Qhen leaving on the banks of the Euphrates, in a small ruined town, a young woman dreams of another Syria. Leïla Mustapha, 32, would like her country to escape the war, which still rages there, but also the dictatorship, whether that of Bashar Al-Assad or some foreign power. Leïla Mustapha knows what she is talking about. She is the mayor, more precisely deputy mayor, of Rakka, the former "capital" of the Islamic State (IS) organization.
She is Syrian, civil engineer, major of her class, responsible for the reconstruction of a city with an Arab majority. A symbol of jihadist barbarism, Rakka remains traumatized, partly demolished by the battles waged to drive out IS. Leïla Mustapha is also Kurdish, daughter of this Syrian Kurdish country which, in the north of the country, runs along the border with Turkey.
She wants to believe that Syria and in particular its region are doomed neither to the Damascus boot nor to that of Ankara. She's not afraid of adversity, as she says in a book co-written with journalist Marine de Tilly, Woman, life, freedom (Stock, 250 p., 19.50 euros). But she is alone, Leïla Mustapha.
The Kurds in Syria are no longer in the news. We have forgotten them, now that they have done the job: a victorious face-to-face, on the ground, house to house, against the Islamist soldiers. With Damascus, they maintain a stormy relationship, sometimes in a tactical alliance, sometimes in conflict. They were released by the Russians, who were partners for a time. They were betrayed by the United States and the Europeans, of whom they were the essential allies against IS. They are now under attack by Turkey, which is settling in their region. Quantified measure of the ingratitude shown towards the Kurdish fighters of Syria: they had 11,000 dead and thousands of seriously wounded in the combats against the IS – wounded whom they fail to come to seek treatment in Europe.
A character soaked in the ordeal
For the past few weeks, Syrian and Russian hunters have been shelling the Idlib massif in the west of the country, where 3 million people live. Idlib is the last bastion of the armed rebellion against Bashar Al-Assad. It is essentially made up of Islamist groups, Sunni Arabs, protected from the Turkish army – which has entered into confrontation with Syria.
The Kurds fear a mass exodus from the little territory they still control. Such a move would accelerate a policy of ethnic cleansing encouraged by Ankara.
