Arab Belt

The Arab Belt (Arabic: الحزام العربي, al-hizām al-ʿarabī; Kurdish: Kembera Erebî, که‌مبه‌را عه‌ره‌بی) was the Syrian Ba'athist government's project of Arabization of the north of the Al-Hasakah Governorate to change its ethnic composition of the population in favor of Arabs to the detriment of other ethnic groups, particularly Kurds.[3][4]

Arab Belt
الحزام العربي
Al-Hasakah Governorate highlighted in red
Date23 August 1962 – 1976
LocationAl-Hasakah Governorate, Syria
TypeForced deportations[1]
MotiveArab nationalism, Ba'athification
PerpetratorSyria Syrian Arab Republic
Organized by Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party
Syrian Arab Armed Forces
Outcome
  • 120,000 Kurds deprived of Syrian citizenship in 1962
  • Hilal report internal memo issued in 1963
  • Ba'ath party adopts the proposals of Hilal report in1965
  • Hafez al-Assad orders the launch of Arab Belt programme in 1973
  • Deportation of 140,000 Kurds and replacement with Arab settlers from Raqqa[2]
  • 4,000 Arab families settled in new villages in 1973
  • Tabqa Dam built in 1973
TargetSyrian Kurds

It involved the seizure of land which was then settled with Arabs displaced by the creation of Lake Assad. The programme was implemented in 1973; forcibly deporting around 140,000 Kurds and confiscating their lands around a 180-mile strip. Thousands of Arab settlers coming from Raqqa were then granted these lands to establish settlements.[5][6]

Background
Main article: Kurdish immigration into Syria

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the Jazira province was a “no man’s land” primarily reserved for the grazing land of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes Shammar and Tayy Arab tribes (see map drwan for Mark Sykes).[7] During the late days of the Ottoman Empire, large Kurdish-speaking tribal groups both settled in and were deported to areas of northern Syria from Anatolia. The largest of these tribal groups was the powerful Reshwan tribe, which was initially based in Adıyaman Province but eventually also settled throughout Anatolia. Clans from another Anatolian tribe, the Milli confederation mentioned in 1518 onward, moved into the area. Danish writer C. Niebuhr who traveled to Arabia and Upper Mesopotanmia in 1764 recorded five nomadic Kurdish tribes (Dukurie, Kikie, Schechchanie, Mullie and Aschetie) and six Arab tribes (Tay, Kaab, Baggara, Geheish, Diabat and Sherabeh).[8] in the area around Mardin. According to Niebuhr, the Kurdish tribes were settled near Mardin in Turkey, and paid the governor of that city for the right to graze their herds in the Syrian Jazira.[9][10] The Kurdish tribes gradually settled in villages and cities and are still present in the modern governorate).[11]

Map drawn for Mark Sykes in 1907 showing the distribution of Arab and Kurdish tribes in upper Mesopotamia (including Jazira province) with the train tracks to become border separating Turkey (to the north) from Syria (to the south)

Since World War I

The demographics of northern Syria saw a huge shift in the early part of the 20th century when the Ottoman Empire (Turks) conducted ethnic cleansing of its Armenian and Assyrian Christian populations and some Kurdish tribes joined in the atrocities committed against them.[12][13][14] Many Assyrians fled to Syria during the genocide and settled mainly in the Jazira area.[15][16][17] During WWI and subsequent years, thousands of Assyrians fled their homes in Anatolia after massacres. After that, massive waves of Kurds fled their homes in Turkey due to conflict with Kemalist authorities and settled in Syria, where they were granted citizenship by the French Mandate authorities.[18] The number of Kurds settled in the Jazira province during the 1920's was estimated at 20,000 people.[19] Starting in 1926, the region witnessed another huge immigration wave of Kurds following the failure of the Sheikh Said rebellion against the Turkish authorities.[20] Tens of thousands of Kurds fled their homes in Turkey and settled in Syria, and as usual, were granted citizenship by the French mandate authorities.[18] This large influx of Kurds moved to Syria’s Jazira province. It is estimated that 25,000 Kurds fled at this time to Syria.[21] The French official reports show the existence of at most 45 Kurdish villages in Jazira prior to 1927. A new wave of refugees arrived in 1929.[22] The mandatory authorities continued to encourage Kurdish immigration into Syria, and by 1939, the villages numbered between 700 and 800.[22] French authorities were not opposed to the streams of Assyrians, Armenians or Kurds who, for various reasons, had left their homes and had found refuge in Syria. The French authorities themselves generally organized the settlement of the refugees. One of the most important of these plans was carried out in Upper Jazira in northeastern Syria where the French built new towns and villages (such as Qamishli) were built with the intention of housing the refugees considered to be “friendly”. This has encouraged the non-Turkish minorities that were under Turkish pressure to leave their ancestral homes and property, they could find refuge and rebuild their lives in relative safety in neighboring Syria.[23] Consequently, the border areas in al-Hasakah Governorate started to have a Kurdish majority, while Arabs remained the majority in river plains and elsewhere.[24]

