Calm Restored After Syria Soccer Riots

Calm Restored After Syria Soccer Riots

DAMASCUS, Syria - Two days of rioting that began with fights between fans of rival soccer teams left 15 people dead and more than 100 injured in Kurdish areas of northern Syria, Kurdish officials said Sunday, adding that calm had been restored in the city where the trouble began.

Fifteen people died in the violence, 13 of them in Qamishli, 450 miles northeast of Damascus, and two in Amouda village, 20 miles to the west, Faisal Youssef of the Democratic Progressive Kurdish Party in Syria said.

Youssef, who was in Qamishli, would not elaborate, but nine people were believed to have died in the initial soccer fights and the rest in rioting ignited during funerals for some of the dead.

Abdel Baki Youssef, another local Kurdish leader in Qamishli, said 15 people were confirmed dead and that Qamishli was calm on Sunday, but he said there may be "more martyrs" because he understood burning and looting was continuing in the Kurdish city of Hasakah and elsewhere.

more...

Calm Restored After Syria Soccer Riots

No, no, no! First, Hasakah, where my husband is from, is NOT a "Kurdish city." This was NOT a soccer-related riot just because it occurred during a soccer match. This was a pre-planned riot by instigators who are taking advantage of outside western backing. The Kurds, not content with the land grabs they have made in Iraq and establishing a homeland-by-theft in that region, are planting the seeds for the same in Syria and Iran (they can't get away with it in Turkey because we need Turkey as a strategic NATO ally). They showed up at the game with posters of Bush and Blair and were shouting anti-Arab slogans and burning the Syrian flag.

We have been in contact with my husband's family in Qamishly and Hasakah. They are scared out of their minds. Schools are still closed and you can hear gunfire at night. There is concern that the government will have trouble dealing with this problem; government feels it is being "set up." That any negative action they take will result in an excuse for an invasion by the US. Not kidding here folks.

...

At least 14 Kurds died in riots which began Friday in Qamishli during a brawl between Kurdish and Arab soccer fans. The violence reportedly began when Arab fans began chanting support for Saddam Hussein. According to diplomats in Damascus, Syrian security forces fired on the crowd, killing six people. Three children were trampled to death in the ensuing panic. Rioting the next day killed five people in Hasake, a town of Arabs and Kurds 50 miles south of Qamishli.

Violent outbursts by Syria's Kurdish minority reinforces concerns that recent political gains by Kurds in Iraq will embolden Kurds in neighboring lands to seek greater recognition. Some analysts see Kurdish ambitions for independence as a regional powder keg. Kurds have been a significant minority in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran since the early 1900s, when Kurdish lands were divided as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated.

The US-led war in Iraq was opposed by Syria and Iran, in part due to the potential ramifications of a resurgent Kurdish community in Iraq's north. Turkey, a regional ally of Washington, was also worried about the way the war's aftermath would impact its own Kurdish population.

...

Of the 1.3 million Kurds in Syria, some 225,000 are designated as "foreigners," carrying only a red identity card for domestic travel. Another 25,000 are categorized as "unregistered." They are forbidden to own property and travel abroad. Syria's Kurds were subjected to an "Arabization" policy in 1962 that stripped citizenship for some 120,000 of them. In the early 1970s, thousands of Arabs settled in Kurdish villages along the Turkish frontier. Kurdish place names were replaced by Arab names and the Kurdish language was banned from schools.

Restrictions on the Kurds gradually eased under Syrian President Hafez al-Assad who died in 2000. In September 2002, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad became the first head of state ever to visit Hasake. Kurdish residents hoped the visit marked the beginning of a new approach by the government toward the Kurds.

"Nothing has happened at all since then," the diplomat says. "There are no signs that the issue is being dealt with."

But Syria's Kurds insist that they are not seeking autonomy from Damascus. Instead, they say they want the full rights enjoyed by other Syrian citizens. They are demanding "recognition of the Kurdish identity and culture," wrote Saif Badrakhan, US representative of the Kurdistan National Congress, on a Kurdish website. Specifically, the Kurds want education in the Kurdish language, human rights, an end to Arabization and forced assimilation policies, and an end to treatment as second class citizens, says Mr. Badrakhan.

