Kurds triumph, but other Syrians afraid
ISTANBUL — An enormous yellow flag with a red star in the middle hangs over the main square in Tel Abyad, the Syrian border town just seized from Islamic State extremists by a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia.
For Syrian Kurds, it’s a symbol of triumph. Other Syrians, though, fear the flag is the harbinger of expulsion and possibly the breakup of Syria.
Aided by U.S. airstrikes, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, took over the strategic town Tuesday after weeks of fighting in surrounding villages. But there was no battle of Tel Abyad because Islamic State forces left without a fight, U.S. officials said.
State Department officials called the fall of the town a “significant victory.”
There’s little question that the Kurds’ advance has closed the gateway for foreign volunteers flocking to join the Islamic State, whose self-proclaimed capital is in Raqqa, 60 miles to the south. And few Syrians, no matter their origin, will miss the black flag of the extremists, nor their harsh rules and brutal punishments.
But they also fear the Kurdish militia. As the YPG approached Tel Abyad, Arabs and Turkmen, who make up 90 percent of the town’s population, fled to other Syrian vil- lages or to Turkey, which registered 25,000 refugees in one week, adding to the estimated 2 million-plus already there.
The YPG is the Syrian affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has long sought an independent Kurdish state and had been designated a terrorist group by the U.S., the European Union and Turkey.
New arrivals in Turkey said they feared that nonKurds will be mistreated or expelled. That already has happened in nearby Hasaka province and near Kobani, the Kurdish town 35 miles west of Tel Abyad that was saved from Islamic State capture last fall by U.S. airstrikes.
With U.S. help, the Kurdish militia now controls over 90 percent of neighboring Hasaka province, U.S. officials say, and there is now a land link between Qamishli in the east, the most populous Kurd- ish city in northern Syria, and Kobani. Only Afrin, in northwest Syria, remains unconnected.
The YPG and its parent organization, the PKK, favor creation of a Kurdish state of Rojava, or West Kurdistan. Kurdish gains have raised tensions with the hundreds of thousands of Arabs, Turkmen and other minorities who to do not share that dream.