Northeastern Syria is inhabited – and has been for many centuries – by the Kurdish people. That territory also happens to be the oil-bearing part of Syria, currently held by local Kurdish forces of the YPG (People’s Protection Units), and by the American troops still in Syria, as President Trump said, to “guard the oil.” Now the Kurds have signed an agreement with an American oil company. The story is here.
The Syrian foreign ministry has things backwards. It is the Syrian Arabs who for decades have been “stealing” the oil that rightly belongs to the Kurds. For those oilfields that Syria claims as its own are well within historic Kurdistan, the territory spread between Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey that by rights ought to have become an independent state following upon the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres contained language recognizing a truncated Kurdistan, located on what is now Turkish territory (leaving out the Kurds of Iran, British-controlled Iraq, and French-controlled Syria). However, no plan for an independent Kurdistan, truncated or otherwise, was ever implemented, since the Treaty of Sèvres was replaced by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which made no mention of Kurdish claims. But that does not mean that the Kurds ceased to exist as a distinct people, or that their claims to an independent Kurdistan, even if not implemented at the time, should continue to be overlooked. An independent Kurdistan, wherever it can first be recognized – whether in Syria, Iran, Iraq, or Turkey — would do much to right a terrible wrong, the injustice of having 35-40 million Kurds without a state of their own.
A [Syrian foreign] ministry statement, published on state media, did not name the firm involved in the deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance that seized swathes of north and east Syria from Islamic State with US help….
Damascus “condemns in the strongest terms the agreement signed between al-Qasd militia (SDF) and an American oil company to steal Syria’s oil under the sponsorship and support of the American administration,” the statement said.
“This agreement is null and void and has no legal basis,” it said, adding that it was a violation of Syrian sovereignty….
US President Donald Trump has said that despite a military pullback from northeast Syria, a small number of American forces would remain “where they have oil.” The Pentagon said late last year that oilfield revenues would go to the SDF.
Now is the time for the American government to declare that in its view the agreement made between the American oil company and the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF (made up mostly of Kurdish YPG fighters) is valid, because the area covered in the agreement with the oil company belongs by right to the Kurdish people, as represented in this matter by the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is overwhelmingly Kurdish in its makeup. There is no other legitimate claimant to that area. The criminal Assad regime has, during the nine years of its genocidal campaign against the people of Syria, in the American view lost whatever legitimacy it may once have had.
What can Assad do after such a declaration? The American military remains to guard the oil. The Syrian army does not dare to take them on, in order to assume control of the area that is the subject of the agreement, about oil exploration and production, between the SDF and the unnamed American oil company.
How will other states react? France is likely to approve of the American position, not only because of its condemnation of Assad’s murderous conduct, and denial of the regime’s legitimacy, but because Paris has been the strongest Western supporter of the Kurds ever since the days of Francois Mitterand. Other E.U. countries might similarly add their voices, eager to register their disapproval of the Syrian regime by denying its sovereignty over the Kurdish-populated area where the country’s oil reserves are located. Sunni Arab countries – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt – that are adamantly opposed to Assad and his chief backer Iran, should approve of the American declaration. Turkey, ever mindful of its own Kurdish problem, will be furious at this American move to back the Kurds in Syria. But Erdogan would not be foolish enough to have his troops in Syria attempt to challenge the American army head-on.
Perhaps the Americans can also begin to talk about “occupied Kurdistan,” and recall the Treaty of Sevres which – as noted above — mentioned recognition of an independent, if truncated, Kurdish state. They can also explain that an independent Kurdistan never came to pass only because the Turks insisted that in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which defined the borders of the modern Turkish Republic, no mention be made of the Kurds. An independent Kurdistan is still an idea worth promoting. Some 35-40 million Kurds are the largest ethnic group without a state of their own. The Kurds were our most loyal and effective allies in the fight against Saddam’s forces in Iraq; they remembered gratefully the American air cover that protected them from Saddam Hussein’s bombers. In Syria, it was the Kurds who were our most loyal and effective allies in the fight against ISIS. A Kurdish state carved out of Syria would not weaken Syria alone, but also Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, where the Kurdish populations would eye that small Kurdish state enviously, and be fortified in their own desire to obtain autonomy, or ideally, to become part of an independent Kurdistan that would have had its origins in the mini-state of the Syrian Kurds.
As for Iran, the nine million Kurds in the western part of that country would bestir themselves at the appearance of an independent Kurdish state in Syria, and that naturally will pose problems for the Islamic Republic, requiring a diversion of resources to keep the Kurds in check. The recent spate of attacks inside Iran, some likely carried out by the People’s Mujahidin (MEK), has made Teheran exceptionally anxious about internal opposition. It does not want to have to deal with nine million disaffected Kurds, newly inspired to agitate for incorporation into an independent Kurdistan.
And then there is Turkey. Such a development – an independent Kurdish state carved out of northeastern Syria — would likely lessen Erdogan’s mischief-making, on land and sea, from Turkey to Libya, and throughout the eastern Mediterranean. He would need to pull back from his foreign adventurism in order to devote his attention and resources to keeping the 15-20 million Kurds in Anatolia subdued, for they would undoubtedly become more restive should that Kurdish mini-state be established, with Washington’s support, in northern Syria.
“Occupied Kurdistan” – it’s a telling phrase, and a true one. Use it often. In fact, don’t leave home without it.