...

"It's time that the Kurds who were born in Syria are recognized as Syrian nationals by law," says Mohammed Aziz Shukri, a professor of international law at Damascus University. "We should give the Kurds their legitimate rights."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0317/p01s04-wome.html

"The violence reportedly began when Arab fans began chanting support for Saddam Hussein."

---Not true. According to family, the fight began after Kurds showed up carrying posters of Bush and Blair (why would you bring these to a soccer match?) Is it just a coincidence that similar riots are now taking place in Iran? The Kurds are taking advantage of the love being sent to them by the US for helping locate Saddam. They are trying to establish (don't believe any "representative" who states otherwise) autonomous regions in areas they now populate.

"Of the 1.3 million Kurds in Syria, some 225,000 are designated as "foreigners,"

---That's because the majority of them have entered the country illegally. The jazeera (eastern) region of Syria was dominated mostly by Christian Arabs/Assyrians as early as two decades ago. BTW, it's funny how those cities were NEVER referred to as "Assyrian cities" but simply as the "Syrian town of Hasakah"....now they are "Kurdish cities"???

"Kurdish place names were replaced by Arab names and the Kurdish language was banned from schools."

----I find it so odd and frustrating that an issue is being made out of this when in fact the Kurds have done/continue to do the EXACT same thing in Iraq. Almost every Assyrian (the indigenous people of Iraq) village/town has had its name changed to a Kurdish name and the natives had to put up a fight in order to maintain teaching the Aramaic language. Hypocrites.

The Kurds deserve their own country; I have no problem with that, of course. I DO have a problem when they engage in land grabs, as they have in Iraq, and deny the rightful owners of the land their rights, then go crying that they are "oppressed." Fact is the REAL Kurdish homeland is in Turkey. They were promised this land at the end of WWI by the League of Nations. Turkey renegaded on this promise and they have been at war since. We back Turkey because, as I stated earlier, it is a strategic NATO ally. Seeing that they would never win in Turkey, "Kurdistan" was then moved to Iraq and a "homeland" was established in an area already home to others. Your sympathies are misplaced here.

Do you have any impressions as to the attitude
of the US towards these provocations by the Kurds?

There was a story a week or so ago about some US
forces going in there with apparent permission from
Damascus to "try to make peace". I was trying to figure
out what that was about.

just speculation based on what family members and the community there relay to us. Keep in mind that conspiracy theories run rampant over there, so take all this with a grain of salt:

They feel the Kurds, in return for being an ally in the "war on terror" and helping find Saddam, have now been given the green light by the US to push for further demands in the region, especially in Syria and Iran, as a way to create instability. Hence my statement above about the Syrians feeling that their government is being "set up" as any retribution could be used as an excuse to invade Syria.

Also, the fact that a jr. level diplomat was with the Kurds when they stormed the Syrian embassy in Brussels has raised a lot of eyebrows in terms of who is provoking all this.

The only report I've come across regarding US intervention in Syria is from the Kurdish Media, which in my opinion is not very reliable, but here it is anyway (note how they refer to countries in the region as "northern Kurdistan," "western Kurdistan," that should leave no doubt what there true intentions are): http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=4781

I tend to agree that it looks like the US is allowing
this, which would make it a very stupid and dangerous
game that is being played. A sort of "reward the Kurds
with some of our enemies land instead of the land belonging
to our good friends the Turks" plan. I did read some time
back that Little Assad visited Turkey to talk over the
Kurdish problem, which was somewhat of a surprise. The US
seems to like keeping messes stirred up anyway, it's a form
of drumming up business for our magnificent military I
gather. I hope your friends and relations manage to come
out OK.

