Events in al-Qamishli in the spring of 2004 ended the obscurity of a community that, despite an increasing sense of identity since the 1970s, has not been able to transform its demographic weight (two million citizens, or 10 per cent of Syria’s population) into a substantial political force. Syria’s ‘Kurdish question’ has been a tangible presence on the national scene for many years. But a relaxation of tensions, however, relative and ephemeral, brought about by the change of president in Damascus and especially by the hopes raised by the American-Kurdish ‘alliance’ in Iraq, has been perceived by Kurdish political activists as an opportunity to bring their community’s issue to the fore and adopt a more assertive opposition strategy.