, but some of the women are “very ideological, and the atmosphere is very ripe for all sorts of indoctrination of little kids and of women who just don’t know what’s going to happen to them or their families.”

    The struggles of daily life have not helped.

    The tents were freezing cold in the winter and have been swelteringly hot this summer, with temperatures rising as high as 122 degrees. Much of the water is contaminated with E. coli. Human Rights Watch researchers saw children drinking water from a tank with worms coming out of the spout, according to a report the group released in July, and the skin of many women and children they saw was pocked with sores caused by a parasite.

    Conditions are especially poor in the so-called annex, where those who are neither Syrian nor Iraqi are housed, including more than 7,000 children — about two-thirds of whom are younger than 12 — and 3,000 women.

    Annex residents are not allowed to leave their section without a guard. The authorities have also restricted aid groups’ access to the annex, making it difficult to provide much more than basics like water and food, aid workers said.

    As a result, children in the annex are going without school and other services. There is not even a playground.

    “We fear that the narrative of a radicalized population has played a role in hindering humanitarian access,” said Misty Buswell, a spokeswoman for the International Rescue Committee. “The youngest and most vulnerable are paying the highest price and suffering for the perceived misdeeds of their parents.”

    Aid groups are gradually expanding services to keep up with the camp’s population, which leapt from under 10,000 at the end of 2018, to more than 72,000 as ISIS lost its last territory in March. But donors are wary of supporting a camp perceived to be housing hardened ISIS followers.

    Medical care in the annex is limited to two small clinics, neither of which operates overnight, and women from the annex must clear numerous hurdles to be referred to an outside hospital. Women there regularly give birth in a tent without a doctor or a midwife, aid workers said.

    The number of child deaths — mostly from treatable conditions like severe malnutrition, diarrhea and pneumonia — has nearly tripled since March, Ms. Buswell said. Between December and August, the deaths of 306 children under 5 have been recorded at the camp, she said. Almost a third of them were in the annex, double or sometimes triple the rate of deaths elsewhere in the camp, often because children there cannot get medical care, she said.

    The women’s grievances are on display in the group chat channels where some of them congregate, which simmer with violent videos, sinister rumors and desperation.

    One recurring message in the group-chat app Telegram holds, without evidence, that Kurdish guards are kidnapping children and forcing them to serve in Kurdish militias. Another rumor falsely claims that camp residents’ organs are being sold. Others allege murders, sexual assaults and rapes. Many of the posts are pure ISIS propaganda, including beheading videos and vows to rebuild the so-called caliphate.

    Given that residents are being guarded by the same military force that fought their husbands and sons, the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the tensions may have been inevitable. The families who arrived between December and March were among the most committed of the group’s followers, Ms. Tsurkov said, choosing to leave only as the last shreds of the caliphate were being bombarded.

    Aid workers and researchers said the guards often raid women’s tents at night, confiscating items or relocating families for what they say are security reasons, and fire into the air to keep order. Guards have confiscated women’s cash and valuables, leaving them without money to buy fresh food for their children, according to Human Rights Watch. Women in the annex are not allowed to have cellphones, though some do anyway.

    A spokesman for the camp did not reply to a request for comment for this article. But the camp authorities, as well as some aid workers and researchers, have said extra security measures were warranted by the frequent outbreaks of bullying, harassment and violence.

    The Pentagon report said local forces did not have enough resources to provide more than “minimal security,” allowing extremist ideology to spread unchecked.

    “It’s a cycle of violence,” said Ms. Kayyali, the Human Rights Watch researcher. “ISIS has committed atrocities against the world. Policymakers don’t want to deal with anyone connected to ISIS. Then they’re re-radicalized by mistreatment, and they go back to what they know.”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/world/middleeast/isis-alhol-camp-syria.html
    #réfugiés #asile #migrations #déplacés_internes #IDPs #Syrie #réfugiés_syriens #Etat_islamique #violence #Kurdes #Kurdistan_syrien #radicalisation

    • Dans le nord-est de la Syrie, la mort lente des #prisonniers djihadistes

      « Le Monde » a pu accéder à l’un des centres gérés par les forces kurdes. S’y entassent des centaines de détenus, les derniers irréductibles du « califat » du groupe Etat islamique, souvent blessés ou mourants.

      La mort a une odeur. Le désespoir aussi ; son effluve se mêle à celle de la maladie, de la dysenterie, de la chair humaine que la vie, peu à peu, abandonne. Quand la porte de la cellule réservée aux malades de cette prison pour membres de l’organisation Etat islamique (EI) du nord-est de la Syrie s’ouvre sur d’innombrables détenus en combinaisons orange, entassés les uns sur les autres sur toute la superficie d’une pièce de la taille d’un hangar, c’est bien cette odeur-là qui étreint la poitrine.

      Les responsables de la prison, appartenant aux forces kurdes de sécurité, ne connaissent pas le nombre d’hommes et d’enfants qui gisent là, entre le monde des vivants et celui des morts. « On ne peut pas les compter. Ça change tout le temps. » Certains guérissent et regagnent leurs cellules. D’autres meurent.


      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/10/31/au-nord-est-de-la-syrie-dans-une-prison-de-djihadistes-de-l-ei-tous-les-jour

  • Raqa campaign cements rising profile of Syria’s Kurds

    Syria’s Kurds were once a marginalised minority, but now they are leading the charge for the Islamic State group’s Raqa bastion and hoping to cement their gains in the war.

    The surprise turnaround in their fortunes is the result of several factors, including the Syrian regime’s decision to focus attention elsewhere and a key alliance with Washington against IS.

    They are now receiving direct US military support, and hold large swathes of the Kurdish-majority parts of Syria they call “#Rojava”.


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-4579318/Raqa-campaign-cements-rising-profile-Syrias-Kurds.html
    #Kurdistan #Kurdes #Kurdistan_syrien #Syrie #conflit #guerre

  • La #Turquie bombarde les combattants #kurdes dans le nord de la #Syrie

    L’artillerie turque a bombardé des combattants kurdes dans le nord de la Syrie, où Ankara mène une opération militaire d’envergure, accusant ceux-ci de ne pas respecter un accord passé avec les Etats-Unis sur leur retrait.

    http://information.tv5monde.com/en-continu/syrie-les-rebelles-soutenus-par-ankara-sont-entres-dans-jarabl
    #Kurdistan #bombardement #kurdistan_syrien #Jarablos

  • وفد برلمان كردستان العراق يزور عين العرب – كوباني.. وسياسي كردي ينشر خريطة كردستان سوريا | رأي اليوم
    http://www.raialyoum.com/?p=217813

    A l’occasion d’une visite des cousins irakiens à Kobané, échanges de vue à propos de la création d’un Kurdistan syrien. La carte proposée, qui offre un corridor jusqu’à la mer, en prenant au passage la « capitale » alaouite de Lattaquié, devrait plaire presque autant aux Turcs qu’aux officiels syriens.