...
Amnesty International also released an alert Tuesday saying 25 Kurds have been killed since violence erupted from a football match on Friday. It also said hundreds of men and boys as young as 14 were arrested in their homes and named 12 Kurdish students from the University of Damascus who were arrested.
A Cabinet statement carried by official media attributed the troubles to “infiltrated elements (aiming to) sow anarchy and sabotage public institutions and private property.”
Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported that seven Kurds were killed and several others wounded when security forces opened fire on groups marking the anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attacks on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.
...
Rioting broke out Friday during a football match at Qameshli, on the Turkish border 600 kilometers northeast of Damascus, when Arab tribesmen shouted slogans against Iraqi Kurdish leaders and brandished pictures of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Rioting Kurds set fire to public buildings, which were empty on Friday, the normal day off in Syria.
...
The unrest was the result of “the absence of democracy and public freedoms, the spread of corruption, and a policy of discrimination toward Kurdish citizens,” it charged.
Claiming security forces had fired on defenseless citizens, the signatories condemned “the violence and the security policy of the authorities, which will have harmful effects on society and the country.”
They also condemned violence by the Kurds, including “attacks on public and private property and profaning the Syrian flag.”
The United States had called on Damascus Monday “to exercise tolerance for all ethnic minorities in Syria.”
Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli urged Damascus “to refrain from using increasingly repressive measures to ostracize a minority that has asked for a greater acceptance and integration into Syrian life.”


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/17_03_04/art22.asp

This site needs to be updated as there have been plenty more cases like the ones mentioned at the site (one example below):

From Amnesty International:

http://www.aina.org/reports/ai.htm

snip:
AI Country Report, Iraq, 1997
In May, two unarmed members of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), Samir Moshi Murad and Peris Mirza Salyu, were killed in 'Ain Kawa, near Arbil, by Kurdish students allegedly associated with the PUK. The ADM members were reportedly intervening to settle a dispute between Kurdish and Assyrian students when they were deliberately shot. Although PUK leaders condemned the killings, no one was brought to justice (see below).

-----------
No effective or meaningful investigations into these and other killings have been carried out to date. All the above victims were killed after the Kurdish administration was established. In most of these cases, the Council of Ministers set up committees, headed by investigating or court judges, to gather and examine the evidence. None have so far resulted in any convictions.

Amnesty International has received numerous allegations attributing these killings to special forces within the KDP, PUK and IMIK. The security apparatus of the KDP, Rekkhistini Taybeti, and that of the PUK, Dezgay Zanyari, are said to have units akin to assassination squads, whose members receive orders from senior party officials. There is also widespread conviction that such unlawful and deliberate killings could not have been perpetrated without the knowledge, consent or acquiescence of the leaders of these two parties, to whom the security and intelligence apparatuses are ultimately responsible.

-------------
Like many countries, Syria must also find effective solutions on how to deal with illegal residents. Firing on instigators at a sporting event is certainly not the answer, but neither is provoking locals by shouting anti-Arab slogans and brandishing posters of Bush and Blair in an area that is sympathetic to the Arab cause, and then following up by targeting Christian-owned businesses (Ezla Tours company being one of them) and churches.

QAMESHLI, Syria (AFP) - The death toll in clashes between Kurds in northern Syria and Arab residents backed by security forces has risen to at least 35 since last week, Kurdish and Syrian officials said.

...

Five Syrian Arabs have also died in the violence gripping the Kurdish regions of northern Syria since March 12, the governor of Hassake province said Wednesday.

...

The Damascus government has blamed the troubles on "acts of sabotage and sedition", as well as unidentified infiltrators, while Kurdish officials have accused the authorities of encouraging local tribes to take up arms.


The highest-ranking government official to comment on the unrest, Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, said Wednesday that the troubles were being "exploited by foreign parties" and blown out of proportion by foreign media.


But the unrest was now over, he said.

...

The riots coincide with rising tension between Syria and the United States as Washington moves to impose new sanctions on Damascus.


Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Wednesday that Washington would soon announce new sanctions against Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism.


"There is not a question of sanctions; there will be sanctions and there will be very firm sanctions very soon," Armitage said in a radio broadcast, whose transcript was provided by the State Department.

