Denial of Basic Rights<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I spent the first two decades of my life, and the following nine years, without an \u201cidentity card,\u201d unlike my Syrian peers who obtained theirs at the age of fourteen.<\/p>\n
At the time, I was unable to register for the free preparatory or secondary school exams \u201cas a private candidate\u201d, obtain a driver\u2019s license, travel abroad or even domestically by plane, or purchase a SIM card. All of this was because I belonged to the Maktumeen (Unregistered) category who were even less fortunate than the Hasaka Foreigners. Yet both groups, as stateless, were denied legal recognition as Syrian citizens and deprived of many fundamental rights, such as the right to own property. Like many others, we were forced to register our homes, lands, and all possessions under the names of relatives who held Syrian nationality, which also created numerous legal disputes, even among members of the same family.<\/p>\n
One of the harshest realities we experienced during the period of statelessness was witnessing many people born without nationality because of the 1962 census and because their parents themselves were deprived of nationality. Many of them died without ever experiencing the meaning of genuine citizenship in Syria.<\/p>\n
From the perspective of civil documentation, the distinction between Maktumeen and Hasaka Foreigners was made through documents: the former were given only a \u201cCertificate of Identification\u201d \u2014a stamped piece of paper issued by the local mukhtar that conferred no rights whatsoever\u2014 while the latter were issued the so-called \u201cred identity card,\u201d which granted them a few limited rights, such as the ability to sit for free preparatory and secondary exams \u201cas private candidates\u201d and to obtain a driver\u2019s license, but not other fundamental human rights, including registering a marriage.<\/p>\n
In Syria, to live as a Kurd deprived of nationality in al-Hasaka province under the rule of the Arab Socialist Baath Party meant enduring layers of compounded injustice. On the one hand, you shared the oppression faced by all Syrians living under an authoritarian, repressive, and undemocratic regime. As a resident of al-Hasaka and the broader al-Jazira region, classified as a \u201cdeveloping\u201d area, you also suffered from marginalization, poverty, exclusion, and unemployment compared to those from many \u201cinterior provinces.\u201d On top of that, you were denied recognition of your mother tongue and the right to learn it, your annual Newroz celebration, even your legal personality, and the most basic cultural, linguistic, civil, and political rights \u2014simply because you were born Kurdish and stateless, to Kurdish parents in al-Hasaka province.<\/p>\n
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\u201cA Refugee in My Own Country\u201d<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The labels used to describe stateless people in Syria varied in both public discourse and everyday language. They ranged from \u201cforeign infiltrators,\u201d to \u201crefugees\u201d allegedly coming from Turkey in search of land after the Agrarian Reform<\/a> Law, to Maktumeen (Unregistered), Hasaka Foreigners, \u201cdenationalized,\u201d \u201cdeprived of nationality,\u201d \u201cstateless,\u201d \u201cthose evading mandatory military service,\u201d and many other terms. Yet the most striking paradox was the use of the term \u201crefugees.\u201d In the context of countries of asylum, \u201crefugee\u201d signifies legal recognition and the enjoyment of a set of rights. In Syria, however, it was sometimes applied to Kurds deprived of nationality, without conferring upon them any civil or political rights.<\/p>\n
I argue \u2014without minimizing the suffering of other Syrians or denying the existence of other forms of discrimination in Syria\u2014 that the deprivation of nationality under the exceptional 1962 census<\/a> in al-Hasaka governorate is unlike any other injustice. You are not merely living in limbo, suspended in a legal void, but rather confined within a vast prison, while at the same time not existing at all\u2014not recognized. You have no dreams resembling those of others regarding your future. You cannot travel to seek a new homeland.<\/p>\n
Instead, you wage daily struggles at school, in university, and in everyday life with those different from you, trying to prove that you are like them and deserve the same rights \u2014rights you cannot even express openly because of authoritarianism, in a country where human rights ranked at the very bottom of successive governments\u2019 priorities since the founding of the Syrian state.<\/p>\n
Tens \u2014indeed hundreds\u2014 of racist incidents targeted stateless people in Syria, whether through derogatory labels, or through outright denial of the possibility of falling in love with a \u201ccitizen\u201d girl and even falling in love with a girl from the Maktumeen or the Hasaka Foreigners. The documents they carried were often mocked<\/a> as \u201ccards for animals\u201d or \u201cfor cattle.\u201d They were spoken<\/a> of with a mix of \u201ccontempt and pity.\u201d One of the most common forms of mockery was the widespread saying: \u201cEven cattle have IDs in Europe, while you do not even have anything resembling one.\u201d<\/p>\n
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From Discrimination to False Privilege<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Statelessness can shift your position from being a person subjected to discrimination for years to suddenly feeling that you \u201cenjoy\u201d a superficial privilege over other groups deprived of the very same rights!<\/p>\n
After the year 2000, the Syrian authorities allowed some stateless persons to \u201cregularize\u201d their legal status, moving them from the category of Maktumeen (Unregistered) to the Hasaka Foreigners \u2014holders of the red identity card\u2014 particularly in cases where the mother was a Syrian citizen, as in my own case.<\/p>\n
This status allowed them to obtain a driver\u2019s license and sit for the free preparatory and secondary school exams \u201cas a private candidate,\u201d without having to advance grade by grade like other Syrian citizens. Yet they remained deprived of fundamental rights such as property ownership, traveling abroad, or even spending a night in the hotels of the capital.<\/p>\n
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A Step Closer to the Dream and a Historic Opportunity<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Obtaining the \u201cred identity card\u201d issued to the Hasaka Foreigners meant embarking on a \u201cnew stage\u201d in the long journey of statelessness in Syria. After my family\u2019s legal status was changed from Maktumeen (Unregistered) to the category of Hasaka Foreigners, I asked a friend traveling to al-Hasaka city to register me for the General Secondary Examination (literary branch), as I was residing in Qamishli<\/a>, on the border with Turkey, at the time.<\/p>\n
