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| Clockwise from top: The late Isa Huso, his car and flower draped casket |
Yesterday’s assassination
of Isa Huso, a prominent Syrian Kurdish politician, in Syria’s northeastern
town of Qamishli falls into a category police call whodunits-murders.
They are called such
because they are notoriously tough to solve, there is more than one potential
suspect, with each having a distinct motive.
In Isa Huso’s case, the
two prime suspects are:
(1) The Syrian regime,
which imprisoned him under President Bashar al-Assad after the 2004-2005 Qamishli uprising
by Syrian Kurds and during the rule of Assad's late father Hafez
for campaigning for human rights
(2) Al-Qaeda-linked militants
from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and
Jabhat al-Nusra, who are trying to rest control of Syria’s oil-rich Kurdish areas
near the border with Turkey.
In
a way, the two potential suspects are connected.
The
al-Qaeda-linked organizations were a
creation of the Damascus government, designed to discredit those who oppose Assad
and to hide the regime's own brutal tactics.
This reminds me of the notorious “قناص” -- Arabic
for “sniper” -- in the years of Lebanon’s civil war.
Between 1975 and 1990, the Syrian army often planted
a sniper on a Beirut rooftop to shoot at one side in the conflict, then the
other, to keep them fighting.
Isa Huso, 60, was a
member of the Higher Kurdish Council, aimed at bringing together Syrian Kurdish
groups, and an opponent of Assad.
Syria's main Kurdish
militia later issued a call to arms to all Kurds to fight jihadists operating
in the north.
It follows weeks of
intense fighting between jihadist groups and Kurds, who make up a little over
10% of the population and are largely concentrated in northeastern Syria,
towards the Turkish border.
Huso was leaving his
home in the border town of Qamishli when a bomb planted inside his car
detonated.
He was a member of the
foreign relations committee in the Higher Kurdish Council, an umbrella group
for regional Kurdish factions.
"Huso sought to
promote Kurdish rights within a united Syria free from the grip of the Assad
regime," his former neighbor, Massoud Akko, told Reuters news agency.
“No-one knows who
killed him but the fingers point to the militant Islamists. They are the only
ones who are targeting Kurds as Kurds,” he added.
Responding to Huso's
killing, Kurdish fighters known as the Popular Protection Units (YPG) issued a
call to arms.
“(The YPG) called on all
those fit to carry weapons to join their ranks, to protect areas under their
control from attacks by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) fighters, al-Nusra
Front and other battalions,” said a London-based Syria watchdog, the Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights.
The YPG, which claims
to have no political affiliations, was set up to counter offensives in majority
Kurdish areas.
In recent months it has
been battling to drive out rebels from the north, including the al-Qaeda
affiliated al-Nusra.
Areas near the Turkish
border have seen some of the most intense fighting, with clashes reported
between the strongest local Kurdish group, the Democratic Union Party (PYD),
and al-Nusra in the town of Ras al-Ain.
The PYD has said it
aims to set up a local council to run Kurdish regions until Syria's war ends.
PYD leader Salih Muslim reassured
Turkey last week that his group’s call for a local administration in Syria’s
Kurdish regions does not mean it is looking to divide Syria.
Muslim, who flew to
Ankara from Erbil, told the media he was in Turkey to allay Ankara’s concerns
over Kurdish separatism, and to explain why Syria’s Kurdish regions needed
a local administration.
"Kurds will need
to have a status in the new order in Syria,” Muslim told Anatolian news agency. “But what's in question now is a provisional
arrangement until we arrive at that phase. ”
Muslim told Turkish
officials a local administration would include other ethnic groups such as
Christians, Turkmen and non-Kurds who live in the Kurdish-majority areas of
northeastern Syria.
Muslim’s visit appears
to have eased suspicions between Syrian Kurds and Turkey.
Turkish Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters yesterday he acknowledged Syrian Kurds’
need to establish a “civilian administration” in their areas, just as other
opposition groups have. He warned such provisional measures were possible
provided the administration does not gain “permanent status.”