Syria's "Kurdish Spring"

The Huffington Post WORLD blog, in a September 06, 2013 article by Daniel Wagner and Giorgio Cafiero which was first published in Foreign Policy in Focus, explores the changing status of Syrian Kurds in light of the rebel violence directed against the Assad regime --

"Amid... deepening regional divisions, a new opening has emerged for one of the Middle East's longest-suffering minority groups: the Kurds."

The writers assert that the "shifting regional balance of power" brought about by the sectarian conflicts has "enabled the Kurds to exercise greater control over their destiny."

The blog suggests that "it is entirely plausible that Syria's Kurds will maintain autonomy in northeastern Syria when the dust eventually settles."

Just as Turkey's government for decades suppressed minority Kurdish ethnic expression within its boundaries and Saddam Hussein oppressed and massacred Kurds in Iraq during his reign of terror, so Syrian Kurds were massacred in Qamishli for "protesting against an Arab nationalist regime that had for decades dispossessed Kurdish farmers, confiscated Kurdish land, and outlawed the teaching of the Kurdish language", prompting a Syrian "Kurdish Spring" that began in 2004.

With the widespread violence now occurring in the rest of the country, the Syrian government has withdrawn most of its security forces from the Kurdish areas, "leaving the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as the defacto regional government", just as the Kurdish region of northeastern Iraq had been left to the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) after the fall of Hussein.

But the Syrian Kurds face new threats, as Salafi jihadists, intent on overthrowing the Assad government, have also targeted Kurdish PYD forces, and attacks have also come from the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), who fear the Kurdish militia "is loyal to Assad's regime."

Since the conflict has exploded, over 35,000 Syrian refugees have fled to Iraqi Kurdistan. In response, the leader of the KRG, Masoud Barzani, declared his government was "prepared to defend" Syria's Kurds.

According to the writers, the KRG's support for the PYD "underscores Barzani's greater pan-Kurdish policies." Wagner and Cafiero assert "Barzani's likely motivation stems from his suspicion that a future war between central Iraq and the KRG could occur, and under such circumstances Syrian Kurdistan could provide strategic depth." They go so far as to suggest "if violence continues to plague Syria's northeast, the border between Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan may ultimately dissolve."

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Jeremiah's prophecy of judgment on "Babylon, land of the Chaldeans" in chapters 50 and 51 in the hebrew bible describes the "spirit of the kings of the Medes" rising up to defeat the armies of the Chaldeans. The Kurds are the descendants of the Medes, and occupy the lands once known as the Median Empire. Three "nations" of Medes are described as aligning -- the "Minni, Ashkenaz and Ararat." Ashkenaz would better be translated as "Adiabene", the realm which capital was Arbela, now modern-day Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, and a reflection of the Iraqi Kurds. Minni would better be translated as Mannaea, the realm of the "Mannaeans", which corresponds to the "Iranian part of Kurdistan", according to the Xenohistorian Weblog.

"Ararat" would then represent the Medes of the eastern Turkish and northeastern Syrian areas, today the Kurds of Turkey and Syria.

The Iranian Kurds and Iraqi Kurds, under Talibani and Barzani, had in modern times been at odds for decades, until uniting in common cause to overthrow Saddam in 1993 during the First Gulf War. Today they have together formed the Kurdistan Regional Government in self-rule over the northern part of Iraq.

What remains missing from Jeremiah's fulfillment of the prophecy then is the joining of this alliance by the Turkish-Syrian Kurds -- the "Ararat" Medes -- so as to consolidate the three factions of the Medes in a battle against the land of the Chaldeans.

The conflict in Syria, as described by Wagner and Cafiero, may be the scenario that brings the Turkish-Syrian Kurds into the greater Kurdistan alliance, and allowing the consolidation of the power of the 'kings of the Medes" -- the "Ararat, Adiabene and Mannaean" factions -- so as to present a dominating military force that will invade and defeat the armies of Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, modern-day Iraq, fulfilling the judgment prophesied by Jeremiah.