He had two names \u2014one Kurdish used at home and another Arabic on official papers. The clerk, acting arbitrarily and claiming the documents were incomplete (though they were not), rejected the application. That news was one of my greatest disappointments at the time.<\/p>\n
I tried again the following year (2002\u20132003). This time, my father went himself to the Directorate of Education, carrying stacks of documents, both required and unnecessary. To our amazement, it worked. I was finally allowed to sit for the secondary school exam as a private candidate that year, bringing me one step closer to the dream of pursuing university studies in Damascus. I placed my hopes in fate, believing that the future had to hold something better and that remaining in al-Hasaka forever was not destiny.<\/p>\n
In haste, I abandoned my grueling daily work repairing and rewinding electric motors. I had barely four months left to prepare for my exam. I studied day and night, walking every day to a spot near the \u201cAirport Quarter,\u201d a district of luxury villas, adjacent to a small grove of trees called the \u201cAssad Forest,\u201d and close to wheat fields, vegetable gardens, and fig and mulberry trees, along with wells of fresh water and the railway connecting Qamishli to al-Hasaka.<\/p>\n
That place had become a regular gathering spot for students engaged in self-study. It resembled an open-air school, bustling with dozens of young men and women, including those escaping the city\u2019s noise and the strict confines of family life.<\/p>\n
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A Success in Limbo<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
My grades qualified me to enroll at Damascus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Arabic Language. Throughout those university years, one \u201cjoke\u201d repeatedly circulated among dozens of non-Kurdish students: \u201cYou\u2019re Kurdish, so why are you studying Arabic literature? Ha ha ha ha \u2026\u201d And once they learned that I did not hold Syrian nationality and was therefore deprived of rights, they would add sarcastically: \u201cAnd on top of that, you\u2019re not Syrian and will never get a job! Ha ha ha ha.\u201d Truly, it was a kind of dark comedy.<\/p>\n
In reality, pursuing a university education as someone from the Hasaka Foreigners (something completely off-limits to the Maktumeen until the year 2000) was a risky adventure with extremely high costs, especially for my family, that supported me as much as they could during the early years, before I began a long and exhausting journey of working alongside my studies in one of Damascus\u2019s luxury hotels.<\/p>\n
I remember those years (2002, 2003, 2004), when the entire Jazira region with its three governorates had no universities at all. Like thousands of other students, I had to travel on long-haul buses for more than nine hours from Qamishli to Damascus, or somewhat fewer hours from Jazira to Aleppo. Yet the real burden was not just the travel: it was the financial and personal risk of years of university study without any clear future. Stateless students were also denied the right to obtain a graduation certificate that could be used for employment.<\/p>\n
Before enrolling at the university, I had joined an underground Kurdish party, one of the Kurdish political movements that, since their establishment in 1957, placed the plight of the Hasaka Foreigners at the core of their agenda, alongside the so-called \u201cArab Belt<\/a>\u201d issue. Their monthly publications rarely omitted references to these two causes. Likewise, many of their activities \u2014and those of several Arab Syrian opposition members, especially those sympathetic to the Kurdish cause in particular and to the democratic cause in Syria more broadly\u2014 revolved around these issues. Many among them endured arrest, enforced disappearance, and torture.<\/p>\n
Clinging to the hope of a miracle that might occur in the future \u2014and to the conviction that statelessness was not destiny\u2014 was the only lifeline for the Hasaka Foreigners during their university years. Attending university, in addition to the heavy financial burden, also deprived students of the chance to learn a craft or trade, which naturally could have provided a better income. At that time, many people preferred to learn a craft or a trade rather than spend years at university \u2014years that offered no hope of employment or a clear professional future.<\/p>\n
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Hasaka Foreigners and the Syrian Uprising<\/h5>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Following the nationwide protests that erupted after March 2011, in the context of what was then called the \u201cArab Spring,\u201d former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad issued Legislative Decree No. 49 in April of the same year. The decree granted Syrian Arab nationality to those registered in the records of the Hasaka Foreigners. However, it excluded tens of thousands from the category of Maktumeen (Unregistered). Between 1962 and 2011, the combined number of Hasaka Foreigners and Maktumeen reached approximately 517,000, according to exclusive statistics<\/a> obtained by STJ from a source within al-Hasaka\u2019s Civil Registry.<\/p>\n
Once again, the Maktumeen were subjected to compounded and inhumane injustice. In addition to being deprived of all rights since 1962, Decree No. 49 failed to address their plight as it did for the Hasaka Foreigners. While some Maktumeen succeeded in \u201cregularizing\u201d their status to become Hasaka Foreigners and eventually Syrian citizens, the stories of tens of thousands of others were effectively erased. By 2012, as the Syrian conflict escalated into a proxy war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced or forced millions into exile, new categories of people deprived of documentation \u2014and at risk of statelessness\u2014 emerged, most notably internally displaced persons and refugees.<\/p>\n
It was evident that the decision to grant nationality to deprived Kurds in 2011 was a \u201cpolitical\u201d maneuver by the former Syrian regime to win Kurdish support, rather than a genuine attempt at reform in a fractured country. At the very least, it was an effort to prevent their active participation in the protests against the regime. Yet the months and years that followed proved this strategy ineffective, as most Kurdish cities and areas with large Kurdish populations witnessed sustained demonstrations against the regime, in parallel with protests across the rest of Syria.<\/p>\n
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