AUTONEWS

Assad returns, the Kurds lose their dream of freedom


Tue, 15 Oct 2019 14:30:44 +0200

They stand in line for a few hours, waiting for patients. Except then being driven back with the children, the suitcases too big, the wives too covered that sweat profusely in the still warm mid-October sun, the dry air, the bags of warm clothes. Now those of us who in the past have fought against the regime of Bashar Assad, or the young draft dodgers, are starting now. They do not want to be forced into the Syrian national army's punishment units, immediately sent to fight and die on the front line against the Turks, a distinguished-looking forty-year-old confides. Let it be understood that you are a high-ranking intelligence officer from Rojava, but put you in the patient queue like so many others. The hundred-kilometer journey from the city of Qamishli to the border of Semalka on the Tigris reveals the depth of the drama that is traumatizing the Syrian Kurds. In the past this hilly, green region, dotted with oil wells, has always been considered one of the most stable for the dozens of almost totally Kurdish villages.