Arab Belt

The Arab Belt (Arabic: الحزام العربي‎, al-hizām al-ʿarabī; Kurdish: Kembera Erebî که‌مبه‌را عه‌ره‌بی) was the Syrian Baath 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.[1][2] It involved the seizure of land which was then settled with Arabs displaced by the creation of Lake Assad.

Map drawn for Mark Sykes in 1907 showing the route of the proposed Aleppo–Baghdad section of the Berlin–Baghdad railway and the regional telegraph lines, published. The map shows alterations to the route of the railway line proposed by the author and the routes taken on his own journey through the Ottoman Empire.

Background

Until the beginning of the 20th century, al-Hasakah Governorate (then called Jazira province) was a "no man's land" primarily reserved for the grazing land of nomadic and semi-sedentary tribes.[3] During World War I and subsequent years, thousands of Assyrians fled their homes in Anatolia after massacres. After that, massive waves of Kurds fled their homes in the mountains of Turkey[4] due to conflict with Kemalist authorities and settled in Syria, where they were granted citizenship by the French Mandate authorities[5] and enjoyed considerable rights as the French Mandate authority encouraged minority autonomy as part of a divide and rule strategy and recruited heavily from the Kurds and other minority groups, such as Alawite and Druze, for its local armed forces.[6] The number of Kurds settled in the Jazira province during the 1920's was estimated at 20,000[7] to 25,000 people[8] French Mandate authorities encouraged their immigration and granted them Syrian citizenship.[9] 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.[10] The mandatory authorities continued to encourage Kurdish immigration into Syria, and by 1939, the villages numbered between 700 and 800.[10] These continuous waves swelled the number of Kurds in the area, and French geographers Fevret and Gibert[11] estimated that in 1953 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.[11]

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.[12] Consequently, the border areas in al-Hasakah Governorate started to have a Kurdish majority, while Arabs remained the majority in river plains and elsewhere.

In 1939, French mandate authorities reported the following population numbers for the different ethnic and religious groups in al-Hasakah city centre.[13]

Syrian census of 1939
DistrictArabKurdChristianArmenianYezidiAssyrian
Hasakah city centre7,1333605,700500
Tell Tamer8,767
Ras al-Ayn2,2831,0252,263
Shaddadi2,6106
Tell Brak4,509905200
Qamishli city centre7,9905,89214,1403,500720
Amuda11,2601,500720
Al-Darbasiyah3,0117,8992,382425
Chagar Bazar3803,8103
Ain Diwar3,608900
Derik (later renamed Al-Malikiyah)441,6851,204
Mustafiyya34495950
Derouna Agha5705,09727
Tel Koger (later renamed Al-Yaarubiyah)165

Due to the successive immigration waves, the population of northeastern Syria has seen several unnatural, big jumps (as shown in the table) fueled by the arrival of Kurds from Turkey.[4] For example, the Jazira population jumped by 42.7% between 1931 and 1932. Likewise, the population jumped by 45.8% between 1933 and 1935. Another very significant jump happened in 1953 when the population swelled by 30.8% compared to the year before.[14]

Historical population
YearPop.±%
192940,000—    
193144,153+10.4%
193263,000+42.7%
193364,886+3.0%
193594,596+45.8%
193798,144+3.8%
1938103,514+5.5%
1939106,052+2.5%
1940126,508+19.3%
1941129,145+2.1%
1942136,107+5.4%
1943146,001+7.3%
1946151,137+3.5%
1950159,300+5.4%
1951162,145+1.8%
1952177,388+9.4%
1953232,104+30.8%
1954233,998+0.8%
[15] —    

The French geographer Robert Montagne summarized the situation in 1932 as follows:[16]

We are seeing an increase in village establishment that are either constructed by the Kurds descending from the Anatolian mountains (north of the border) to cultivate or as a sign of increasing settlement of Arab groups with the help of their Armenian and Yezidi farmers.

Planning

The Baath party came to power in 1963 in Syria and decided in 1965 to build the 350 km long and 10-15 km wide Arabic belt along the Syria–Turkey border. The planned belt stretched from the Iraqi border in the east to Ras al-Ayn in the west. After another coup within the Baath party, Hafez al-Assad succeeded in becoming the head of Syria in 1970 and began to implement the plan in 1973. The project's name was officially changed to "Plan for the establishment of state model farms in the Jazira region".[17]

Execution

41 Arab villages were built in the course of time, and all the Kurdish village names of the area were replaced by Arabic names. About 4,000 Arab families from the provinces of Al-Raqqa and Aleppo, where they had previously lost their houses by the construction of the Tabqa dam, were accommodated in the new villages. These Arabs are named as Maghmurin (مغمورين Maġmūrīn, which is affected by flooding).

Background

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.[18]

References
  1. Tejel, Jordi (2009). Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society. London: Routledge. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-203-89211-4.
  2. David L. Phillips (2017). The Kurdish Spring: A New Map of the Middle East. ISBN 9781351480369. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
  3. 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.
  4. 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 29 June 2020.
  5. Dawn Chatty (2010). Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East. Cambridge University Press. pp. 230–232. ISBN 978-1-139-48693-4.
  6. Yildiz, Kerim (2005). The Kurds in Syria : the forgotten people (1. publ. ed.). London [etc.]: Pluto Press, in association with Kurdish Human Rights Project. p. 25. ISBN 0745324991.
  7. Simpson, John Hope (1939). The Refugee Problem: Report of a Survey (First ed.). London: Oxford University Press. p. 458. ASIN B0006AOLOA.
  8. McDowell, David (2005). A Modern History of the Kurds (3. revised and upd. ed., repr. ed.). London [u.a.]: Tauris. p. 469. ISBN 1-85043-416-6.
  9. Kreyenbroek, Philip G.; Sperl, Stefan (1992). The Kurds: A Contemporary Overview. London: Routledge. pp. 147. ISBN 0-415-07265-4.
  10. Tejel, Jordi (2009). Syria's Kurds: History, Politics and Society. London: Routledge. p. 144. ISBN 978-0-203-89211-4.
  11. 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.
  12. Tachjian Vahé, The expulsion of non-Turkish ethnic and religious groups from Turkey to Syria during the 1920s and early 1930s, Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, [online], published on: 5 March, 2009, accessed 09/12/2019, ISSN 1961-9898
  13. 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.
  14. De Vaumas Étienne. Population actuelle de la Djézireh. In: Annales de Géographie, t. 65, n°347, 1956. pp. 72-74; doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/geo.1956.14375.
  15. De Vaumas Étienne. Population actuelle de la Djézireh. In: Annales de Géographie, t. 65, n°347, 1956. pp. 72-74; doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/geo.1956.14375.
  16. De Vaumas Étienne. Population actuelle de la Djézireh. In: Annales de Géographie, t. 65, n°347, 1956. pp. 72-74; doi : https://doi.org/10.3406/geo.1956.14375.
  17. November 2009. "Group Denial: Repression of Kurdish Political and Cultural Rights in Syria" (PDF). Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
  18. 20 March 2013. "Syria's Oil Resources Are a Source of Contention for Competing Groups". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 September 2017.
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