http://www.alternet.org/world/how-kurds-will-save-syria

How the Kurds Will Save Syria

A minority group emerges as a likely force for a united Syria.

By Vijay Prashad / AlterNet

March 24, 2016

As the Russian aircraft began their partial withdrawal from Syria, the Syrian Kurds declared their ambitions for what they call Rojava. Given the deeply fragmented nature of Syria during this five-year war, the Syrian Kurds suggested that the country adopt federalism as its organizational principle. Syria’s partition was off the table, as was the re-creation of a strong central government. Instead, the Syrian Kurds proposed that a unity of relatively autonomous states within Syria would be the model. The Kurds, it was said, have shown in practice what might be part of the post-conflict agreement.
Idris Nassan, who is part of the foreign ministry of the Kurdish canton of Kobane, said that the idea of a federation is not merely for the Kurds. Rojava – which in Kurdish means the west – refers to the Western Kurdistan, with the Eastern parts in Iraq and Iran. It might have a majority Kurdish population in some of the towns, but within Rojava live people of many different ethnicities. In fact, during the meeting to discuss federalism – held in Rmelan, in the northeastern edge of Syria – the delegates came from many different communities. They included Kurds and Arabs, certainly, but also Armenians, Assyrians, Chechens, Circassians, Syriacs, and Turkmen. The federal area of Rojava would not be a Kurdish area per se, but merely a self-administered part of Syria.
What was announced last week was the culmination of a five-year project. When the war began in Syria, its intensity first gathered along the western flank of the country from Dara’a to Aleppo. Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad recalled large parts of his armed forces to reinforce Damascus and to fight along that corridor. In moving his troops to the western part of the country, Assad essentially gave the Syrian Kurds a free hand in their northern zone. It was then that the Syrian Kurds began to emerge as a political force.http://www.alternet.org/world/how-kurds-will-save-syria