COMMUNAL TENSIONS SIMMER IN SYRIA’S ALEPPO
Agence France Presse
October 29, 2012 Monday 9:36 AM GMT
The Kurdish rebel sits fiddling with his Kalashnikov looking bored
when a comrade suddenly breaks into screams of “Allahu akbar” as a
series of explosions reverberate from the front line.
“Take it easy, take it easy, he can’t hear you,” says the Kurd,
sitting next to a pile of broken glass on the street, his jeans
rolled up to reveal knock-off black plimsolls with the word “PRADA”
written on the label.
>From where he stands checking the IDs of civilians crossing the front
line of the Syrian war in Aleppo he can see the checkpoint of the
Kurdish militia reviled by many of his comrades in the overwhelmingly
Sunni Arab, Free Syrian Army (FSA).
But although he and his comrades say they are brothers fighting
together to bring down President Bashar al-Assad, at their post in
the neighbourhood of Bushtan al-Basha they disagree on what a new
Syria would look like.
“We need an Islamic government,” says 20-year-old Mutassim, before
his Allahu Akbar chants, his beard wispy and a crocheted white prayer
cap rammed on top of his head.
But the Kurd, who does not want to give his name, says he joined the
rebels to avoid national service in President Bashar al-Assad’s army,
and not to be a “mujahid” like Mutassim.
Asked whether he wants an Islamic government, he gives an emphatic
“No”.
“We need a government for everyone,” he added. After chatting a bit
longer, his commander barks across the street for him to go back to
his checkpoint. He doesn’t move.
One day earlier, clashes broke out nearby between the FSA and Kurdish
militiamen as Muslims celebrated Eid al-Adha, in which one watchdog
said 30 people were killed.
The fighting in Ashrafiyeh on Friday was the deadliest such incident
between Kurds and the armed opposition of the 19-month uprising
against Assad and came one day after the rebels moved into the mixed
neighbourhood.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian branch of the
leftist and secular Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that controls the
area and which professes to be neutral, blamed both the regime and
the FSA for the violence.
There are deep tensions between the PYD, which has been seen as
doing the regime’s bidding, and the rebels, seen by the Kurds as
being influenced by an Islamist agenda.
But the FSA, which is already overstretched and under armed, can ill
afford to take on the Kurds, no matter how much their foot soldiers
bray for revenge.
— Change ‘after the regime falls’ —
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Yussef Aboud, a commander in the Tawhid Brigade of the FSA, said the
problem had been resolved after the Kurds sent peace emissaries.
“We don’t want this problem again because it will make things very,
very difficult,” he told AFP at his office well behind the frontline.
He calls the Kurds brothers, but warns that could change in a
post-Assad Syria. “Maybe in the future unless the PKK corrects their
mistakes, but if they stay the same, after we finish Assad and his
army, we will (fight the PKK).”
Peter Harling, analyst at the International Crisis Group, believes
such remarks are largely rhetorical given the prospect of defeating
Assad is still far off.
Syria’s second city of Aleppo is a melting pot for the country’s
ethnic, religious and sectarian communities that for decades have
lived largely in peace.
The rebels say they represent all Syrians, but there is little sign
of Christian, Shiite or Alawite fighters in Aleppo.
Neighbourhoods controlled by the main rebel faction, the FSA, are
conservative Sunni areas where no woman is seen on the street without
skirts to the ground and her head, if not her face, heavily veiled.
Many have reportedly fled to areas controlled by the regime, where
there is less risk of being bombed by warplanes or shelled by heavy
mortars.
Opposite the Bustan al-Basha checkpoint, a heavily damaged Armenian
Christian old people’s home has long since been evacuated and is now
in the sights of regime snipers.
In a deserted side street, the words “The God of Allah” have been
spraypainted in Arabic on the ground floor of an apartment building
that houses an Armenian dentist and an Armenian paediatrician.
In what was a mixed Christian-Sunni street, the only clothes hanging
out to dry are that of the rebels, many of whom wear black bandanas
inscribed with the words: “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is
his messenger”.
When asked what would change in a post-Assad Syria, fighters in Aleppo
often say that they want an Islamic government and sharia law.
Abu Mahar, who claims to control 200 fighters, said any communal
resentment was the work of regime propagandists, but went on to accuse
Christians of not being true Syrians.
“Christians have no connection with the country,” he told AFP in a
gym turned rebel base elsewhere in the city.
“We all love Syria, but if anything happens in Syria, they’ll run away,
because the West and the regime tell them that if the rebels take over,
they’ll kill them.”
Harling advises caution, saying that at least for now relations
between the rebels and the Christians are holding up.
“It could be much much worse than it is. It’s not an all-out
confessional civil war. This is not Lebanon yet. It could be, but I
think they’re very different societies,” he told AFP by telephone.
Back at the Bushtan al-Basha checkpoint, 20-year-old Kutayba insists
there is no incompatibility between an Islamic government and Syria’s
rich tapestry of minorities.
“No I don’t think they (minorities) will be happy (with an Islamic
government), but that’s what’ll happen. We won’t hurt them.”