In 1939, French mandate authorities reported the following population numbers for the different ethnic and religious groups in al-Hasakah governorate.[25]

DistrictArabKurdChristianArmenianYezidiAssyrian
Hasakah city centre71333605700500
Tel Tamer8767
Ras al-Ayn228310252263
Shaddadi26106
Tel Brak4509905200
Qamishli city centre7990589214,1403500720
Amuda11,2601500720
Derbasiyeh301178992382425
Shager Bazar38038103
Ain Diwar3608900
Derik (later renamed al-Malikiyah)4416851204
Mustafiyya34495950
Derouna Agha570509727
Tel Koger (later renamed Al-Yaarubiyah)165

The population of the governorate reached 155,643 in 1949, including about 60,000 Kurds.[24] These continuous waves swelled the number of Kurds in the area who represented 37% of the Jazira population in a 1939 French authorities census.[26] In 1953, French geographers Fevret and Gibert estimated that out of the total 146,000 inhabitants of Jazira, agriculturalist Kurds made up 60,000 (41%), semi-sedentary and nomad Arabs 50,000 (34%), and a quarter of the population were Christians.[27]

Historical population
YearPop.±%
193144,153—    
193364,886+47.0%
193594,596+45.8%
193798,144+3.8%
1938103,514+5.5%
1939106,052+2.5%
1940126,508+19.3%
1942136,107+7.6%
1943146,001+7.3%
1946151,137+3.5%
1950159,300+5.4%
1953232,104+45.7%
1960351,661+51.5%
1970468,506+33.2%
1981669,756+43.0%
20041,275,118+90.4%
20111,512,000+18.6%

Censuses of 1943 and 1953
Syrian censuses of 1943[28] and 1953[29] in Al-Jazira province
Religious group Population
(1943)		 Percentage
(1943)		 Population
(1953)		 Percentage
(1953)
MuslimsSunni Muslims99,66568.26%171,05873.70%
Other Muslims4370.30%5030.22%
ChristiansSyriac Orthodox & Syriac Catholic31,76421.76%42,62618.37%
Armenians9,7886.70%12,5355.40%
Other churches9440.65%1,2830.55%
Total Christians42,49629.11%56,44424.32%
Jews1,9381.33%2,3501.01%
Yazidis1,4751.01%1,7490.75%
TOTAL Al-Jazira province 146,001 100.0% 232,104 100.0%

Among the Sunni Muslims, mostly Kurds and Arabs, there were about 1,500 Circassians in 1938.[30]

The Kurdish rebellion against the Iraqi government led by Mustafa Barzani[31] and the discovery of oil in Al-Jazira Province in the 1960s coincided with drew attention to the area.[32] 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 Al-Malikiyah.[33]

Implementation

First step: Stripping of Citizenship

On 23 August 1962, the government decreed an extraordinary census of al-Jazira Province.[32] If a person was not able to produce a document that proved they lived in Syrian before 1940, they were deemed illegal immigrants, mainly from Turkey.[34] As part of this census on the 5 October 1962, 120,000 Kurds in the province were deprived of their Syrian citizenship.[35] The Syrian Government later admitted mistakes were made during the census, but didn't reinstate citizenry.[34] In 1962 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.[32] Oil had been discovered in northern Syria and the desire the control the Kurdish region's resources was connected with the policy.[32]

