Further fracturing Arab countries

The battle between Kurdish militiamen and Daesh over the strategic Syrian border town of Tel Abyan has been a crucial test for both sides; Daesh is certain to try to regain control.

The town, across from the Turkish city of Akcakale, is located on the route from Ain Al Arab (Kobani) and Qamishli, on the Iraqi border and lies across the direct supply line from Turkey to Daesh’s capital at Raqqa.

The advance by the Kurish YPG, the military wing of the Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD) and several rebel allies has been bolstered by air cover mounted by the US.

Turkey expressed concern over this development as the PYD is affiliated with the leftist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a 30-year war for political and cultural autonomy for the Kurdish-majority region in southeastern Turkey.

Unless the US and its Western allies put serious pressure on Ankara to refrain from helping Daesh reconquer Tel Abyad, it is likely that Turkey will do just this.

Ankara and its insurgent allies in Syria have already charged the Kurds with driving Arabs and Turkmen out of the areas they have conquered although the inhabitants of these locations have simply fled as the war arrived on their doorsteps.

In January this year, the YPG distinguished itself by breaking the five-month-long Daesh siege of Ain Al Arab/Kobani and liberating the area around the town.

Although the conflict left most of it in ruins and rendered its residents refugees in Turkey, the town is now being rebuilt and resettled although Turkey, adopting Israel’s punitive attitude towards Gaza, has blocked construction materials from crossing from its side of the border.

The YPG has become an example for other Syrian minority groups pressured and persecuted by Daesh and other radical fundamentalists or fearing harsh treatment at their hands.

Druze militiamen have recently reinforced Syrian government troops in the battle to retake a disused airbase that was overrun last week by the fundamentalist-dominated Southern Front Alliance, which enjoys US backing.

A Druze leader from the city of Sweida said that Druze fighters from the Druze-majority city had helped recapture the base, no longer used as an airbase but as a staging area for government forces.

Since the conflict in Syria began in 2011, the Druze have done their best to avoid involvement, but have armed for communal protection.

The fact that the Southern Front Alliance includes Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra may well have been a factor in the decision of the Sweida Druze to back regime troops.

Last week, Nusra forces massacred at least 20 Druze villagers following a confrontation in Qalb Lawzeh village in the northwestern Idlib province, which is largely under the control of Nusra and its allies.

While the Southern Front condemned the massacre and Nusra apologised, the Druze were not convinced since their sect is considered heretical by radical Sunnis, and Nusra elements destroyed Druze cemeteries and shrines in recent months.

A few hundred Christians also took up arms in northeastern Syria with the aim of defending major Christian enclaves within the area conquered by Daesh.

In March, 450 militiamen staged defensive operations around four Assyrian Christian villages among a cluster of 30 settlements in Hassakeh province. Daesh had shelled the area, ransacked its centre and driven its inhabitants into exile, taking 300 hostages and killing dozens of villagers.

Many of the refugees settled in Qamishli, which is under Kurdish control.

In northern Iraq, the Kurdish Peshmerga has been and remains a key force in the struggle against Daesh, although the Kurdish forces have been weakened by divisions between factions loyal to Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani and former Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

Iraqi Christian and Yazidi minority groups also formed militias to protect their communities against Daesh, Nusra and similar factions.

The Yazidi Sinjar Resistance Units were formed as far back as 2007, but did not begin to operate properly until last year when Daesh fighters attacked Yazidi communities in the Mount Sinjar area on the Syria-Iraq border, massacring hundreds and kidnapping thousands.

The Yazidis, ethnic Kurds who adhere to an ancient faith, had been a largely peaceful people.

Last week, Amnesty International reported that in January, Yazidi fighters attacked two Sunni Arab villages in the Sinjar area and killed 21 inhabitants, mainly elderly men, women and children.

In February, hundreds of Iraqi Christians took up arms and formed a militia charged with defending their communities and reclaiming their homes from Daesh, which has cleansed Christians from the northern city of Mosul, seized a year ago, and villages in northern Iraq.

These militiamen have also adopted an aggressive line towards Sunni neighbours who supported Daesh or Kurdish forces who fled the Nineveh plains, leaving the Christians at the mercy of Daesh.

Christians say that neither will be permitted to return to Christian areas once they have been recaptured.

About 30,000 fled the Nineveh region and 150,000 have been displaced in Iraq since Daesh crossed the border from Syrian into Iraq.

The rise of these militias in both Syria and Iraq amounts to a desperate measure taken by vulnerable communities in need of protection, but these armed groups fracture further countries already fractured by sectarianism and civil war.