Is Syrian Federation a Prescription for Partitioning?

Policy Studying Unit 28th June 2016

Harmoon Centre for Contemporary Studies

Harmoon Centre for Contemporary Studies is an independent, nonprofit, research, cultural and media institution. Its main focus is to conduct studies and researches about the Arab region, especially Syria. It also works towards cultural and media development, enhancing the civil society performance, and spreading democratic awareness and values of dialogue, as well as respect for human rights. The Centre also provides consultation and training services in political and media .fields to all Syrians on the basis of Syrian national identity To achieve its objectives, the Centre conducts its activities through five specialized units, (1) Policy Studies Unit, (2) Social Researches Unit, (3) Books Review Unit, .(4) Translation and Arabization Unit, and (5) Legal Unit A set of action programs are also adopted, such as the program for Political Consultations and Initiatives; Program for Services, Media Campaigns, and Public Opinion Making Program; Program for Dialogue Support and Civil and Cultural Development Program; Syria Future Program. The Centre may add new programs depending on the actual needs of Syria and the region. In implementing its programs, the Centre deploys multiple mechanisms, including lectures, workshops, seminars, conferences, training courses, as well as paper and .electronic press

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Contents 1. Declaration of federation ...... 2 2. Reactions to the “Rimelan Declaration” ...... 3 3. Possible Scenarios ...... 5 4. The Question of Federalism ...... 7 5. Conclusion ...... 10

The “federation” of Syria has been preoccupying Syrian discussions and debates during the past three months following the declaration of a federal system by Syrian Kurds and their allies in the Rojava area (west of Kurdistan). But what are the different reactions to the declaration? What are the possible scenarios? Does “federalism” respond to the current Syrian needs? And how would Syrians find the way out?

1. Declaration of federation Under the theme “A Federal Democratic Syria is a Guarantee for Peaceful Coexistence and Brotherhood of People,” the Federal Democratic System of Rojava and Northern Syria held its constituent assembly on March 16-17 in SDF-controlled Rimelan City with 200 representatives of 31 Kurdish, Assyrian and Syriac parties. The congress convened one year after the declaration of the “Kurdish self-rule” in northern Syria by PYD’s co-chairman, Salih Muslim, which incorporated three cantons, namely Aljazeera and Kobani, east of the Euphrates, and Afrin, west of the Euphrates. Interestingly, the meeting was held right after the statement on 29 February by Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Ryabkov, who said that Moscow “hopes that the participants in the Syrian negotiations reach the idea of establishing a federal republic.” “If as a result of talks, consultations and discussions on Syria's future state order ... they come to an opinion that namely this (federal) model will work to serve the task of preserving Syria as a united, secular, independent and sovereign nation, then who will object to this?” he added. Reactions to the Russian proposal, at the time, suggest that it could be possible or serious, and it could be a trial balloon intended to gauge the Syrian response. Yuri Venin, senior researcher at the International Relations Institute in Moscow, said the Ryabkov

proposal is only “one of the ideas at the table,” and that “even if the idea is only a press release, it is a realistic reading of the political and demographic reality which emerged after years of conflict in Syria.” Mr. Venin indicated that such proposal “may open the door for further proposals to be discussed in the expected talks in Geneva.” Analysis linked between the Ryabkov statement and the recent US statement of Plan B, in which Syrians were warned of a possible partitioning of their country if the conflict protracts. CNN quoted Admiral James Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, as saying that Plan B, which Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of, might include a land “campaign without Russia.” The admiral’s statement coincided with a flaring, local and international, debate that Syria might be divided into four regions: the Syrian Kurdistan Region, with Hasakeh as its capital; the Coastal Region, to which Homs in to be annexed; the Jabal al-Arab Region; and one last region to cover the rest of the country and be under a Sunni control, with Damascus as its capital.

2. Reactions to the “Rimelan Declaration” Following the declaration, the Syrian regime’s Foreign Office rushed to warn “any party against attempting to undermine the territorial integrity of Syria and the unity of its people under whatever names.” That, it added, “includes those who gathered in al-Rmeilan city in Hasaka province.” “Raising the issue of a federation or that of federalization would affect the territorial integrity of Syria…,” the source said. “Any declaration to that effect would be without any legal value and void of any legal, political, social or economic effect as long as it does not reflect the will of the entire Syrian people.”

Similarly, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces rejected the Kurdish move. An official statement published March 17 on the coalition’s website stated that “The Syrian Coalition warns of any attempts to establish entities, regions or administrations against the will of the Syrian people.” “The shape of the Syrian state, whether central or federal, cannot be determined unilaterally by a single faction, one segment of the people, a party or a movement,” it insisted.