...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1515&ncid=1515&e=6&u=/afp/20040317/wl_mideast_afp/syria_kurds_unrest_040317211724

"The riots coincide with rising tension between Syria and the United States as Washington moves to impose new sanctions on Damascus."

These well-timed riots have absolutely nothing to do with the supposed "oppression" of the Kurds. We're just causing trouble in countries we hate and the Kurds have always been willing participants in these situations (going back to Ottoman rule when they took part in the Armenian genocide in exchange for a homeland in the SE region of the country; too bad the Turks renegaded on that promise).

A year ago, it would have been inconceivable for a citizen of Syria, run by the Baath Party of President Bashar al-Assad, to make a documentary film with the working title, "Fifteen Reasons Why I Hate the Baath."

Yet watching the overthrow of Saddam Hussein across the border in Iraq prompted Omar Amiralay to do just that. "It gave me the courage to do it," he said.

"When you see one of the two Baath parties broken, collapsing, you can only hope that it will be the turn of the Syrian Baath next," he added, having just completed the film, eventually called "A Flood in Baath Country," for a European arts channel. "The myth of having to live under despots for eternity collapsed."

When the Bush administration toppled the Baghdad government, it announced that it wanted to establish a democratic, free-market Iraq that would prove a contagious model for the region. The bloodshed there makes that a distant prospect, yet the very act of humiliating the worst Arab tyrant spawned a sort of "what if" process in Syria and across the region.

The Syrian Baath Party remains firmly in control, ruling through emergency laws that basically suspend all civil rights. The government says the laws are necessary as long as Israel occupies the Golan Heights, 40 miles from Damascus, and the two nations remain at war.

Yet subtle changes have begun, even if they amount to tiny fissures in a repressive state. Some Syrians are testing the limits, openly questioning government doctrine and challenging state oppression.

Syrians who oppose the government do so with some trepidation because it used ferocious violence in the past to silence any challenge. Yet the fall of Mr. Hussein changed something inside people.

"I think the image, the sense of terror, has evaporated," said Mr. Amiralay, the filmmaker.

On March 8, for instance, about 25 protesters demanding that repressive laws be lifted tried to demonstrate outside Parliament. Security forces squashed the sit-in as it started, but the event would have been unthinkable before the Iraq war.

People here do not know what previously locked doors they can push open, but they are trying to find out.

...

Anwar al-Bounni, a 45-year-old human rights lawyer, also senses shifts rippling through the country. Sitting at his desk in Damascus one recent night, he was fielding calls from Kurds across northern Syria reporting deadly clashes with government forces. Violence in the Kurdish areas makes the government nervous, fearful that Iraq's problems are spilling across the border.

Mr. Bounni has defended several Kurds arrested in high-profile cases for demanding greater minority rights. He recently received two summonses on the same day — signing the small paper chits that arrived at his cramped, low-ceilinged office by special messenger — from Military Intelligence and State Security. Both are among some 11 overlapping secret police organizations that Syrians loathe and fear.

Yet even the police act somewhat differently now.

...

Previously, Mr. Bounni noted, he would have been taken directly to jail for publicly demanding real political parties, a free press, fair trials or other civil liberties. The arresting officers would also have probably knocked him around, not treated him with a certain offhand civility.

"If the regime left today, there would be no one to run this country," he said. "There has been no political life for 40 years," he added, noting that the chaos in Iraq is largely the result of a similar void.

...

"I think maybe some in the regime want to return to those days; they are not comfortable that people speak out," he said. "I think they know the game is finished, at least I hope it is finished."

Others, some from surprising quarters, say similar things. Talk of reform can even be heard from radical breakaway Palestinian factions, still based here despite government denials. Most of the Palestinian offices are shuttered, their leaders asked to remain silent or to move.

One still operating is the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestinian, which was removed from the State Department list of terrorist organizations in 1999.

