Syrian Kurds have long been discriminated against in Syria and if al-Assad falls, they may be able to use this as an opportunity to advance their people.
And now these opposing viewpoints are manifesting in reality, and in particular in the border village of Qahira, which is near the Rabia border crossing. Life in border towns has been tense anyway and when Syrian rebels took control of several checkpoints on the Syrian side, things became even more so.
Additionally, there has been a flood of Iraqis returning home to escape the ever-increasing violence in Syria. The head of the Rabia border crossing told NIQASH that he believed 7,000 Iraqis had returned over this crossing since last Sunday.
Meanwhile the small village of Qahira, with about 80 residences, has seen conflict of a different kind. All of its inhabitants apparently fled the village within the space of an hour recently because of the arrival of both Iraqi Kurdish troops - known as Peshmerga – and the Iraqi military.
“Everyone left because they were afraid of violence similar to what is happening in Syria,” one of the village’s residents, Ali al-Sayed told NIQASH. “The Peshmerga and the Iraqi army seemed to be about to start a battle. We didn’t know what was going on. We only wanted to stay alive.”
Al-Sayed says that all of the families in the village, including children and elderly, fled their houses on one of the hottest days they’ve had there so far, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which sees the religious fasting all day until the evening. Currently Qahira’s residents are all sheltering in nearby villages or they’ve gone to the city of Mosul, al-Sayed says.
Now apparently the only people occupying Qahira are the Peshmerga and the Iraqi military. The Iraqi regiment that moved there is part of a larger force that had been deployed along the Iraqi-Syria border when the Syrian rebels began to target border crossings.
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