Hannah believes that ethnicity and religious sects are not the problem in Syria. The problem, he says, is the al-Assad regime. But Hannah doesn’t believe that the regime will collapse anytime soon. And that’s not because al-Assad’s forces are particularly strong. It is because the various opposition groups are not unified, Hannah says. "If all of the opposition’s armed groups united - including the Kurdish armed forces – then that regime would not last a week."
In his opinion, what’s happening now is that both the Syrian opposition and the al-Assad regime are tired of fighting. One day, one side controls an area and the next day, the other side take the area back. He also thinks that Western powers are not interested in helping to topple the al-Assad regime because they – like many Syrians – fear that religious extremists will come to power.
Hannah says that Syria’s Kurds have a plan though. If religious extremists come to power in Damascus, he says, “we will sign trade and business partnerships with South Kurdistan and North Kurdistan. We will open our borders to them."And intrestingly, by South and North Kurdistan, he means, respectively, Iraqi Kurdistan and the Kurdish dominated areas of Turkey. The Kurdish areas in Syria are rich in resources as are the Shiite Muslim-dominated areas – it will be the Sunni Muslims who suffer in Syria, he suggests.
“The Arabs in Syria have a proverb that says if you are from a poor family, you will remain poor forever," Hannah notes. “But now we are teaching the Kurds something else. We say: "you can learn from history but history will not remain the same forever. The future is for those who prioritise science and education"."
Hannah ended by telling NIQASH that he remains on the side of the revolutionaries in Syria and he believes the high price so many in the country are paying is worth it. “The Syrian people needed this revolution. The people who’ve been living oppressed and in poverty needed to rise up,” he said.
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