The fall of Syria’s Berlin Wall

There is no wall of concrete and stone dividing eastern from western Syria, as there once was in Berlin. But there is a wall nonetheless: one built of weapons, culture, language, and beliefs. It has separated eastern Syria from western Syria ever since Bashar al-Assad enlisted the services of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), handing it the keys to the northeast so that he could concentrate his brutality and repression on the west.

That wall – constructed of arms, political and ideological decisions, and deep-seated hatred – is now well and truly cracked. The agreement signed on 18 January marked its collapse. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) capitulated under intense international, domestic and psychological pressure. They knew the battle ahead would not be easy: at least half the population under their control is not Kurdish; revenues and economic activity have dried up; and a society moulded over a decade around Kurdish nationalism and allegiance to “Kurdistan” rather than Syria will require time to recover.

More than half a century passed between the division of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall. And even today, stark differences persist between east and west – in unemployment, social cohesion, racism, and civic culture. The east had been ideologically uniform, Marxist and socialist; the west retained a religious, or at least spiritually grounded, public life. Individual initiative and independence were crushed in the east, while the west encouraged them. And for all its claims of internationalism, the east bred a particularly virulent form of racism.

A similar experiment emerged in eastern Syria under SDF rule, albeit in a far shorter time. Education there is barely functional. A generation has grown up with little or no command of Arabic, whereas Kurdish Syrians once spoke it fluently, whether through schooling or television dramas. The United Nations does not recognise the certificates issued by the so-called Autonomous Administration. The only things that have visibly flourished are elaborate cemeteries for party “martyrs” and an extensive network of tunnels. Loyalty is measured by obedience and hostility to Turkey.

The rebranding of “northeastern Syria” as “Rojava” carries an unspoken dream: the unification of the four parts of Kurdistan. What it deliberately ignores is that Syria was once the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, the cradle of one of Islam’s most brilliant civilisations; that it was a pioneer of Arab unity projects; and that the union with Egypt under President Shukri al-Quwatli came about through overwhelming popular and nationalist pressure. Today, by contrast, the SDF seeks to detach eastern and northern Syria from the rest of the country under the banner of federalism within a nation whose people still yearn to belong to a single polity.

Ordinary Syrians cannot enter SDF-controlled areas without a Kurdish guarantor, much as in the Gulf states. These regions are rich in oil, gas, water and agriculture, yet the wealth barely touches daily life. Roads are cratered, electricity is sold by the ampere, water by the jerrycan, and taxes are extortionate. The Autonomous Administration was in effect a rent-seeking mini-state, one that even extracts large sums from expatriate Syrians under the banner of “resistance”, through levies such as barkhodan and barastin.

In eastern and northern Syria (under SDF control), there was an authority outside the authority of the state and unrecognised internationally, dominated by a security-driven party apparatus led by PKK cadres dispatched from Qandil. There is a façade of pluralism reminiscent of Assad’s old National Progressive Front, but real power is monopolised by a Kurdish elite.

Relative security exists, but it comes at the price of suffocating repression: omnipresent security services, encouragement of informants, arbitrary arrests on suspicion, for ransom, or even for teaching Arabic. Teachers have indeed been detained for that offence. At times, a citizen can be arrested simply because a photograph of President al-Sharaa is found on their mobile phone.

Strict rules govern images and symbols, alongside the near-deification of Abdullah Öcalan. His portraits, statues and doctrines dominate public life and school curricula to a degree that rivals the cult of Kim Jong-un in North Korea. Despite abundant natural resources, the economy is closed and rent-based, reliant on oil smuggling. Unemployment is high, young people are fleeing in droves, and a military-economic cartel controls livelihoods and business.

Education is explicitly ideological, glorifying the leader and the doctrine of the “democratic nation”, while professing to transcend nationalism even as it entrenches it in practice. The forced imposition of Kurdish in predominantly Arab areas, and the lack of recognition for qualifications, have created deep resentment. The secularist line is rigid; religion is marginalised or treated as a security problem. Arabs feel excluded, though this is often muted by material incentives or forced military participation. The prevailing identity is a Marxist-inflected Kurdish one, thinly veiled by universalist rhetoric.

In western Syria, the Arab Syria, a state is struggling to rise from the rubble. There is somewhat broader freedom of expression, alongside a weak and overstretched central state. Cities lie in ruins; crime and insecurity flare intermittently; policing is fragile. Yet there is more personal freedom, if less order. The economy is exhausted and resources scarce, but there is commercial openness and space for individual initiative amid the chaos.

Education is poor and schools battered, curricula outdated, and cultural debates over history and symbols are fierce. Yet pluralism is greater. Religion has returned forcefully to the public sphere in all its varieties – Salafi, Sufi, Brotherhood and jihadist – and has become a central social force.

The wall we speak of is now embedded in minds and mentalities. Dismantling it will require sustained political, intellectual, national and educational effort. Bridges must be rebuilt where they were destroyed.

The armed current (SDF) that is now being dismantled is likely to re-emerge as a political one, and it will be no less aggressive – much like the violent demonstrations staged by PKK supporters across Europe.

Treatment, however, is unavoidable. And it must begin not with vengeance, but with love: services, care, tact and empathy, until the level of national belonging is equal on both sides of what was, for too long, Syria’s invisible Berlin Wall.