LONDON, United Kingdom – Tensions between armed members of the PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD) and rival Kurds erupted in violence and killed several people last week, after the PYD carried out armed raids it claimed were targeted against drugs offenders.
The PYD – the Syrian arm of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) – had initially focused on areas near Ain al-Arab (Kobani in Kurdish) and Efrin. But on June 17, its militia forces arrested three activists in the town of Amude, and charged them with dealing in cannabis.
The arrests led to sit-in protests on the streets of Amude, and the Kurdish Youth Movement (TCK) said it had staged hunger strikes in support.
“We were shocked about the latest arrests by the PYD that targeted Kurdish activists on charges of drug-dealing and many other false accusations that can never be pinned on these revolutionary activists,” the TCK said in a statement.
Caught in the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a civil war that is in its third year, the country’s Kurdish-dominated enclaves have been suffering from unemployment and poverty, and have turned into hubs of marijuana farming. The PYD’s security forces have carried out many operations against crop cultivation.
In another alleged anti-drugs raid on June 23 by PYD security forces in the village of Tal Ghazal near the Syrian town of Kobani, three civilians were killed, several were wounded and more were arrested. The attack was condemned by the Kurdish National Council in Kobani, a rival coalition of several Kurdish parties.
Pro-PYD media claimed that one of the arrested suspects, Mohammed Ismail, was a member of the biggest rivals of the PYD party, the Freedom Party, which quickly rejected any relation to him.
On 27 June, the PYD’s Asayish security forces carried out more anti-cannabis operations in the village of Arab Piran in Efrin, capturing 200 kilograms of hashish. Last Thursday, a clash erupted between protestors and a convoy of the People’s Defense Units (YPG) and protestors.
According to the YPG, its fighters were attacked by the Free Syrian Army’s 313th brigade in Amude, a clash in which YPG-member Sabri Gulo and three of the rival fighters were allegedly killed.
But PYD rivals, like the Freedom Party, reject that its claims of an armed attack. Their version is that the YPG shot at protestors.
“It was a peaceful demonstration,” the Freedom Party’s Dr. Welid Sexo told Al Monitor. “The YPG attacked demonstrators in Amude, which led to dead and wounded.”
The Local Coordination Committee (LCC) in Hassaka province, which organizes protests in Amude, said that six civilians were killed “as a result of gunfire by the PKK.”
Harriet Allsopp, an expert on Syrian Kurdish affairs, told Rudaw that the incident is not new. “We are seeing more and more peaceful, but small and local, protests against the PYD from the Kurds and more and more authoritarian tactics by the PYD. In most cases the PYD are denying responsibility.”
Moreover, she added that “Amude has long had a strong nationalist and anti-regime movement, and so, many Kurds say the PYD is acting against the interests of the Kurdish national movement and the anti regime movement.”
The office of Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani held an emergency meeting recently with representatives of Syrian Kurdish parties to discuss the tensions.
