Muhammad Talab Hilal

Muhammad Talab Hilal was a Syrian military officer and politician. He was the minister of supply in the Ba'athist government of Yusuf Zuayyin and after Zuayyin's resignation in 1968, also under Nureddin al-Atassi. In 1971 Hilal took part in a delegation consisting of Hafez Al Assad and other Syrian Ministers visiting Moscow, Soviet Union. Under Assad, he served as a deputy prime minister, minister of agrarian reform at different times. Before he was the governor of Hama He denied an eventual existence of a Kurdish language and ethnicity and supported the shutting down of Kurdish schools also when they taught in the Arabic language. In view of the Kurdish uprising in Iraq he warned of a similar situation in Syria

(1) eviction and resettlement of Kurds

(2) deprivation of all education for Kurds

(3) removal of Kurds from employment

(4) the reevaluation of the Syrian citizenships of Kurds also holding a Turkish citizenship

(5) encouragement of intra-Kurdish factionalism in order to divide and rule

(6) Arab settlements in former Kurdish lands

(7) colonization "pure and nationalist Arabs" to be settled in Syrian Kurdistan so Kurds might be "watched until their dispersion"

(8) military involvement by divisions stationed in the zone of the cordon would guaranty that the dispersion of the Kurds and the settlement of Arabs would take place according to plans drawn up by the government

(9) collective farms are to be established by Arab settlers equipped with "armament and training"

(10) prohibition of "anybody ignorant of the Arabic language exercising the right to vote or stand for office"

(11) Kurdish religious dignitaries were to be expelled to the south and replaced with Arabs

(12) "a vast anti-Kurdish campaign amongst the Arabs" to be undertaken by the state