WASHINGTON — The Syrian civil war and the weakening of central states in the Middle East has resulted in a new power struggle among Kurdish parties over control of the Kurdish areas in Syria, instead of unifying them. The outcome is two different Kurdish autonomous zones in Syria and Iraq that compete with each other, based on different economic models.

The New York Times earlier suggested that it could be possible that as a result of the Arab Spring, a Syrian Kurdistan could break off from Syria and merge with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in a breakdown of the Western-imposed Sykes-Picot borders of 1916.

The borders have divided the Kurds and this has created separate Kurdish parties focused either on Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey or all of them. Nevertheless, all of these Kurdish parties share the idea of a unified Kurdish identity, all the while facing different political systems and geographical realities.

The main Kurdish blocs in Syria are the Democratic Union Party (PYD) backed by the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that fought a war against the Western-backed Turkish state, and the Kurdish National Council (KNC) uniting several Kurdish parties, backed by Massoud Barzani, the powerful president of the oil-rich Kurdistan Region of Iraq.