Last summer’s Erbil agreement was meant to unite the different Syrian Kurdish parties on security matters. The agreement is barely a year old, and apparently dead as well. The Kurds of Rojava (Syrian, or Western, Kurdistan) appear no more united today than the Sunni Arabs fighting the Assad regime.
Disturbing reports about intra-Kurdish violence in Syria also appear all to frequently. Most recently, the PYD (the Democratic Union Party of Syrian Kurds, which is pro-PKK) apparently had its YPG (Popular Protection Units) open fire on fellow Kurds demonstrating against it in Amude. The PYD denies this, of course, claiming that there were armed elements within the demonstration firing against them. Other reports speak of PYD kidnaping of Kurdish political opponents and a general intolerance towards criticism and dissent. The party is accused of being Stalinist in its methods, an arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which takes orders from its imprisoned dear leader and recently elected new field leaders with a 100% consensus. Just as the PKK began its political life in the 1970s and 80s by targeting competing Kurdish parties before ever opening fire on Turkish forces, the PYD is accused of setting itself up as the only power in Rojava. They deny this, claiming that they are the only ones able and willing to defend Syrian Kurds at the moment–which they are doing in places like Aleppo, Afrin, Ras al-Ayin and others. It is difficult for me to disentangle the competing narratives about the PYD and its YPG armed force from a distance, of course, and I don’t presume to try and do so.
History does show us that national liberation movements wherein one party held a monopoly of force were the most successful. 
History does show us that national liberation movements wherein one party held a monopoly of force were the most successful. In Vietnam, the communists first eliminated competing Vietnamese liberation movements such as the Hao Hao, Cao Dai and even armed members of the Vietnamese Catholic church. They then set themselves up as the only viable party for pursuing Vietnamese national liberation. They took in every non-Communist Vietnamese who was nonetheless willing to obey orders from them, and went on to defeat two of the strongest armies in the world--the French and then the Americans. In the Zionist (or Jewish national liberation movement) case, the mainstream Jewish Agency and its Hagganah armed wing eventually had to attack the smaller armed Zionist parties, the Irgun and Lehi, to achieve a monopoly of force and unite the Zionists in Palestine. When the British left, the nascent Zionists forces stunned the world by defeating the combined might of five invading Arab states as well as local Palestinian Arab irregulars.
But for every national liberation movement that unified and achieved success, there are many more who only managed to descend into fratricidal killing and defeat. Before the twentieth century, the Scottish, the Irish and the Welsh knew similar divisive bloodletting and defeats in their struggles against the English. Today the Palestinians may be in need of a three state solution, as Hamas and Fatah glare across at each other from their respective little enclaves. The Kurds should know this better than anyone, given their own bitter history. It would therefore be especially tragic for the PYD to try and impose its own monopoly of force on Rojava, especially if they fatally weakened Syrian Kurdistan in the process.
It would therefore be especially tragic for the PYD to try and impose its own monopoly of force on Rojava, especially if they fatally weakened Syrian Kurdistan in the process.
The PYD and its YPG armed force are without question, however, the most powerful actors in Syrian Kurdistan today. So why not pursue unity through other means? Why not hold an election throughout liberated areas of Rojava? The southern Kurds had the honor of holding Iraq’s first free and fair elections in 1992 under the most difficult of circumstances, just months after gaining de facto autonomy. Iraqi Kurds could provide technical assistance to hold the elections, and if the PYD has trouble trusting them, they could also bring in observers from Kurdish parties of north and east Kurdistan as well as international observers (if they are willing to come). Before an interim emergency government (given Rojava’s ambiguous status and boundaries) is even elected, they could promise to appoint an overall military commander originally from the YPG, in recognition of that group’s preeminent role in defending the area. That commander would take his or her orders from elected civilian leaders, however, who might well not be from the PYD. All parties who participate in the electoral contest would agree to abide by the results beforehand, of course, and all Kurdistani armed forces would be put under the command of the new government.
I know I’m not proposing an easy thing here, and a lot depends on details, arrangements, chance and other factors. If they managed to pull it off, however, Syrian Kurdistanis would certainly have the entire world’s attention and sympathy. They would have held Syria’s first real elections since the 1950s. Especially if they also elected some Arab and Christian representatives, they would make the strongest imaginable case for more self-determination. What’s more, they might manage to achieve a degree of unity vis-a-vis outside threats without killing each other.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since August 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press).