Second Step: Hilal Report

The Baath party came to power in Syria through a 1963 coup and continued the anti-Kurdish Arabization strategy. In November 1963, Muhammad Talab Hilal, Ba'athist military offcier and then-chief of internal security in Al-Hasakah Governorate, produced an internal report outlining a twelvefold strategy to achieve the Arabization of the al-Jazira Province. The steps were:[36][37][38][39]

  • (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

Presenting the "Kurdish Question" in fervent racial rhetoric, the Ba'ath party memo stated:

bells of the Jazira sound the alarm and call on the Arab conscience to save this region, to purify it of all this scum, the dregs of history until, as befits its geographical situation, it can offer up its revenues and riches, along with those of the other provinces of this Arab territory . . . The Kurdish question, now that the Kurds are organizing themselves, is simply a malignant tumour which has developed and been developed in a part of the body of the Arab nation. The only remedy which we can properly apply thereto is excision.[40]

A decision was made by the Ba'athist government in 1965 to build the 350 km long and 10-15 km wide Arab belt along the Syria–Turkey border. The planned belt stretched from the Iraqi border in the east to Ras al-Ayn in the west.[4]

Third step: Deportations of Kurds and creation of Arab Settlements

After another coup within the Baath party, Hafez al-Assad emerged as the head of Ba'athist Syria in 1970. While the proposals in the Hilal report had officially been accepted by the Ba'athist government as early as 1965, it was Hafez al-Assad who ordered the implementation of the Arab Belt programme in 1973.[41][42] The project's name was changed to Plan to establish model state farms in the Jazira region.[43][44] By the end of the programme, around 140,000 Kurds living in 332 villages were displaced from their homes; and tens of thousands of Arabs - mostly from the Raqqa region- established settlements in the confiscated lands. The area of the project was a strip of land - almost 15km in breadth - that extended over 375 km in length; across the north-eastern boundary-regions with Turkey and Iraq.[45][46]

Villages were built into which were to be settled 4,000 Arab families coming from the land which was to be submerged following the completion of the Tabqa dam and the filling of Lake Assad.[4] The Arabs were provided with weapons and divided between more than 50 so-called model farms in the Jazira Region and to the north of Raqqa.[4] Twelve were built each around Qamishli and Al-Malakiyah and sixteen around Ras al Ayn.[47] The Kurdish village names of the area were replaced by Arabic names not necessarily related to the traditions and history of the region.[47] These Arabs are named as Maghmurin (مغمورين Maġmūrīn, which is affected by flooding).[47] The campaign has eventually faded out under Hafez al Assad in 1976, but the deported Kurds were not allowed to return.[4]

Aftermath

Ba'athist persecution of Syrian Kurds continued during the 1980s and 1990s; and Syrian security forces violently clamped down on Kurdish cultural activities. Anger at the anti-Kurdish policies of the Assad regime led to an anti-government uprising in Qamishli in 2004, which culminated in the Qamishli massacre.[48]

