Fighters in Ras al-Ain (Photo: Reuters)
Omar Hossino and Kinda Kanbar write for Syria Deeply:
Kurdish and Arab militias waged a bitter battle for three months in the northern city of Ras Al Ayn, in Hassakeh province. Now, they’ve reached a truce that has managed to last into a third week, marking an early success for a nascent group of peacekeepers led by famed Christian dissident Michel Kilo....
The months of fighting in Ras Al Ain killed nearly 300 people. It took a diverse group of men and women, Kurds and Arabs, Alawites, Sunnis, Christians, tribal leaders and urbanites to broker Feb. 17’s tenuous peace....
Ras Al Ain, a city of over 50,000, has a Kurdish majority and significant ethnic minorities of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Circassians, Assyrians, and Turkmen along with Christian, Sunni Muslim, and Yezidi religious groups. Prior to the clashes, its residents say the city was an example of co-existence and tolerance in Syria.
Straddling the Turkish border and connected to the Turkish town of Ceylanpinar, the town’s diversity is highlighted by the fact that it has three different names: Ras Al Ain in Arabic, Serekaniye in Kurdish, and Reish ‘Eino in Assyrian.
But lurking beneath its tolerant crust are the competing interests of the various ethnic, tribal and religious affiliations of its neighbors in Syria and in Turkey, which vigilantly opposes aspirations of many Kurds to create an independent homeland....
Ras Al Ain was the first Kurdish-majority city to protest peacefully against the regime on April 4, 2011, and, as other Kurdish cities and towns in the north, it fell under control of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (or PYD, notoriously affiliated with the militant Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PKK) after the Syrian military withdrew from the area in July.
Rebels opposed to the Assad regime largely ignored Ras Al Ain for months, but entered the city on Nov. 8. Kurdish journalist Muhyideen Isso said residents welcomed the Free Syrian Army at first, but then the Assad regime launched air strikes on the city and the rebels were asked to leave.
The FSA ignored the request and in a display of the increasingly Islamist nature of those fighting the Syrian government, the rebels burned down liquor stores and a church, Isso said.
The PYD and other Kurdish militias decided to fight back.
Ras Al Ain was soon mired in a complicated conflict rooted in decades of Arab-Kurdish disputes, Islamist agendas and regime air strikes. Seventeen rebel brigades, mostly from surrounding areas of Hassekeh, descended on the city. Salafi Islamists militias, such as Jabhat al-Nusra (the U.S.-designated terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq), Ghoraba al-Sham, and the Allahu Akbar Brigades fought alongside tribal and secular groups including the Thuwwar Ghwayran Brigade and Nawaf al-Bashir’s Liberation of the Furat Brigades.
Bashir admitted that his tribe was involved in the fighting, and referred to the PYD as agents of the Assad regime that have no place in the oil-rich regions of Syria.
A ceasefire was brokered in late November but didn’t hold. Prominent opposition figures like [then head of the opposition Syrian National Council] Abdelbasset Sida urged calm, saying that such battles which don’t include the Syrian military could only benefit the Assad regime. President Bashar al-Assad seemed to confirm this point in a speech on Jan. 6, when he praised “the valiant young men” of Ras Al Ain for confronting and forcing out “the terrorists who came from Turkey.”
But the National Coalition remained distant, and fighting flared up again in late January. Some Kurdish groups said Arab rebels entered Ras Al Ayn through Turkish territory.
On the morning of Feb. 5, Kilo’s committee entered Ras Al Ain and sat down with Ahmed Soliman, the spokesman for the Supreme Kurdish Council; Abdul Salim Ahmed and Sinam Muhammad, spokesmen for the PYD’s People’s Assembly of Western Kurdistan; Aldar Khalil of the Supreme Kurdish Council; and another member of the Kurdish National Council. After speaking to the Kurdish groups, they visited the local jihadist leaders from Jabhat al-Nusra, Ghoraba al-Sham, and other tribal-affiliated brigades.
Alan Semo, the PYD’s London-based spokesman, told Syria Deeply that Kilo was “chosen because he is an independent national figure who both sides could trust… unlike the National Coalition, which couldn’t control its troops.”
Talks paid off, and an agreement was signed on Feb. 17 by the PYD and most rebel and Islamist brigades, including Ghoraba al-Sham. Although Jabhat al-Nusra did not sign the agreement, it agreed to halt the fighting, Kilo told AFP....
The eight-point treaty called for the removal of all armed groups from the city, a pledge by the FSA and Islamist groups to consider the rest of the Kurdish-majority areas controlled by the Supreme Kurdish Council (specifically Derbassiyeh, Amuda, Tel-Temer and Grike Lege and Dere) as “liberated,” and the cooperation and coordination between the Kurdish and rebel fighters to liberate other cities that are still under regime control.