User:Paradise Chronicle/sandbox2

Events in Iraqi Kurdistan and the discovery of oil in Syrian Kurdistan in the 1960s coincided with a marked worsening for the Kurdish population. In August 1961, the government decreed an extraordinary census of al-Jazira Province, which was undertaken in November, by which time the uprising for Kurdish autonomy in Iraq had begun. As part of this census on the 5 October 1962, 120,000 Kurds in the province were stripped of Syrian nationality and civil rights, on the pretext that they were foreigners – the August decree stated that Kurds were "illegally infiltrating" from Turkish Kurdistan into Syria, aiming to "destroy its Arab character". The following year, the Syrian government adopted the Arab Belt (al-Hizam al-Arabi) policy in order and "save Arabism" and defeat the "Kurdish threat" by expelling all the Kurdish inhabitants from the area of the Syria–Turkey border, dispersing and resettling them, and replacing them with Arabs. Oil had been discovered at Qaratchok, and the desire the control the Kurdish region's resources was connected with the policy. The region of the planned belt are rich in oil deposits and fertile agricultural land. About 50 to 60 per cent of the Syrian petroleum caves are estimated to be located in the district of Derik. The Kurdish situation worsened again when, in March 1963, Ba'ath Party of Michel Aflaq took power in Damascus. In November the party published Study of the Jezireh Provnce in its National, Social, and Political Aspects, a pamphlet written by the al-Jazira Province's chief of police, Mohamed Talab Hilal. An Arab nationalist, Hilal claimed to use "anthropological" reasoning to "prove scientifically" Kurds "do not constitute a nation". His view was that "the Kurdish people are a people without history or civilization or language or even definite ethnic origin of their own. Their only characteristics are those shaped by force, destructive power and violence, characteristics which are, by the way, inherent in all mountain populations". It was also his opinion that "The Kurds live from civilization and history of other nations. They have taken no part in these civilizations or in the history of these nations." Hilal produced a twelvefold strategy to achieve the Arabization of the al-Jazira Province. The steps were:


 * (1) eviction and resettlement of Kurds
 * (2) deprivation of all education for Kurds
 * (3) removal of Kurds from employment
 * (4) the reevaluation of the Syrian citizenships of Kurds also holding a Turkish citizenship
 * (5) encouragement of intra-Kurdish factionalism in order to divide and rule
 * (6) Arab settlements in former Kurdish lands
 * (7) colonization "pure and nationalist Arabs" to be settled in Syrian Kurdistan so Kurds might be "watched until their dispersion"
 * (8) military involvement by divisions stationed in the zone of the cordon would guaranty that the dispersion of the Kurds and the settlement of Arabs would take place according to plans drawn up by the government
 * (9) collective farms are to be established by Arab settlers equipped with "armament and training"
 * (10) prohibition of "anybody ignorant of the Arabic language exercising the right to vote or stand for office"
 * (11) Kurdish religious dignitaries were to be expelled to the south and replaced with Arabs
 * (12) "a vast anti-Kurdish campaign amongst the Arabs" to be undertaken by the state

Though the 120,000 Kurds of al-Jazira Province deemed non-Syrians were unable to vote or marry or receive education or healthcare, they were nevertheless eligible to be conscripted for military service, and could be sent to fight on the Golan Heights; they were particular victims of the Arab Belt policy, which continued to set the Kurdish agenda of the Syrian government and many of whose provisions were implemented in the following years. The strategy called for the eviction of 140,000 Kurdish peasants and their replacement with Arabs; possibly even extending the expulsions to the Kurds of the Kurd Mountains was under consideration in 1966. In the decade following 1965, around 30,000 Kurds left al-Jazira Province to find work or escape persecution elsewhere in Syria or in Lebanon. In 1967, the land of the Kurds in al-Jazira Province was nationalized under the Plan to establish model state farms in the Jezireh Province, a euphemism for the Arab Belt concept, and those who had been ordered out refused to leave but the events of the Six-Day War temporarily prevented its implementation from being completed. In 1973 the Syrian Government included a The construction and flooding of the Tabqa Dam displaced Arabs who were then resettled in Kurdish al-Jazira. 40 "model villages" were constructed in 1975 and populated with 7,000 armed Arab peasant families; these settlements stretched from Amuda to Derik, a town whose Kurdish name was replaced with the Arabic al-Malikiyah at that time. Proceeding slowly to avoid international criticism, the Syrian government suppressed Kurdish culture and harassed Kurdish people, and Kurdish literature and music was confiscated. Members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria were given lengthy prison sentences for "anti-Arabist" crimes. In official government documents, mention of Kurds (along with all other non-Arabs) is omitted, and while there were Kurdish members of the legislative People's Council of Syria, official identity was exclusively Arab.

In 1976, the policy of the Arab Belt, never fully realized, were abandoned, with Hafez al-Assad preferring "to leave things as they are", remitting the official harassment and ceasing to build new settlements. Existing Arab colonies and settlers remained in place, and while Kurdish music was again heard, the position of Kurds in Syria remained dependent to developments in relations between Syria and Iraq. The descendants of the 120,000 continued to be denied passports and documents and were still nevertheless the subject to conscription into the 21st century.