Kurds rise in unison to defend their land, honor and people
“I want to go to fight the terrorists and ISIS,” the 22-year-old Kurd said. “We must defend our land and our honor and our people.”
Ghoshank arrived in Lebanon three years earlier at the start of the uprising in Syria, and now he stood before the U.N.’s ESCWA offices in Downtown Beirut protesting the treatment of his countrymen at the hands of ISIS militants as they besieged Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, sending a hundred thousand mostly Kurdish refugees across the border into Turkey.
And Ghoshank registered as a volunteer, along with nearly a hundred others, with a Kurdish representative here in order to go back to Kobani and fight.
“All the young men and women here want to go and defend their land and honor,” he said. “I will give them whatever I have. I will give them my life.”
Another young man, who declined to give his name, said he had also signed up as a volunteer to fight in Syria in the resistance against ISIS, after his hometown in Kobani became a “ghost town.”
Most of his family had fled the town, leaving behind just a couple of young men to protect their house from looters.
“I want to go and defend and enter Ain al-Arab, my city,” said the young man, who had arrived in Lebanon six months earlier.
Dozens of Kurdish young men in Lebanon, primarily refugees from Syria, signed up to go back home and fight ISIS, relishing the prospect of defending their homes.
Abdel-Karim Delo, a senior Kurdish official in Lebanon, said that 95 had registered to join the fight, filled with anger at the ISIS advance. Delo said many had fled Syria without identification papers and officials were working on resolving the issue so they can be sent to Turkey and from there into Kobani to defend their land.
Another official said dozens had come forth as volunteers offering their services to the peshmerga in Iraq, who are also defending Kurdish land against ISIS there.
Many Kurds here see it as a duty to defend their land from extremists, but local officials also say it could help show that most Syrians are also against ISIS, at a time when the refugee community feels increasingly in the crosshairs of Lebanese anger after ISIS occupied the town of Arsal last month and beheaded two captive Lebanese soldiers in recent weeks.
ISIS and the Nusra Front still hold at least 21 soldiers and policemen they captured during the battles in the town. The Nusra Front shot dead one kidnapped soldier last week.
Syrian refugees have borne the brunt of instability in Arsal as well as curfews and tent burnings in response to ISIS and the Nusra Front acts against the Army and the Internal Security Forces.
“We are with the real Syrian revolution, not the Daesh revolution,” said Ahmad Rashid, an official with the Kurdish Democratic Party in Lebanon, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
Ahmad Mahfouz, a Syrian civil activist who attended the protest and is originally from Kobani, said there was an opportunity to unify Lebanese and Syrian public opinion in opposition to the extremism and “savagery” of ISIS.
“It’s important for us as Syrians to show that we are all against the criminality in Syria, and the bloodletting and this ruinous war,” he said. “This enemy is an enemy to all of us.”
There were between 15,000-20,000 Kurds with Lebanese citizenship here before the Syrian uprising. But the Kurdish refugees from Syria have exceeded 300,000, according to Horan Hem, a senior KDP official currently based in Lebanon.
Most of the refugees come from Kobani, Qamishli and Efrin.
“If the Kurdistan regional government calls on us to volunteer, we will answer that call as a Kurdish community against extremism, or the so-called ISIS,” Hem said. “And if they ask us for financial help, regardless of how bad our situation is, we will offer our support.”
Hem and his colleagues had organized protests against the Syrian regime in Lebanon. He credits their protests near the Syrian Embassy with its move from Hamra to Baabda.
The Kurds here say they disassociate themselves from Lebanese politics – the Kurdish community is a minority and are not generally represented in Parliament or the Cabinet.
“We are against any extremism and terrorism that targets the minorities in the region, like Christians, Armenians, Turkmen, Kurds,” Hem said. “[ISIS] are doing things that are outside the religious norms, not just of Islam but all religions.”
“We support, as a Kurdish community and organizations in Lebanon, the peshmerga and the Kurdistan regional government in their stand against those extremists,” he added.
Hem said that dozens of Kurds in Lebanon had come forth and said they were willing to volunteer with the peshmerga in Iraq against ISIS. Like the other Kurds, they see the ISIS advance as a violation of their honor.
Hem also said the Kurds in Lebanon would be happy to volunteer against ISIS in Lebanon.
“The Lebanese think all the Syrians are extremists or supporting ISIS and that is 100 percent wrong,” he said, referring to the anger directed against Syrians after the Arsal battle, adding that the militant group sought to sow strife in Lebanon between the Lebanese and the Syrians.
“As Kurds or as Syrians we are against this attack and support the Lebanese Army, government and parties,” he said. “We call on the Lebanese people as a whole that this should not lead to strife between them and us.”
Hem said many of those who volunteered do not have proper identification papers or passports, but they were willing to sacrifice to save their land. “They were ready to go and defend until martyrdom.”
DailyStar
