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Amid Syria's violence, Kurds carve out autonomy

23 January 2014 01:45 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. In the northeast corner of Syria, a pocket of stability is emerging amid the country's civil war. Here the talk is of building, not bombing, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Local leaders have launched projects to revive normal life and encourage people to stay. They are creating a regional administration, producing cheap fuel, subsidizing seeds for crops and trying to restore electricity to an area that had lost power for nearly 24 hours a day. And so far they are fighting off the forces of both President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels who want to oust him.

The people now in control here are Kurds, an ethnic group that forms the majority of the population in parts of northern Syria, eastern Turkey, northern Iraq and western Iran.

"We have no power or water. Food is short," said Hardin, a 30-year-old teacher, shivering as cold rain began to fall at the funeral of a Kurdish fighter. "But before, our minds and spirits were repressed. Now our dreams are becoming reality. This is the Kurdish moment. Going back to the way we were is not an option. It would be a betrayal of those who sacrificed their lives."

For years the 30 million Kurds spread across those territories have been the world's largest ethnic group without an independent homeland. Only the Kurds in Iraq, who displaced Iraqi forces in the 1990s when a U.S. and British no-fly zone was in place against Saddam Hussein, have managed to carve out an area of real autonomy.