Four days before the Kurdish declaration, head of the Kurdish National Council in Syria (KNC), Ibrahim Biro, told the Rudaw Media Network that “UN Special Envoy to Syrian, Staffan de Mistoura, and US and European foreign ministers stressed that a federal system is necessary in Syria.” Biro added that KNC “believes that federalism doesn’t mean partitioning the country. However, if federalism fails, the country will be partitioned and Syrians will moan the lost chance.” “KNC is an important component of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces,” he concluded. Similarly, Iraqi Kurdistan Region presidency invited the Syrian Kurds to support a federal system in Syria as well as a self-ruled “Syrian Kurdistan.”

Friday after the “Kurdish self-rule” declaration witnessed demonstrations in opposition-controlled cities, which coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Syrian Revolution. Protesters expressed their total rejection of federalism and partitioning of the country.

On the international level, State Department spokesman John Kirby said: “We don't support self-ruled, self-autonomous zones inside Syria.” “Whole, unified, nonsectarian Syria -- that's the goal,” he added. Meanwhile, State Department official Mark Toner stated that “Washington will not recognize a ‘self-rule’ semi-autonomous Kurdish zone in Syria.” “This

is something that needs to be discussed and agreed upon by the relevant parties in Geneva and then by the Syrian people themselves,” he added. On the regional level, a senior Turkish official said his country “refuses any new cantons in Syria because no ethnic-based unilateral steps can be taken.” In remarks during his visit to Tehran on March 19, former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey and Iran support the territorial integrity of Syria. Shortly before this, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country is only “defending the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Syria.” He spoke of differences with Russia over the idea of federalism, especially after the latter expressed support for this option and approved the opening of a Rojava’s representation office in Moscow.

3. Possible Scenarios Far from diplomatic and press releases, which are partly misleading, joint US-Russian practices indicate that there could be ongoing efforts not to reconsider the concept of state determined by the Sykes–Picot Agreement but rather to redraft the concept itself with a view to weakening it under a different name, be it ‘federalism’ or ‘sectarian quotas’, and consequently emptying the concepts of central authority and national sovereignty of their contents. It is no longer a secret that America and Russia are considering different scenarios to solve the Syrian crisis through federalism. Russians consider it a tool for Assad’s regime to maintain control over areas populated by Alawite majority, which include the strategic Russian naval facility in Tartus and the Hmeimim Airbase, which the Russians built upon

their intervention in Syria on 30 September 2015. The Americans, however, consider federalism a possible realistic settlement of a fragmented country controlled by many contrastive-ideological armed groups. Such settlement, however, recalls the Iraqi experience, especially that federalism is still a fresh proposition there; it only emerged in the 1990s, shortly after the invasion of Kuwait, the March Intifada in 1991, and the release of the Kurdish-majority area in northern Iraq (Kurdistan) from the central authority grip in Baghdad, with the support of the International Coalition Forces at the time. On 4 October 1992, the parliament of Kurdistan took a decision in which it adopted the federal system of Iraq. The decision provoked wide debate over possible repercussions of such a system on the social, political and economic relations inside Iraq and its neighboring countries.

Since the nineties, federalism was floated every now and then by the Kurdish forces, especially the two biggest parties, the ‘Kurdistan Democratic Party’ and the ‘Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’. They raised the federation topic in every conference and gathering they held outside Iraq. To the best of their luck, things changed dramatically: Saddam’s regime fell in 2003, and the Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period, under the US occupation at the time, adopted the principle of federalism. People wonder now whether similar endeavors are underway for the Iraqi case to be cloned or guided by in Syria. If this happens to be true, it’s doomed to fail; and given the Syrian status quo, and the new facts on the ground, it would mean tampering with the country’s fate and a further step into fragmenting it into fragile cantons, which carry deep inside seeds of a deep rift that would only lead to bloodshed and open-ended wars.

The sheer disparity between Iraq and Syria is the justification for such a gloomy scenario. Unlike Iraq, the Syrian geography and the commingling of local components condemn the Iraqi style to fail. None of the Syrian components can isolate itself from the rest, especially that ethnic, religious and ideological minorities have neither definite geographic borders nor population majority except in very limited areas, which are basically not qualified to become self-ruled federal regions. For instance, the Rojava area, which the Kurds declared federal, has a majority population of Arabs and not Kurds. In Hasakeh Governorate, which is the biggest part of the alleged federalism, there are 1717 villages, 1161 of which are Arab, 453 Kurdish and the rest are mixed (Arab and Assyrian); this means that the Kurdish villages constitute no more than 26% of the total area; and the same applies to the number of inhabitants there.

