New York Times
Dec 29 2004

New Hope of Syrian Minorities: Ripple Effect of Iraqi Politics

By KATHERINE ZOEPF

QAMISHLI, Syria, Dec. 28 – The Iraqi election next month may be
evoking skepticism in much of the world, but here in northeastern
Syria, home to concentrations of several ethnic minorities, it is
evoking a kind of earnest hope.

“I believe democracy in Iraq must succeed,” Vahan Kirakos, a Syrian
of Armenian ethnicity, said recently. “Iraq is like the stone thrown
into the pool.”

Though Syria’s Constitution grants equal opportunity to all ethnic
and religious groups in this very diverse country, minority activists
say their rights are far from equal. They may not form legal
political parties or publish newspapers in minority languages. More
than 150,000 members of Syria’s largest minority, the Kurds, are
denied citizenship.

Minority issues remain one of the infamous “red lines,” the litany of
forbidden topics that Syrians have long avoided mentioning in public.

But in the year and a half since Saddam Hussein was removed from
power in Iraq, that has begun to change, with minority activists
beginning to speak openly of their hopes that a ripple effect from
next door may bring changes at home.

And here in Syria’s far northeastern province of Hasakah, which
borders Turkey and Iraq, there are signs of a new restlessness.

In March, more than 3,000 Kurds in Qamishli, a city in Hasakah
Province on the Turkish border, took part in antigovernment protests,
which led to clashes with Syrian security forces and more than 25
deaths.

In late October, more than 2,000 Assyrian Christians in the
provincial capital, Hasakah City, held a demonstration calling for
equal treatment by the local police. The demonstration, which Hasakah
residents say was the first time Assyrians in Syria held a public
protest, followed an episode in which two Christians were killed by
Muslims who called them “Bush supporters,” and “Christian dogs.”

Nimrod Sulayman, a former member of the Syrian Communist Party’s
central committee, said Hasakah’s proximity to Iraq and demographic
diversity meant that residents of the province were watching events
in Iraq and taking inspiration from the freedoms being introduced
there.

“This Assyrian protest in Hasakah was caused by a personal dispute,
but the way the people wanted their problem solved was a result of
the Iraqi impact,” Mr. Sulayman said. “They see that demonstrating is
a civilized way to express a position.”

“Since the war in Iraq, this complex of fear has been broken, and we
feel greater freedom to express ourselves,” he added.

Mr. Sulayman noted that members of minorities in Hasakah had also
been energized by a sense of brotherhood with their counterparts in
Iraq.

“For example, when Massoud Barzani announced that Kurdish would be
officially recognized as one of the main languages in Iraq, the Kurds
in Hasakah were out in the streets celebrating, expressing their
joy,” Mr. Sulayman said, referring to the leader of the Kurdistan
Democratic Party in Iraq.

Taher Sfog, the secretary general of Syria’s illegal Kurdish
Democratic National Party, suggested that in some sense, Iraq and
Syria were mirror images of each other, as they shared a roughly
similar ethnic composition and a political heritage of Baathism, the
secular Arab nationalist policy of Mr. Hussein and Bashar Assad, the
Syrian president.

“Kurds in Syria feel relieved when we see Kurds in Iraq getting their
rights and holding news conferences,” Mr. Sfog said in his home in
Qamishli. “Democracy there will lead to a push in Syria, too.”

In fact, the Hussein government had long been estranged from Syria’s.
Before the American invasion of Iraq, many Iraqi politicians who
opposed Mr. Hussein made their homes in Damascus. Basil Dahdouh, a
member of the illegal Syrian Nationalist Social Party who represents
Damascus in Syria’s Parliament as an independent, said renewed
contact with Iraq, as well as the chance to observe the changes
taking place there, was leading many Syrians to actively question
their own political ideals. “The Iraq question has raised the idea of
what kind of state we want,” he said.

Emmanuel Khosaba, a spokesman for the Assyrian Democratic Movement, a
political party representing Iraq’s Assyrian Christian minority, said
Syrian political life could not help but be influenced by Iraq.

“In Syria, gradually it’s becoming safer to talk about minority
rights and human rights,” he said. But he cautioned against seeing a
single “Iraq effect” on the very different aspirations of Syria’s
minorities .

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“The interaction between minorities in Iraq and its neighboring
countries really depends on how particular minorities view their own
situation,” Mr. Khosaba said. “For example the Assyrians in Syria are
seeking a national solution within a democratic framework, while some
of the Kurds seek separation.”

Despite their sometimes startling optimism about an Iraqi democracy’s
longer-term prospects, the Syrian minority leaders became more sober
when discussing the violence in Iraq. Not only is it painful to see
Iraq convulsed with strife, they said, but instability in Iraq is
causing problems closer to home.

Bachir Isaac Saadi, the chairman of the political bureau of the
Assyrian Democratic Organization, said that throughout Syria, anger
over the American presence in Iraq had set off a sharp rise in
Islamist sentiment, which was creating difficulties for Syria’s
Christian minority.

“Christians in Syria aren’t afraid of the government any longer,” Mr.
Saadi said. “They’re afraid of their neighbors.”

Though the increase in Islamist feeling is troubling, minority
activists say, fear of the government and of publicly discussing
minority rights has eased to a degree which would have been
unthinkable only a few years ago.

Mr. Kirakos, the Armenian activist, has even begun a bid for Syria’s
presidency, an astoundingly brazen gesture in a country where the
Assad family has ruled unchallenged for more than 30 years.

The Christian Mr. Kirakos’s presidential run – which he announced in
September on , a pro-democracy Web site – is illegal, as
Syria’s Constitution stipulates that the president must be a Muslim.
But though he lost his engineering job as a result of his activism
and his family has received uncomfortable phone calls from the secret
police, Mr. Kirakos is unfazed.

“I carry a Syrian citizenship which is not equal to Ahmed’s
citizenship,” he said, using the common Muslim name as shorthand for
Syria’s Sunni majority. “It is the Syrian Constitution that must
change. We should be writing a constitution that guarantees equal
rights for everyone.”