People's Municipality in Qamishlo resists massacre, strengthening organization

 While the members of the People's Municipality in Qamishlo were preparing to commemorate the martyrs of the Qamishlo massacre, which was followed by the uprising of March 12, 2004, and it culminated in the revolution of July 19, 2012, ISIS mercenaries attacked the municipality building on March 11, 2014 with automatic weapons, stormed the building and threw grenades into the rooms;  The attack killed 11 members of the municipality.

 The martyrs are;  Ibrahim Aziz, Roshan Muhammad Zaki, Fahd Abdul Aziz, Musa Azad Musa, Ali Bora, Jihan Murad, Amina Bilal, Halabja Khalil, Farhad Abdul Aziz Othman, Alaeddin Abdul Ilah, and Awaz Mahmoud Muhammad.

 In their memory, the municipality named a number of parks and kindergartens after their names.

 The mercenary attack came shortly after the announcement of the Autonomous Administration in the cantons of Rojava (January 21, Jazera canton, January 27, Kobani canton, and January 29, Afrin canton).

This attack was intended;  Dealing a blow to the newly declared Autonomous Administration and blocking the way for any democratic transition that ends decades of centralization in Syria regime, a transformation in which municipalities and local administrations play a pivotal role.

 However, the municipality, which started with 20 members, faced the attack with more insistence on organizing and expanding its scope of work through hundreds of registered and contracted member to become one of the main institutions in Qamishlo.

 Today, the municipality consists of 17 sections, followed by two service centers in the town of Hemo and the village of Umm Al-Fursan, and two municipalities in the towns of Garbawi and Tannouriyeh.  It serves hundreds of thousands of citizens throughout the city of Qamishlo with its eight neighborhoods and 180 villages affiliated to it.

 Through these departments, the municipality deals with many matters related to community service, including electricity, health, general hygiene, asphalting of roads, in addition to the environmental aspect.

 During 9 years, it was able to expand the scope of its work, after its work was limited to providing some limited services, it moved to work on implementing large service projects, after it became a ground and reference for the establishment of municipalities throughout northern and eastern Syria, and a nucleus for the Local Administration and Environment Authority to rely on in the Autonomous Administration, to northern and eastern Syria.

 During these 9 years, the municipality was able to completely solve the drinking water problem in Qamishlo canton, by increasing the proportions of the city's nutritional sources, and rehabilitating the main feeding stations.

On the environmental level, the municipality provided a lot at the level of Qamishlo canton, establishing and renovating 31 gardens with thousands of trees, in addition to establishing a number of designated temporary waste dumps.

 With the expansion of the scope of the municipality's work and its interaction with social issues, at the beginning of this year, it introduced the "People's Relations" department.  It is a section that greatly reduces the burden on the conciliation committees as well as the courts, and specializes in resolving existing problems between citizens, which are within the competence of the municipality.  For example, this section listens to citizens' complaints regarding electricity generators, as well as violating buildings.

 And because the police department is in the municipality;  It is at the forefront and is considered the executive body in the municipality. Complaints received from citizens to this section are also referred to the "People's Relations" section, which in turn tries to resolve existing disputes through dialogue and by mutual consent without resorting to the courts.

 In order to enhance popular participation in the municipalities, the municipality expanded meetings with the various components of the region as well as the communes in Qamishlo canton.

 On October 30, 2022, the second conference of the people's - ecological - democratic municipalities that believe in women's freedom in northern and eastern Syria was held in the city of Al-Hasakah, northern Syria.

 Through this conference, the municipalities sought to enhance the concept of local administration and achieve more independence in decision-making. One of the clauses of his closing statement stated that "municipalities should play a major role in the development of direct democracy."

 The co-chair of the Local Administration and Environment Authority in the Jazira region, Suleiman Arab, told our agency: "The attack on the municipality of Qamishlo was deliberately targeting the Autonomous Administration, at a time when some were questioning it about the ability of the people of the region to manage themselves without a state."

 He added, "The municipality resisted the attack with more organization and expansion of the scope of services," pointing out that the municipalities will move in the coming period to achieve tangible steps in the path of achieving direct democracy, without specifying a time frame or mentioning clear details in this context.

 It is scheduled that the martyrs of the Qamishlo municipality massacre will be remembered this year by lighting candles on their tombs and delivering a statement, according to Arabs.

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 ANHA