Sirwan Kajjo | February 13, 2013 THE NATIONAL INTEREST

Last month, fierce clashes broke out between armed Kurdish groups and Arab militias affiliated with the government of Syria’s embattled president Bashar al-Assad on the outskirts of Rumeilan, an oil-rich town in the far northeastern part of the country. The fighting signaled an outbreak of a dispute for control of the sprawling oil fields in the predominantly Kurdish region.

The Kurdish homeland lies on an ocean of oil and other natural resources. Thus, for the Kurds across the Middle East, oil has always been a factor in their ethnic plight. Many Kurds regard it as a curse rather than a blessing. Oil represents a wealth that has never fully belonged to them. Successive governments that ruled Iraq, for example, had always maintained a strong grip over oil fields in the Kurdish north.

But in Syria, as the civil war evolves and the violence turns bloodier, it becomes clearer that oil is going to be a profound dilemma in the future, regardless of Assad’s demise. Compared to its neighbors, Syria does not look like an oil giant. The country, however, has significant amounts of undiscovered oil reserves—as much 3.15 billion barrels—as well as 6.9 billion barrels of discovered reserves, according to a 2009 study by Damascus University. These reserves would meet domestic consumption demands for eighteen years. The majority of these oil fields are located in the northeast, where almost 65 percent of Syria’s Kurds reside.

The first attempts to drill oil in northern Syria date back to 1936, when the French-controlled government decided to look for the black gold. Those endeavors, however, were derailed in 1941 by the start of World War II. But the formal discovery of commercial oil was declared in 1957. The major oil fields were located in areas along the borders with Turkey such as Rumeilan, Qarachook and Swediyeh (approximately 600 miles from Damascus). Smaller fields were discovered later further south in Jebessa and Shadadi, where Arabs form a significant share of a mixed population.

In 1969 the Syrian government finally decided to establish a two-year college in Rumeilan. Since then, approximately fifty-nine students graduate from the relatively small school per year—mostly children of Syrian Oil Company employees. Although Rumeilan’s fields are the richest in Syria, its school has never specialized in refining, and there is the glaring lack of a refinery in the area. Local experts reaffirm that the Baathist regime has deliberately resorted to this particular policy for two reasons: first, to deprive the Kurds of any potential investment and economic development in their region; second, to keep the locals from acquiring sophisticated knowledge of all oil-industry techniques in order to dispel any dream nationalist Kurds might harbor that oil could become their main source of revenue if a Kurdish state were created.

Last July, Syrian forces tactically withdrew from many Kurdish cities and towns in order to focus on fighting rebels in Aleppo, the Damascus suburbs and other contested areas. Some security forces, however, remained deployed at strategic points in the Kurdish northeast. Oil fields in Rumeilan, for instance, have been controlled by regime forces. Shortly after that, the government announced its need to hire locals to take charge of security affairs around these fields. Nidal Ahmed, an engineer, who has worked in Rumeilan field for fifteen years, confirmed in a phone interview that members of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is close to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), have seized the opportunity and applied for those available positions. As the months ensued and the government’s grip in the entire region loosened, these armed Kurdish groups managed to gain absolute control of the fields and other related manufacturing systems, according to the same account. The presence of the few Syrian forces—which are still there— cannot apparently change the de-facto situation. Technically, the majority of oil fields in northern Syria are in Kurdish hands.

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