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Syrian Kurds who fled to Iraq have mixed feelings about Syria, in no rush to go home

(Karin Laub/ Associated Press ) - In this Friday, Feb. 15, 2013 photo, Syrian Kurdish refugees makes traditional bread in a tent in the Dumiz refugee camp in northern Iraq. Syrian Kurds who fled their country’s civil war have mixed feelings about a future without Bashar Assad: They hope to win autonomy if the regime falls, but fear chaos and the rise of Islamists could instead make their lives worse.

By Associated Press, Published: February 18

DOMIZ REFUGEE CAMP, Iraq — Syrian Kurds who fled their country’s civil war have mixed feelings about a future without Bashar Assad: They hope to win a measure of autonomy after the fall of the regime, but fear chaos and the rise of Islamists could instead make their lives worse.

More than 81,000 Syrian Kurds have found refuge in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region in recent months and hundreds more arrive every day. Few seem in a rush to go home.

The Kurdistan Regional Government allows fellow Kurds from Syria to work and move freely in the three provinces of northern Iraq it controls. Some 30,000 refugees still live in a camp of tents and cinderblock shacks near the Syrian border, while the rest have found jobs and homes in towns across the autonomous region, some staying with relatives.

Even those struggling with the hardships of camp life say they prefer to stay in Iraq after the fall of the regime, until they have a better idea how Islamists and other groups in the Sunni Arab-dominated Syrian opposition will deal with Kurds, Syria’s largest ethnic minority.

“If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over and there are problems in the future, we want to stay here,” said Faroush Fattah, a 28-year-old laborer from the northeastern Syrian town of Qamishli who arrived in the Domiz camp three months ago.

The refugees’ ambivalence about the upheaval in Syria is shared by Iraqi Kurdish leaders, who have carved out an increasingly prosperous quasi-state in the autonomous region, aided by an oil-fueled economic boom.

Kurdish autonomy in post-Assad Syria, similar to the Iraqi model, could strengthen long-standing Kurdish demands for an independent homeland for the more than 25 million Kurds in parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.

But the emergence of yet another autonomous Kurdish region would likely spook Turkey, a regional power that is key to plans by Iraq’s Kurds to export their oil riches directly, if necessary without permission from the central Iraqi government.

Turkey is home to an estimated 15 million Kurds, some with self-rule aspirations, and has been battling Kurdish insurgents for nearly three decades. Adding to Turkey’s concerns, the dominant Kurdish faction in Syria, the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, is seen as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the leader of the armed rebellion in Turkey.

The president of Iraq’s Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, has tried to exert influence over Syrian Kurdish groups, presumably in part to protect his strategic relationship with Turkey. Last year, he helped form an umbrella group of Syrian Kurdish groups that includes the PYD and smaller factions loyal to him.

“Barzani has some sway over Syrian Kurds,” said Washington-based Turkey expert Soner Cagaptay. “He has been reaching out to a spectrum of Syrian Kurds, including the PYD, to stop the hostile rhetoric and attitude toward Turkey.”

Falah Mustafa, in charge of the Barzani government’s foreign relations, said Iraqi Kurds want to make sure their Syrian counterparts are united when negotiating their role in a post-Assad Syria with the Sunni Arab-led opposition.