References
  1. McDowall, David (2021). "21: Living apart in French and Independent Syria". A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.). 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland: I.B. Tauris. p. 471. ISBN 978-0-7556-0079-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  2. McDowall, David (2021). "21: Living apart in French and Independent Syria". A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.). 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland: I.B. Tauris. pp. 470, 471. ISBN 978-0-7556-0079-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  3. David L. Phillips (2017). The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East. ISBN 9781351480369. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
  4. Tejel, Jordi (2009). Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society. Routledge. pp. 61–62. ISBN 9780203892114.
  5. Ahmed, Akbar (2013). "4: Musharraf's Dilemma". The Thistle and the Drone. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-8157-2378-3.
  6. McDowall, David (2021). "21: Living apart in French and Independent Syria". A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.). 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland: I.B. Tauris. pp. 470, 471. ISBN 978-0-7556-0079-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  7. Algun, S., 2011. Sectarianism in the Syrian Jazira: Community, land and violence in the memories of World War I and the French mandate (1915- 1939). Ph.D. Dissertation. Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands. Pages 18. Accessed on 8 December 2019.
  8. Carsten Niebuhr (1778). Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern. (Mit Kupferstichen u. Karten.) - Kopenhagen, Möller 1774-1837 (in German). p. 419.
  9. Kreyenbroek, P.G.; Sperl, S. (1992). The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview. Routledge. p. 114. ISBN 0415072654.
  10. Carsten Niebuhr (1778). Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern. (Mit Kupferstichen u. Karten.) - Kopenhagen, Möller 1774-1837 (in German). p. 389.
  11. Stefan Sperl, Philip G. Kreyenbroek (1992). The Kurds a Contemporary Overview. London: Routledge. pp. 145–146. ISBN 0-203-99341-1.
  12. Hovannisian, Richard G. (2007). The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies. Archived from the original on 11 May 2016. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  13. Joan A. Argenter, R. McKenna Brown (2004). On the Margins of Nations: Endangered Languages and Linguistic Rights. p. 199.
  14. Lazar, David William, not dated A brief history of the plight of the Christian Assyrians* in modern-day Iraq Archived 2015-04-17 at the Wayback Machine. American Mespopotamian.
  15. R. S. Stafford (2006). The Tragedy of the Assyrians. p. 24.
  16. "Ray J. Mouawad, Syria and Iraq – Repression Disappearing Christians of the Middle East". Middle East Forum. 2001. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
  17. Bat Yeʼor (2002). Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide. p. 162.
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  19. Simpson, John Hope (1939). The Refugee Problem: Report of a Survey (First ed.). London: Oxford University Press. p. 458. ASIN B0006AOLOA.
  20. Abu Fakhr, Saqr, 2013. As-Safir daily Newspaper, Beirut. in Arabic Christian Decline in the Middle East: A Historical View
  21. McDowell, David (2005). A modern history of the Kurds (3. revised and upd. ed., repr. ed.). London [u.a.]: Tauris. p. 469. ISBN 1850434166.
  22. Tejel, Jordi (2009). Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society. London: Routledge. p. 144. ISBN 0-203-89211-9.
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  24. La Djezireh syrienne et son réveil économique. André Gibert, Maurice Févret, 1953. La Djezireh syrienne et son réveil économique. In: Revue de géographie de Lyon, vol. 28, n°1, 1953. pp. 1-15; doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/geoca.1953.1294 Accessed on 8 December 2019.
  25. Algun, S., 2011. Sectarianism in the Syrian Jazira: Community, land and violence in the memories of World War I and the French mandate (1915- 1939). Ph.D. Dissertation. Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands. Pages 11-12. Accessed on 8 December 2019.
  26. Algun, S., 2011. Sectarianism in the Syrian Jazira: Community, land and violence in the memories of World War I and the French mandate (1915- 1939). Ph.D. Dissertation. Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands. Pages 11-12. Accessed on 8 December 2019.
  27. Fevret, Maurice; Gibert, André (1953). "La Djezireh syrienne et son réveil économique". Revue de géographie de Lyon (in French) (28): 1–15. Retrieved 29 March 2012.
  28. Hourani, Albert Habib (1947). Minorities in the Arab World. London: Oxford University Press. pp. 76.
  29. Etienne, de Vaumas (1956). "La Djézireh". Annales de Géographie (in French). 65 (347): 64–80. Retrieved 29 March 2012.
  30. M. Proux, "Les Tcherkesses", La France méditerranéenne et africaine, IV, 1938
  31. Maisel, Sebastian (21 June 2018).p.343
  32. Nazdar, Mustafa (1993) [1978]. "The Kurds in Syria". In Chaliand, Gérard (ed.). Les Kurdes et le Kurdistan [A People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan]. Translated by Pallis, Michael. London: Zed Books. p. 199. ISBN 978-1-85649-194-5. The Kurds were suspected of being "in league" with the Kurds of Iraq, who had just launched the September 1961 insurrection aimed at securing autonomous status within an Iraqi framework.

    Under the pretext of the illegal immigration from Turkey, on August 23, 1961, the government promulgated a decree (no. 93) authorizing a special population census in Jezireh Province. It claimed that Kurds from Turkey were "illegally infiltrating" the Jezireh in order to "destroy its Arab character". The census was carried out in November of that year; when its results were released, some 120,000 Jezireh Kurds were discounted as foreigners and denied Syrian citizenship.

