Eighteen years ago, the Qamishlo Uprising

On 12 March 2004, nine people were killed when clashes erupted at a football match in the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishlo between supporters of a local team and those of an Arab team based in Deir Ezzor.

The following day, mourners at the funeral procession for the victims chanted anti-Bashar al-Assad slogans and raised Kurdish flags.

Syrian security forces opened fire, killing 23 people and sparking days of protests and rioting in northern Syria’s Kurdish regions (Al-Hasakah, Kobani, Afrin) as well as Kurdish-majority neighborhoods of Aleppo and Damascus.

Kurds reacted to Afrin from Dêrik to protest the attack against the serhildan in Qamishlo and against the state repression.

The state was trying to create enmity among the peoples. It tried to create strife between the Kurdish and Arab people. Yet the Baath regime has not been successful in this policy. The Qamishlo uprising sowed the seeds of a new era for the Kurds.

They established their unions and started to develop a new idea. It had become clear that the Kurds needed a defense force, administration and organization. Contrary to what the state had planned to achieve with this massacre, hostility between the Kurdish and Arab peoples did not develop, nor did the chauvinistic feelings the state hoped to create.

It is often said that the Qamishlo serhildan lit the first spark of the Rojava revolution.

The revolts were crashed by al-Assad forces but the Syrian regime was forced to recognize Kurds.