4. The Question of Federalism Irrespective of the attitudes or reactions of many Syrians who considered ‘federalism’ a fragmentation move, which would divide the country into fragile ‘cantons’ that would only lead to bloodshed and open-ended wars, there is one legitimate question to be asked: Would ‘federalism’ be a solution to the Syrian crisis? We must first indicate that ‘federalism,’ in principle, is an additional form added to the “idea of state” or “concept of state,” and that it originally emerged to meet the needs of developing human communities in modern history. With this meaning, federalism is a pure modern perception regardless of any similar experiments in the Old or Middle Ages. While it originates through the union of a number of countries or states, it also arises from the

dissolution of countries. But as long as federalism is the result of a strong national state, where democracy and citizenship are cherished, it is a source of power for the state as well. Besides, there is a strong controversial relationship between federalism on the one hand, and democracy, citizenship and national identity on the other. Despite bad experiences here and there, the very concept of federalism was intended to establish a strong constitutional system upon which democratic multilateralism is based. Federalism contributes to a) enhancing representative democracy through providing a double citizenship under one republican center, b) embodying court justice against the state’s injustice by weakening the state’s capability to violate rights, and c) setting legal procedures for decision-making that would limit the state’s ability to take rapid actions. To answer the question, “Would ‘federalism’ be a solution to the Syrian crisis?” we must outline the following points:

1. Since the departure of the colonial French in the mid-1940s, Syrians never had a “national state,” as per the modern definition of the term ‘state’. The post- independence state was inherited from the French and had the minimum necessary tools to run a country. 2. That state never had the chance to grow or flourish within a normal context due to the consequences of a series of events that hit the area, including the Palestine Nakba and the emergence of the state of Israel in 1948, as well as consecutive military coups in Syria between 1949 and 1954, which were coupled with more regression. 3. Following the overthrow of the government of Adib Shishakli in 1954, Syria witnessed a short democratic era that lasted until 1958. For four years, a national

democratic state was being established. Unfortunately, it was aborted with the rise of the United Arab Republic in 1958. 4. Although the United Arab Republic collapsed three years later, in 1961, Syrians failed to regain their pre-unity ‘national democratic’ state. Two years later, the new state had further collapsed when the Ba’ath Party led a new military coup d’état in 1963 to unilaterally control the entire authorities and political life in the country. With the new authority’s intrusion in all fields, the state began to fade away. Regrettably, this stage has continued to date. 5. Perhaps one of the striking manifestations of the Syrian policies during the past five decades was the terrible regression of the collective national identity, which resulted from discriminative policies and tribalism and regional pre-national identity ‘awakening’ actions. Les identités meurtrières (Murderous Identities), by Amin MAALOUF, would perhaps vividly reflect the Syrian status where the identity of a person was reduced to a single belonging which prevails over all other forms of belonging; this consequently led to a fragmented Syrian national identity: Arab, Kurdish, Sunni, Alawite, Druze, Christian, etc. Moreover, the past five years uncovered the ugly truth of the Assad regime; it turned out to be more than a sectarian, tribal and fascist system; it appeared to be more of an ERP system which lives on protection provided by Iran, Russia, America and Israel to kill hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Even the ‘unity’ motto it cherished for so long has shrunk to immunize the ‘useful Syria’ and bargain with the separatist Kurds over an entity that is expanding day after another thanks to a suspicious international deal, which proves that all the talk about a new “Sykes–Picot map” is rather true.

5. Conclusion Under this identity conflict, and the war that ravaged the country, Syrians urgently need a new social contract to move into a spacious national condition. In all cases, the “Kurdish federalism” project in northern and eastern Syria isn’t the entrance to it, nor is the “useful Syria” project in west of the country. Under the current circumstances, such schemes won’t lead to a federal state in Syria but rather to blowing the existing national entity, as well as other less immune entities such as Lebanon, Jordan and what is left of Palestine. The dilemma of a federal solution is that it is basically built by the firepower of the warring parties; during the past five years, the changing fight maps, as well as the atrocities and demographic change maps, have played a major role in demarking borders on the basis of sectarian and ethnic identities. As for the Kurdish issue, it is undoubtedly one of the Syrian grievances. If Syrians fail to solve it within the Syrian national entity framework, and within the revival of the national state, then they won’t solve it by establishing the proposed Kurdish region. That’s why there is an urgent and persisting need, more than ever, for the free Syrians to organize and launch a nation-wide dialogue with a view to reaching a new social contract. It is classic that 1) regaining the state, and 2) building a modern national state and multi-democratic society constitute the cornerstone of the hoped social contract. Once this contract is concluded, the floor is open for whoever to suggest his preferred format for the state.