Nayef Hawatmeh, the group's leader and a gray-haired contemporary of Yasir Arafat, holds court in a shabby basement office. The front has played a minor role in Palestinian politics and in the fighting with Israel in recent years, claiming responsibility for some small-scale shooting attacks. Mr. Hawatmeh criticizes suicide bombings inside Israel.

If the region is full of despots, he points out, it is because the West long supported them. In the case of the Palestinians, the United States bet completely on Mr. Arafat while allowing him to build yet another totalitarian system, rather than promising a democratic state that all Palestinians would have supported wholeheartedly.

The Palestinian violence would dwindle, Mr. Hawatmeh said, if the United States forced a specific end to the Israeli occupation. Then Mr. Hawatmeh, aging anti-imperialist, a man who has benefited from Syrian hospitality for years, edges perilously close to sounding like a Bush administration spokesman.

"The Iraqis can see what they are going to get, what they struggled for during all the time under Saddam," Mr. Hawatmeh said. "The Iraqi people can see that the American occupation is not forever and reform will come in time."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/international/middleeast/20SYRI.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Condasleeza would right -- it's straight from this administration's crooked mouth. Unfortunately, as is typical of this administration, it's not true. They want us to believe that taking Saddam out will lead to democracy throughout the ME. Not true. The Syrians began testing the waters after Hafez Al-Assad died. During my husband's visit in 2002 (before Saddam was taken) he was pleasantly surprised at the relative openness he found (at least compared to when he was living there). Yes, change is slow and they are certainly nowhere near where they should be. BUT....they are making changes THEMSELVES. Reform is slow to come in that region, but it is more acceptable to the people if it comes from within rather than externally.

and for those that are beneficiaries of the status quo, patience is a river that runs very deep...


As reform falters, Syrian elite tighten grip...

...

Otari's appointment and the composition of his 31-member cabinet - which proportionately contains more members of the ruling Baath Party than the previous government - has come as a blow to reformers and Syrian human rights activists as well as ordinary Syrians. There is a palpable sense of disillusionment here as hopes of tangible political and economic reform fail to materialize. Faith in Bashar al-Assad, Syria's youthful president, is being replaced by a sullen resentment at his apparent inability to curb the excesses of the powerful and super-rich clique of regime leaders.

Although there is little prospect of significant domestic instability in the near future, cracks in the 40-year-old Baathist edifice are beginning to appear. And analysts, economists, and diplomats believe that unless a concerted effort is made to usher in a genuine and effective reform program, the country could be heading for serious trouble in the long run.

"The mood is getting desperate and hope is going down," says a political analyst and onetime supporter of President Assad. "Eventually this is going to blow up in our faces if we don't attend to our domestic problems."

The current mood is very different from the one that greeted Assad when he succeeded his father, Hafez, as president in July 2000. Many Syrians believed that a new era of political reform, economic growth, and civil society was about to dawn. Political discussion groups - known as salons - emerged, providing venues for free speech and political discourse. But the regime soon developed cold feet, disbanding the salons and arresting some opposition activists. Suddenly, "economic reform" became the slogan. The political reforms would follow, the regime said, once the economy had been knocked into shape.

...

But opposition activists say they are unimpressed.

"We hoped for political reform, we were promised economic reform and now they talk about administrative reform after three years of failure in economic reform," says Raja an-Nasr, a lawyer in Aleppo and a member of the opposition Democratic Party Assembly. "The government has it the wrong way around. Without political reform there can be no economic and administrative reform," he says.

...

Three years after the death of the redoubtable Hafez al-Assad, fear of the regime is beginning to fade as resentment builds. People are more willing to criticize the regime in public, a slight lowering of the voice the only concession to the pervasive mukhabarat, or secret police. And there are other subtle signals that suggest the state's steely grip is weakening. Syria's maligned and marginalized Kurdish population has boycotted parliamentary and regional elections in the past year, an unthinkable gesture during Hafez al-Assad's day.

...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0930/p06s02-wome.html



so while it is understood that change is best from within a society and that the roots of reform should come from within, it's inevitable that external events may act as a catalyst...

