Amina’s office that I came across an initially baffling sight. A statue of Hafez al-Assad, the former Syrian president and founder of the Assad dynasty, stood unmolested at a city-center roundabout. Nearby two photographs of his son, Bashar, were on display in the front windows of Syrianair. While Kurds fly their own red, green, and yellow flag throughout the region, the Syrian national flag was hoisted above a lane of concrete blocks leading to the entrance of a small garrison.
Here is one of the complexities of the Syrian war. The regime retains control of roughly one tenth of Qamishli, plus the local airport and the connecting road as well as the Arab part of the town of Hasakah, some fifty miles to the south. This symbolic toehold allows it to claim that it still controls the capitals of all Syrian provinces except Raqqa, which is held by ISIS, and Idlib, which is held by other extreme Islamists, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. In return the Kurds benefit by having Damascus continuing to pay the salaries of the Kurdish region’s teachers, hospital doctors, and other public-sector workers. Civil aircraft under control of the Assad regime still fly regularly from Qamishli to Damascus and Lattakia. For students enrolled there and for businessmen this provides a useful link, since overground travel has become too dangerous.
