On the ruins of Kurdish dreams

LAURENCE GEAI FOR "THE WORLD"

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Posted yesterday at 15h44, updated yesterday at 18h42

At the checkpoint at the western entrance to Kamechliyé, the eye clings to a column of black smoke rising from an unknown spot somewhere in the city center. "It's the comrades who burn tires," ensured the orderly on duty. Since the Turkish offensive of 9 October against the Syrian cities of Tall Abyad and Ras al-Ain, held by the Kurdish forces, and the flurry of artillery fire that struck Kamechliyé, it was indeed happening. "Comrades" as are the fighters of the Kurdish movement between them, to burn tires. To blind the drones in a ridiculous attempt to fight death falling from the sky? To give this city still attached to peace, with its pastries full of honey cakes, the more realistic finery of a city at war?

Soline, 15, from Kamechliyé (northeastern Syria), poses with her lute, a traditional Kurdish instrument, on October 21, at the Bardarash refugee camp (Iraqi Kurdistan). She fled Syria with her mother and brother three days ago. On the few photos she took away, we can see the other members of her family remained in Syria. This is the second time they come to take refuge in Iraq. They were already there in 2014. Nadja, Solin's mother, tells us: "Rojava is our house, we never wanted to leave it. "
Soline, 15, from Kamechliyé (northeastern Syria), poses with her lute, a traditional Kurdish instrument, on October 21, at the Bardarash refugee camp (Iraqi Kurdistan). She fled Syria with her mother and brother three days ago. On the few photos she took away, we can see the other members of her family remained in Syria. This is the second time they come to take refuge in Iraq. They were already there in 2014. Nadja, Solin's mother, tells us: "Rojava is our house, we never wanted to leave it. »LAURENCE GEAI FOR" THE WORLD "

The orderly was wrong. After a few minutes of a bumpy ride through deserted streets, covered with Kurdish revolutionary slogans and frescoes depicting female combatants, a different smell from burnt rubber told another story. It was October 11 and, among an anguished crowd, filming the fire with a cell phone noria, armed men and women were helpless.

The features of the face drawn, but the step as assured as if it were a market day, a cadre of the Kurdish movement has dropped two words: "Car bomb. " A vehicle loaded with explosives jumped, killing five people. A few hours later, the attack was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) organization. While the conflict between the Kurdish movement in Ankara since 1984 has spilled over in Syria, the struggle believed to have been won by the Syrian Democratic Forces (FDS, predominantly Kurdish) against the IS showed devastating signs of resurgence. Two wars, one old and the other recent, had just clashed after Washington, which had militarily supported the FDS against the jihadists, had paved the way for the Turkish army and its Arab auxiliaries by withdrawing its forces. two points from the border.

Three superimposed conflicts

A third war looms a little further east. Near a roundabout surmounted by a statue of Hafez Al-Assad, founder of the state of terror in Syria and father of the current dictator, behind the blind walls of the security neighborhood whose regime was not never departed despite the withdrawal of its forces in 2012, the rest of Kamechliyé, Damascus is preparing his return. It is perhaps one of the last episodes of its reconquest of the Syrian territory, after having lost parts of it in favor of a now forgotten revolution.

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