Saleh Muslim founded the PYD in 2003 and led it during the years of the Syrian conflict [NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images]
Veteran Syrian Kurdish leader Salih Muslim died on Wednesday in a hospital in northern Iraq due to health issues, his party said.
For years, Muslim led the Democratic Union Party (PYD), Syria’s most powerful Kurdish party.
The PYD in a statement mourned Muslim “who devoted his life to serving his people’s cause and defending their legitimate rights”.
The PYD statement said that Muslim died in a hospital in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, “after a long battle with illness”.
His body will be returned to Syria on Thursday for burial, a party official said. An AFP journalist in Erbil reported that friends and party members gathered in front of the hospital to bid Muslim farewell.
Born in 1951, Muslim hailed from the city of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab.
Under Muslim’s leadership, the PYD emerged as the dominant faction among Syrian Kurds. While it was banned by the regime of former dictator Bashar al-Assad, it managed to gain control of much of northern and northeastern Syria when Assad regime forces withdrew in 2012.
The PYD became the dominant force in the Autonomous Administration of Northeastern Syria (AANES). This administration was technically structured on democratic and confederal lines but the PYD’s rule was authoritarian and repressive, with dissidents and political opponents jailed.
The PYD also cooperated with the Assad regime against Syrian opposition factions on some occasions despite their mutual suspicions of each other.
However, the AANES and its associated People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have agreed to integrate into the current Syrian government following fighting in January which saw government forces capture most of the territory they once held.
Turkey, a key backer of the Syrian government, considers the PYD and YPG to be affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
