In the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the debate continues in the Kurdish press over the involvement of young Kurds in the Syrian revolution. This comes four months after the announcement of the death of a young Kurdish man — a resident of Sulaimaniyah, a city located in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq — in Aleppo. The press is currently reporting that Syrian Kurdish parties captured a number of Kurdish youths after they went there to wage jihad.

In February, the Kurdish newspapers published news of the death of a young Iraqi Kurdish man studying pharmacology at an Indian university who left his studies and went to Syria to assist fighters against the Syrian regime. His name was Howkar Muhammed Kurdi. According to the blog of foreigners in the Syrian revolution, he was “a 25-year-old martyr from Sulaimaniyah in Iraq and a student of pharmacology at the Rajiv Gandhi University. He decided to abandon his studies, go to Syria to join the ranks of his brethren and provide them with medical assistance. He was martyred in a raid on Aleppo on Feb. 12 [2013].”

More than three months after this incident, the official website of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), an armed Syrian Kurdish party, said that in the village of Ain al-Abd near the Syrian-Turkish border, they had captured five militants from Jabhat al-Nusra, including three Kurds from the city of Kirkuk.

It said that 11 individuals were killed in clashes in the village and five members from Jabhat al-Nusra were captured, one of which being a Saudi national, another European and the other three Kurdish Sorani from the city of Kirkuk.