    Arab Belt plan

    In 1962, to combat the "Kurdish threat" and "save Arabism" in the region, the government inaugurated the so-called "Arab Cordon plan" (Al Hizam al-arabi), which envisaged the entire Kurdish population living along the border with Turkey. They were to be gradually replaced by Arabs and would be resettled, and preferably dispersed, in the south. The discovery of oil at Qaratchok, right in the middle of Kurdish Jezireh, no doubt had something to do with the government's policy.
  33. 20 March 2013 (20 March 2013). "Syria's Oil Resources Are a Source of Contention for Competing Groups". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  34. McDowall, David (2020). "A Modern History of the Kurds". Bloomsbury, I.B. Tauris. p. 469. Retrieved 29 August 2022.
  35. Hasan, Mohammed (December 2020), p.6
  36. Nazdar, Mustafa (1993) [1978]. "The Kurds in Syria". In Chaliand, Gérard (ed.). Les Kurdes et le Kurdistan [A People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan]. Translated by Pallis, Michael. London: Zed Books. pp. 199–200. ISBN 978-1-85649-194-5. A zealous nationalist, Hilal proposed a twelve-point plan, which would first be put into operation against the Jezireh Kurds: (1) a batr or "dispossession" policy, involving the transfer and dispersion of the Kurdish people; (2) a tajhil or "obscurantist" policy of depriving Kurds of any education whatsoever, even in Arabic; (3) a tajwii or "famine" policy, depriving those affected of any employment possibilities; (4) an "extradition" policy, which meant turning the survivors of the uprisings in northern Kurdistan over to the Turkish government; (5) a "divide and rule" policy, setting Kurd against Kurd; (6) a hizam or cordon policy similar to the one proposed in 1962; (7) an iskan or "colonization" policy, involving the implementation of "pure and nationalist Arabs" in the Kurdish regions so that the Kurds could be "watched until their dispersion"; (8) a military policy, based on "divisions stationed in the zone of the cordon" who would be charged with "ensuring that the dispersion of the Kurds and the settlement of Arabs would take place according to plans drawn up by the government"; (9) a "socialization" policy, under which "collective forms", mazarii jama'iyya, would be set up for the Arabs implanted in the regions. These new settlers would also be provided with "armament and training"; (10) a ban of "anybody ignorant of the Arabic language exercising the right to vote or stand for office"; (11) sending the Kurdish ulemas to the south and "bringing in Arab ulemas to replace them"; (12) finally, "launching a vast anti-Kurdish campaign amongst the Arabs".
  37. Hasan, Mohammed (December 2020). "Kurdish Political and Civil Movements in Syria and the Question of Representation" (PDF). London School of Economics. pp. 4–5. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
  38. Maisel, Sebastian (21 June 2018). The Kurds: An Encyclopedia of Life, Culture, and Society. ABC-CLIO. pp. 344–345. ISBN 978-1-4408-4257-3.
  39. Chaliand, Gérard (1993). A People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan. Zed Books. pp. 199–200. ISBN 978-1-85649-194-5.
  40. McDowall, David (2021). "21: Living apart in French and Independent Syria". A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.). 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland: I.B. Tauris. p. 470. ISBN 978-0-7556-0079-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  41. Gunter, Michael (15 November 2014). Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-1-84904-531-5.
  42. McDowall, David (2021). "21: Living apart in French and Independent Syria". A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.). 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland: I.B. Tauris. p. 471. ISBN 978-0-7556-0079-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  43. November 2009. "Group Denial: Repression of Kurdish Political and Cultural Rights in Syria" (PDF). Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  44. Paul, James A.; Watch (Organization), Middle East (1990). Human Rights in Syria. Human Rights Watch. p. 88. ISBN 978-0-929692-69-2.
  45. McDowall, David (2021). "21: Living apart in French and Independent Syria". A Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.). 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland: I.B. Tauris. pp. 470, 471. ISBN 978-0-7556-0079-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  46. Ahmed, Akbar (2013). "4: Musharraf's Dilemma". The Thistle and the Drone. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-8157-2378-3.
  47. Hasan, Mohamed (December 2020). "Kurdish Political and Civil Movements in Syria and the Question of Representation" (PDF). London School of Economics. p. 7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  48. Yousef M., Choueiri; Storm, Lise (2005). "24: Ethnonational Minorities in the Middle East - Berbers, Kurds, and Palestinians". A companion to the history of the Middle East. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 475. ISBN 978-1-4051-0681-8.
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