Economy Falters Due To War and Turkish Incursion
Asia Ramazan Antar, who was nicknamed the Kurdish Angelina Jolie after the American movie star, was killed near Minbic, a town on the Syrian-Turkish border that was recently liberated from the control of Islamic State.
The Facebook page called We Want Freedom for Kurdistan, announced that Antar, 22, was “martyred” in the battle against Islamic State, prompting an outpouring of grief and admiration for the young woman.
Antar was recruited into the all-female Kurdish military organization the Women’s Protection Units in 2014, and took part in several campaigns against Islamic State. The organization, known as the YPJ, is the all-female brigade of the armed forces of the Syrian region of Kurdistan, according to the Kurdish project.
Antar’s death comes as Syrian Kurdish groups and their allies said they will approve a constitution for a new system of government in northern Syria next month, defying a Turkish incursion aimed to limit Kurdish influence in the area.
The Kurds are divided between four countries – Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. “Greater Kurdistan” refers to a contiguous region in all of these areas. Some Kurdish national organizations seek to create an independent state including some or all of the areas that have a Kurdish majority, while others want greater autonomy within the existing national boundaries.
The Kurdish militias in Iraq and Syria, which include female fighters, have scored impressive gains against Islamic State. In both Iraq and Syria, Islamic State has lost large parts of its territory, and calls for independence are increasing.
In Syria, Kurds make up about ten percent of the population. As Turkey has now launched an assault to move Islamic State away from the border, Syrian Kurds are suffering as well.
The Arab awakening seemed to be also the Kurdish moment and following the Russian-Turkish crisis of November 2015, the Kurds in Syria had the support of both Russia and the US. Gallia Lindenstrausse, an expert on the Kurds at the Institute for National and Strategic Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University told The Media Line. “Now that Russian Turkish relations have improved and Turkey is pushing the US to choose between them and the Kurds, the situation of the Kurds has worsened.”
In Iraq, however, they are somewhat better off.
“The closest entity that might gain independence among the Kurds is the KRG in northern Iraq,” Lindenstrausse said. “They are moving slowly and steadily toward independence and this can happen even if the situation of the Syrian Kurds worsens.
The Kurdish economy in Iraq has also collapsed, experts say, partly because of the war, and because the price of oil, one of the Kurdish area’s main resources, has dropped.
“The Kurds had hoped that oil would be able to help finance independence,” Mohammed Salih, a Kurdish journalist currently doing a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania told The Media Line. “The drop in oil prices has paralyzed the whole government.”
Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in fighting and sectarian violence. Sunnis and Shi’ites continue to attack each other and there is little trust in the Iraqi government.
“Kurdistan is now a lot more divided than it has bene over the past decade,” Salih said. “There is internal rivalry between different Kurdish groups and political parties. The negatives seem more than the positives.”