I just now noticed a typo in my previous message....it should be "write" and not "right" in the first sentence (must make mental note to check my messages before hitting the "post" button).

Now, any external events that you argue may act as a "catalyst" is destined to fail. Again, I cite the correspondence we have had with people in jazeera (Qamishli, Hasakeh, etc.) regarding the recent riots. The feeling that outside forces were provoking or inciting the Kurds resulted in a major step backwards for supporters of reform. Comments like, "they would not dare do this if Hafez was still in power" were not unusual. When the government cracked down on opposition parties earlier there was much discontent and criticism, placing a lot of pressure on Bashar and the government. That pressure is now gone. The riots have strengthened the hand of the government and silenced the reformers for the Kurds have played right into the hands of the ruling Baathists -- open up society and our enemies will undermine the country.

Many Syrians are sympathetic to those Kurds who have been in the country legally for decades but denied citizenship. I guarantee you that after the attacks ordinary Syrians suffered during the riots that those sympathies are gone. Attacking innocents and vandalizing businesses and religious sites will not win the Kurds any sympathy. But, hey, what do I know? It worked in Iraq.

Recent deadly clashes in Syria between Kurds and the Baathist regime's security forces are not merely a curious exception to the rule of totalitarian tranquillity that normally prevails in that country. Syria may be experiencing the warning tremors of a political earthquake.
.
...
.
The violent measures taken against Kurds in Damascus and Aleppo who dared to protest earlier killings of Kurds in towns along Syria's northern border with Turkey reflect the Assad regime's intolerance of free speech and political pluralism. But something else is also revealed in the response of the Syrian Baathists.
.
The precedent of four million Iraqi Kurds being guaranteed a high degree of cultural and political autonomy in an interim Iraqi Constitution appears to have panicked Syria's rulers, who use an Arab nationalist ideology to justify their unbending denial of any separate Kurdish identity.
.
At issue is not only the status of Kurds but a historic challenge to Arab, Turkish, and Iranian societies. They must learn to let minorities live among majorities without effacing their otherness.
.
http://www.iht.com/articles/511727.html

Syria has continued to arrest Kurds in the wake of deadly riots earlier this month, raising the number behind bars to more than 2000, the head of a banned Kurdish party said on Sunday.

...

The trouble broke out at a football match in Qamishli, 600km north of Damascus, when Arab tribesmen taunted Kurds with slogans against Iraqi Kurdish leaders and brandished portraits of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Syrian officials have accused foreign infiltrators of being behind the unrest, but Dawud cited growing resentment, including discrimination against Kurds in universities and the military.

...

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B142D426-802E-4A99-B630-46D86F7D4830.htm

SYRIA has appealed to Australia to use its close ties with Washington to help the Arab nation shake off its reputation as a terrorist haven and repair its relations with the US.

Secret talks between the two nations have been under way for months but have become more urgent as rogue nations reconsider their role in allowing terrorists to thrive, in light of the US determination to take pre-emptive military action.

...

Australia's close relationship with Washington, and its much higher profile in the Middle East, have prompted Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara'a and parliamentary speaker Mahmoud Al-Ibrache to appeal to Canberra to help bring their country back in from a US-imposed diplomatic freeze.

...

Drawing on the British-sponsored return of Libya to the international fold, Australia is demanding that Syria take a tougher role against terrorists, particularly those using the nation as a base for operations into Iraq.

Australia also has called on the former Soviet client state to abandon any pursuit of weapons of mass destruction before it returns to the fold.

Syria has supported the war on terror but the Bush administration has been sceptical about its commitment, fearing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were smuggled across the border before the US-led invasion last year.

...

Senator Macdonald said yesterday: "Syria is a country that has been a bastard state for nearly 40 years. But the leaders we spoke to in Syria appear keen to make linkages with the West and it sees Australia as having influence in Washington."

The overtures to Syria are seen as a response to the West's determination to confront rogue nations that may either pose a threat themselves or pass on weapons to terrorists.

...

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9088802%255E601,00.html