Kurdistan in Syria is home to 2 million Kurds who have achieved much in the history of the Kurdish movement and suffered greatly at the hands of the Syrian regime. The Kurdish villages lie along the Turkish-Syrian frontier which divides them from the related Kurdish communities of Turkey, with the border even passing through the middle of some villages which have now been divided since the end of the First World War. The same people have been separated into Turkish citizens oppressed by the Turkish Government and Syrian citizens persecuted by the Syrian regime. Akin to the Kurds of Turkey, the Kurds in Syria are not allowed to speak Kurdish, have schooling or publish at all in their tongue nor form their own political parties. There is even a decree which forbids the playing of non-Arab music at weddings. The state in which they live is called the Syrian Arab Republic and officially the Kurds are regarded as Arabs too. Kurdish villages have been renamed with Arab names and any mention of the Kurds has been wiped from school history books.

The Arab Cordon and the Kurds of Syria denied the right to citizenship.

In the 1960s the Syrian government declared that the Kurds of Jezireh were not indigenous, but were refugees from Turkey. Indeed after the Sheik Said rebellion, many Kurds did flee into Syria, some went to Aleppo and Damascus, both of which have had large Kurdish populations since the rule of the Kurdish leader Saladin and others settled in Jezireh. They chose this area as being the closest Kurdish area to flee to which was outside the borders of Turkey and the veangance of the Turkish regime. However, the Syrian authorities stripped 120,000 Kurds of their nationality without any regard as to whether they had arrived in Jezireh in the 1920s or had been there since time immemorial. These Kurds and now their descendants are forbidden to marry, own land, work, repair their houses and use schools and hospitals. Around 30,000 were forced to leave this area alone after the government took away their land and homes and moved in Arab settlers to "arabize" the area. The number of these Kurds has increased greatly since then and now there are many thousands of Kurds who have been denied even the basic right of citizenship.

Report of Syria's human rights abuses for 1996

Syria Human Rights Practices, 1995, US Department of State Report