KURDISH SYRIA, WHERE THE FALLEN CAN FIND FAME
Throughout the six-year civil war, killed Kurd fighters are venerated with noted enthusiasm, with resources being lavished upon the dead
Soldiers wear pictures of them on their shoulder patches. Museums in every city in northern Syria fill halls with their portraits. Streets are named after them, and billboards commemorate them. They are the war dead of the Kurds’ participation in Syria’s six years of conflict: Syrian Democratic Force fighters, especially from Kurdish units, who were killed in battle — and they are everywhere.
In a civil war in which hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died, honouring those killed has become a potent recruiting tool, one that all sides use. The Kurds have institutionalised it, lavishing resources on both the dead and their survivors.
Veneration of the war dead is a potent morale booster, especially among the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey condemns as terrorists. The Americans consider the Kurdish units as the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is vital in the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State.
Do not call her a bereaved mother, said Aisha Affendi, a co-president of the Movement for a Democratic Society in Kobane, whose son Shervan was killed in an ambush at 19. “I am the mother of a martyr,” she said, a phrase habitually uttered with defiance, and one that confers instant credibility in Kurdish society.
One of the officials at the Martyrs Institute in Manbij is named Darwish Salahudin, but when people introduce him to a stranger, they will not use his name, they will say, “This is the brother of the martyred Comrade Botan.”
He brightened, relating that. “We see it as an honour to be the relative of a martyr; everybody knows who we are.”
The well-funded martyrs institutes in every northern Syrian city hand out pensions to parents, spouses and children of fighters killed in battle, and in some cases of civilian victims as well. They also host museums with galleries of hundreds of enlarged photographs of the local fallen; finance signs and billboards with faces of groups of the dead; print off likenesses of all shapes and sizes to distribute to homes, offices and public spaces; and stage public memorial events, with marches and speeches on anniversary days. No public office in Kurdish areas is without at least one and usually many photographs of the fallen.
Then there are the cemeteries. Every major city now has a section for the mostly Kurdish fighters from the YPG, as well as the Women’s Protection Units, YPJ. They are well tended, with permanent staff and no expense spared, usually in striking contrast with the much shabbier civilian graveyards.
The cemetery for war dead outside Kobane, on the border with Turkey, has a towering marble altar pavilion, elaborate and decorative, and a massive rotunda is under construction. Inside the rotunda, officials plan to put keepsakes from many of the dead fighters — relics like the wristwatches they were wearing when killed, or a notebook, a piece of clothing or even just a lock of hair. All have been gathered and carefully catalogued, waiting for the rotunda museum to be finished.
Ibrahim Qaleif, an Arab and vice-president of the Manbij Martyrs Institute, said he saw nothing strange about such expansive veneration of the dead.
“As much as we give the martyrs, it doesn’t compare to the lives they gave for us,” he said.
The hall for war dead in Kobane is the size of an indoor basketball court, and its four walls are nearly full now with photographs of the dead. Most were killed in 2014 and 2015, battling the Islamic State in Kobane, but there are many from the past two years, as fighters from the city joined the Americans in the onslaught against the Islamic State elsewhere.
In the midst of all those is a photograph of Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the United States. A quotation from him reads, “We don’t bury our martyrs in the dirt, but in our hearts.”
Plans are underway, said the co-president, Arif Bali, to begin hanging photographs of the dead from the hall’s ceiling once they run out of wall.
“In our history, we carry a very heavy burden, a debt to our martyrs,” Mr Bali said. “Our martyrs gave us the right to speak in our own language. They are like flowers in our gardens.”
That is more than just talk. Babies are given the names of the war dead; friends change their names to those of famous fighters who have been killed, or just of fallen friends.
Some Kurds even seem to invite death in war, which their US advisers say makes them formidable in battle. The Americans have expressed consternation that the Kurds will seldom wear body armour or helmets, even when they have the equipment.
“We have a lot of that stuff here, somewhere in storage,” said Haqi Kobani, the deputy commander in charge of administration for the Syrian Democratic Forces. “No one ever wants to wear them.”
Suicide attackers are the most highly praised, and pictures of them are displayed especially prominently, as with the recent case of Avesta Khabur, who blew herself up to destroy a Turkish tank in Afrin. Within two days, her face was everywhere in northern Syria.