QAMISHLI, Syria - Here on the fringes of Syria's agricultural heartland, the veneer of normalcy is all around. A statue of former President Hafez al-Assad, which was brought down during riots last year, has been rebuilt in a traffic circle. Slogans scrawled on walls still call out for him. Few signs remain of the violence that struck the city just weeks ago.But as Syria endures heavy international and domestic pressure to change, storm clouds are gathering here once again. In this predominantly Kurdish city on Syria's border with Turkey, a growing movement of Kurds is demanding recognition and representation in Syria's government.
Emboldened by their brethren in Iraq and inspired by Lebanon's opposition movement, which helped force Syria out of that country, some advocates are even calling for Kurdish administration of Kurdish areas. "There is a kind of anxiety and restlessness now," said Hassan Salih, secretary general of the Yekiti Kurdish party based in Qamishli. "We are disappointed with all the unfulfilled promises."
Tensions in this city of 150,000 reached new levels this month after the body of a prominent cleric, Sheik Muhammad Mashouk al-Khaznawi, was found halfway between here and Damascus. Days later, protesters calling for an international investigation of the sheik's killing clashed with
One police officer was killed, a dozen protesters were wounded, dozens more remain in custody, and Kurdish businesses were looted, they say. A day after, Kurdish hopes were dashed when Syria's governing Baath Party passed on calls to grant Kurds more rights and freedoms at its 10th Congress, ending the meeting with little more than platitudes, Mr. Salih said. "Lebanon affected us a lot, and we learned from it that demonstrating can achieve many things without violence," he said. After riots flared in Qamishli in 2004 after a brawl at a soccer match, he said, "the regime sought to frighten us, but the assassination of the sheik has made us rise up again."
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But tensions have simmered since 1962, when a census taken by the government left out tens of thousands of Kurds, leaving them and their children - now hundreds of thousands in all - without citizenship and denying them the right to obtain government jobs or to own property. They now carry red identification cards identifying them as "foreigner."
The government also resettled thousands of Arabs from other parts of the country into areas along the border to build a buffer with Kurdish areas in neighboring Iran, Iraq and Turkey, pitting Kurds against Arabs. A long-running drought has not helped, as many in the farming region, especially Arab sharecroppers, have seen their incomes and tolerance for one another plummet.
In 2004, a soccer game incited the brawl between Arab and Kurdish fans that grew into the country's worst civil unrest in decades, spreading to many other cities in Syria and leaving at least 36 people dead, some of them policemen. President Bashar al-Assad, in an effort to cool tempers, visited the region for the first time and called for national unity, while pardoning 312 Kurds who were accused of taking part in the violence. But Kurds say the ethnic rifts remain.
Sheik Khaznawi, a charismatic 47-year-old cleric who began denouncing the Syrian government in sermons in recent months, came to embody the Kurdish political opposition. To some, he was a reformer who pushed a more thoughtful, inclusive brand of Islam; to others, he was an apostate willing to reach out to other faiths and challenge long-held Islamic mores.
But to Syria's government, he was the ultimate threat: a religious figure who appeared to be seeking to tie Syria's listless Kurds to the feared Muslim Brotherhood, which led a ferocious revolt in Syria in the 1980's. "He was able to play a moderating role and create dialogue between Kurds and Arabs," said Ammar Abdelhamid, a Syrian political analyst. "They saw him setting up a real opposition to the regime."
Sheik Khaznawi rattled nerves in February when he met with leaders of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood in Brussels, signaling even deeper collusion between the two forces. "The sheik used to say that he was surrounded by a minefield and that his role was to dismantle the mines," said Murshid al-Khaznawi, the sheik's son. "He crossed many red lines that others did not cross."
On May 10, the sheik disappeared while on a trip to Damascus. Rumors circulated that he had been arrested by the Syrian secret police, and demonstrators in Qamishli called for his release. But the government denied having him in custody. Then on June 1, the authorities led his sons to a grave in the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Deir ez Zor. A government statement said the sheik had been kidnapped and killed by radical Islamists who were against his reformist approach.
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"There wasn't just one reason for his kidnapping; there were many," said Muhammad Habash, a member of Syria's Parliament and confidant of the sheik, who pointed to differences between the sheik and his relatives as one possible reason. Mr. Habash added that the political parties in Qamishli were capitalizing on the death of the sheik, insisting that there are few clear indications of a government hand in the killing.
But the sheik's sons, who acknowledge that there have been financial disagreements in the family, countered that Mr. Habash was serving the interests of the government, which they blame for the killing. They said, for instance, that the sheik's body showed few signs of decomposition, though the government has said he had been buried for more than two weeks. They added that his teeth were broken and his skin burned when they found him, not the signs of suffocation.
Days later, the demonstration in Qamishli met fierce resistance from the government. The Khaznawi sons and others said security forces encouraged an Arab mob to help beat the protesters and loot Kurdish storefronts, though there was no confirmation of those assertions. "There are issues and problems, and it's time they are solved," Mr. Salih said. "As a Kurdish society, we have gotten past the culture of fear."
Even the sheik's sons, who said they were not overtly political before, have taken a hard political stand. "After the assassination of the sheik, we have begun to support Kurdish movements from the bottom of our hearts," Mr. Khaznawi said.