The PYD is still pro-Assad

In the past three months, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has spread news that Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate radical group, had committed massacres against Kurds and accused Turkey of helping the terrorist group. But many believe this is a strategy by the PKK to attract sympathy of Kurds for their cause and also to endorse the regime's attempt to portray the Syrian uprising as sectarian discord coupled with ethnic confrontation.

Meanwhile, President of Iraqi Kurdistan Massoud Barzani asked the organizing committee of the grand Kurdish conference to set up a fact-finding committee representing parties from the Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran and Turkey.

After visiting various Kurdish towns in Syria, the committee prepared a report that remained within the grand Kurdish conference members. The report denied that any massacre had taken place in the area, proving the PYD's claims to be untrue. According to the report, “After interviewing many people, the committee couldn't find evidence that a massacre had taken place against Kurds, only that there had been fighting between two armed groups.”

Rostam Jihangeri, a fact-finding committee member from the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party, told the Kurdish Bas news agency that the committee did see evidence of a pact: “In Qamishlo, we could feel cooperation or an agreement between the Syrian regime forces and the PYD's the People's Defense Units (YPG) because they are protecting the city together.”

He also said the PYD didn't let the committee see people in Amuda “because they had fired on protesters before and had killed some of them, so they didn't want us to meet families of those who had been killed by the PYD forces.”

While Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which is close to Turkey, backed the report that no massacre had taken place in the Kurdish areas in Syria, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which is close to Iran, said that they believe a massacre did take place against Kurds by radical Islamist groups.

One wonders why the PYD would claim that the Jabhat al-Nusra committed massacres against Kurds. The answer is very simple: The PYD wants to legitimize its formidable use of violence to clamp down on any other Kurdish forces, especially the pro-KRG Kurdish National Council (KNC) in a bid to monopolize power and also to garner Kurdish sympathy. They are using what George Orwell mentioned in his 1984 book, “War is Peace”: They are creating an environment of war to legalize their dictatorial tendencies.

Although PYD leader Saleh Muslim visited Turkey multiple times this year, the PYD is still in agreement with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The PYD's stubborn position to back Assad despite the mounting indications that the regime's collapse has become inevitable may put the entire Syrian Kurdish population onto a dark path. This is why the PYD should abandon backing Syria's dictator.