Though they have, throughout US involvement in the Syrian War, been America’s go-to ally, the Kurdish YPG hasn’t had the rosiest of track records. Several times throughout the war, when offensives have put them in control of Sunni Arab territory, they have engaged in ethnic cleansing, killing Arabs they see as “pro-ISIS” and burning entire villages worth of homes.
This is informing the almost exclusively Sunni Arab population of the ISIS capital city of Raqqa as the YPG launches a major offensive just north of the city, and according to locals, is prompting many civilians to join the ISIS effort to defend the city.
This problem has been true in ISIS territory in both Iraq and Syria, where at times the “liberators” have been seen as unwelcome, and prone to violent outbursts against the locals. In Raqqa, the historical distrust between Arabs and Kurds is punctuated by a large influx of Arab refugees last year when the Kurds took nearby Tel Abyad.
The reality that many locals are indeed siding with ISIS, over fear of the alternative, is likely to only add to the tendency for the fall of ISIS territory to be followed by bloody purges of civilians as collaborators.
Unfortunately these kinds of revenge killings are inevitable especially when you consider that many of these same Kurds are also survivors of ethnic cleansing. It doesn’t make it right but ethnic conflicts are never as black and white as many in the media make them out to be.
If you look at many modern ethnic cleansings they often involve two sides of a conflict. The Hutu’s of Rwanda victimized the Tutsi’s after years of being victimized by the Tutsi’s who had sided with there nation’s former European colonists (& sadly still do). Serbian mobs and militias lashed out at ethnic Albanians after NATO’s illegal bombings that they begged for (not to mention the aid they gave the Ustase during the Holocaust.) Similar events occurred between Abkhazians and Georgians, Armenians and Azeris and even different classes of the same race in Cambodia and the USSR. With each case you have long oppressed people finally breaking and becoming oppressors and the victims of ethnic cleansing mimicking the cruelty of there ethnic cleansers against there ethnic cleansers. It’s a transmittable disease passed through bloodshed.
None of these facts make such actions acceptable but it paints a picture that is much more complicated then the media seems to have the patience for, especially when they have already backed a side.
I am not innocent here. I to have backed a side. I have long supported the YPG for political reasons. I believe there vision for a stateless socialist society could be a major game changer on the world stage. I can only hope and pray that they find the strength to show more mercy and grace then there former victimizers and refuse to allow my own sympathies for there larger cause silence me from condemning them if they choose to cross that line.