Syria’s stateless Kurds can’t afford to become citizens

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — “Syria is lost.” These were the words of Nasrin*, a mother to children who were born and raised in a country that will not grant them their legal right to citizenship.

Nasrin’s children are two among tens of thousands of stateless Syrian Kurds. Without citizenship, they lack even the most basic of rights. They cannot vote, own property, legally marry or register their children, or obtain a university degree.

Nasrin is a Syrian citizen who married a stateless Syrian man officially recognised as "unregistered" (maktoum in Arabic, plural maktoumeen). Because nationality is conferred through the father, her two sons, aged 20 and 14, are maktoumeen. 

Nasrin’s Syrian-born sons not being granted citizenship is illegal under Syria’s own Nationality Law of November 1969,  which confers citizenship to anyone born in the country who did not acquire another nationality at birth.

To get her sons their citizenship and associated rights, Nasrin, a single mother since her husband left the family, will have to embark on a legal process too costly and complicated to handle alone.

An ill-fated census 

The plight of maktoumeen like Nasrin’s sons was determined almost sixty years ago by an impossibly hasty census conducted in Hasaka, the province with the highest concentration of Kurds in Syria.

The province-wide census, ordered in 1962 by a governor whose supporters had termed the local Kurds as “invaders”, was to be conducted in a single day. Around 120,000 Syrians in Hasaka were stripped of their citizenship in the process, the overwhelming majority of whom were Kurds.

The hereditary nature of statelessness means their number ballooned in the following decades. By 2011, the total number of stateless Syrian Kurds had reached more than 517,000, according to data obtained from the Personal Status Department of Hasaka province by the non-governmental organisation Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ).

During the 1962 census, people were divided into different categories. Those who were able to provide limited documentation to prove their citizenship were classed as foreigners (ajanib), while those who failed or refused to participate in the one-day census were identified as maktoumeen. 

Though Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president since 2000, deplored the 1962 census as inaccurate in the early years of his rule, nothing was done to rectify the status of the stateless. But when the Syrian uprising shook at the foundations of his regime in 2011, Assad attempted to soothe some of the discontent that had spread to Kurdish areas by issuing Decree No. 49, allowing those categorised as ajanib to apply for citizenship. 

The adoption of Decree 49 saw a surge in applications for Syrian citizenship from the ajanib; according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), some 104,000 stateless people had acquired Syrian citizenship by mid-2013, with almost 100 percent of applications approved. The ongoing Syrian conflict and the displacement it has caused mean it is difficult to know how many have applied since, but an STJ report from 2019 that cites officials at Hasaka’s Personal Status Department said that the number of ajanib had shrivelled from over 346,242 in early 2011 to 19,753 in 2018. Decree 49 did not apply to the maktoumeen, whose number hovered at around 150,000 in 2011, according to estimates from the UN and the STJ.

Fresh calls for the situation of the maktoumeen to be rectified have been made from Kurdish members of Syrian parliament.

“Not only are there Kurds that are unregistered, there are also unregistered Christians and Arabs,” Abdulrahman Khalil, a Kurdish member of Syrian parliament from the Communist Party told Rudaw’s Dilbixwin Dara on November 16. 

“It is these people’s right to have an identity and become citizens of Syria, and that is why we are trying to achieve this for them in Syrian parliament.”

Omar Ose, a Kurdish member of Syrian parliament from the Damascus-based Syrian Kurds' National Initiative (SKNI), is also among those who are pushing for the rights of the maktoumeen.

“I am willing to personally pursue their cases and ask for their rights,” Ose told Dara on November 18. “If the Syrian government refuses to address the rights of the people, it will only show their chauvinism.”

‘A lot more than we can afford’

To become Syrian nationals, Nasrin’s children can be registered as ajanib, then use Decree 49 to apply for citizenship. Over 50,000 maktoumeen have obtained Syrian nationality in this way, according to the STJ.

But it’s a costly process, one increasingly out of the reach of ordinary people like Nasrin as the Syrian economy deteriorates. Before the Syrian uprising began, one US dollar was worth around 45 Syrian pounds. The value of the pound has since plummeted, and since this January has crashed from roughly 1,200 pounds to the dollar to roughly 2,600 Syrian pounds a dollar in some off-market currency exchanges as of November 30. 

To get citizenship “is a very long and complicated process,” Nasrin told Rudaw English.

“It takes clout and costs a lot more than we can afford… to get an ID card, we need to pay at least $500, sometimes more. Some lawyers ask for a thousand dollars. Where would we get that kind of money?”

“The situation is messed up, and many do not have any form of ID. Those who can afford to do it, do it, and the rest remain like us,” she added. 

A.R* is a maktoum in his early 30s living in Qamishli. He is among the few maktoumeen who can afford to pay for the process of acquiring citizenship for his family. 

“For the process, you need to hire a lawyer to represent you, because you do not have the legal documents to pursue the case yourself,” A.R told Rudaw English.

“I’ve hired a lawyer for $2,000 to pursue our case,” he said. “I’ve paid him $1,000, and I’ll pay him the rest after we get our IDs.”

“The lawyer represents my father. If my father gets citizenship, then we can all get it under his name, because our names will also be added to the family file.”

‘Our only option’

Hasaka province has been under the control of the Kurdish-led but multi-ethnic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) since 2012. Jan Diqitli*, a photographer and maktoum from Hasaka’s biggest city, Qamishli, said the discrimination he and other maktoumeen suffered under Assad’s regime has decreased considerably since the change.

The NES “serves us the same way they serve any other citizen – they do not differentiate between us,” Jan told Rudaw English.

But maktoumeen in NES-controlled parts of Syria are still at the mercy of Damascus when it comes to some of their rights, so the acquisition of Syrian citizenship remains a long-term goal for people like Jan.

"Our only option is to apply for citizenship, as expensive as it is. We need to be able to register our property under our name, and that is the only way," he said.

Despite the difficulties Jan faces at home, the Qamishli native says he won’t be embarking on the journey for refuge abroad taken by millions of Syrians before him.

"We're staying in our land,” Jan said. “If we wanted to leave, we’d have done so a long time ago."

*Names have been changed to protect identities