ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - As radical Islamists continue their fight in Syria, including attacks on the Kurdish areas known as Rojava, Islamic groups in the Kurdistan Region denounce such groups as threats to stability.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is the main radical group in Syria, from which al-Qaeda recently distanced itself. In recent months its fighters have infiltrated neighboring Iraq and engaged Iraqi forces in fierce battles in the Sunni province of Anbar.
“We see this group as a threat to the security and stability of the region,” Muthana Amin, a member of the political bureau of the Islamic Union (Yekgirtu) told Rudaw.
He says they damage the image of Islam and lead both Iraq and Syria to more destruction.
“The first victim of the actions of these groups is the religion itself. Then, it is security, stability and people’s rights,” says Amin.
Over the past year the main Syrian opposition group -- the Free Syrian Army (FSA) -- has lost much of its initial vigor in the war against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. In their place have appeared the ISIS and other radical groups, which aim to topple the regime and establish an Islamic state on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.
To gain more ground the ISIS has been fighting the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Rojava, using ground assaults and at times suicide car bombs. But so far, the YPG has proven more than a match to these groups.
“These groups who are fighting in Syria today, it is not clear who they are,” says Soran Omer, a member of parliament from the Islamic League (Komal). “They are being used as tools by other countries and they have stained Islam.”
In the past three years, a number of Kurdish youth from the Kurdistan Region have traveled to Syria and joined radical groups in the fight against Damascus. So far around 30 have been killed in the war.
Kurdish Islamic parties deny they have encouraged anyone to join the fight in Syria, arguing that the conflict is not considered as a “jihad,” or holy war.
“I suggest that Islamic parties in Kurdistan should hold a conference to show people the real agendas of those groups fighting in Syria,” said Omer.
The Kurdish condemnation of extremist Islamic groups like ISIS resonates with the international concern that extremist groups are dominating the war in Syria and that they pose a serious threat to stability in the wider Middle East.
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