US refuses to issue visa to PYD leader for the second time

U.S. State Department refused to issue a U.S. visa to Salih Muslim, the Chairman of the Democratic Union Party, (PYD) based in Syria for the second time.

Muslim told an audience in Washington via Skype that his application for a U.S. visa was refused two months ago. "I'm waiting a direct invitation from a strong man," he joked, during a panel hosted by the Kurdish Policy Research Institute on Thursday.

The PYD functions as terrorist the PKK's political affiliate in Syria. Despite the ongoing U.S. partnership between the PYD's armed affiliate People's Protection Units (YPG), both Obama and the Trump administration have been reluctant to invite Muslim to Washington. Muslim is currently residing in Europe.

The Obama administration previously rejected Muslim's visa application in January 2015, despite calls by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank, and some U.S. lawmakers, including Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who had urged the State Department to allow a visit.

The Trump administration's decision to refuse recognizing the PYD leader as a legitimate contact underlines the point made by Jonathan Cohen, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, that the U.S. and YPG partnership was more tactical in nature, and not something strategic. "It is a transactional relationship. We haven't promised them anything" he said last week during a panel.

Muslim said the type of relationship they will have with the U.S. is going to be determined by Washington, although he said that the relations were getting deeper with time and there were direct contacts in Syria with U.S. officials. Brett McGurk, U.S. Special Envoy for the Global Coalition Against Daesh, and top Pentagon officials visited northern Syria many times and had meetings with the PYD-led Syrian Democratic Council and others.

Muslim was also sympathetic to the criticisms of absence of political pluralism in PYD-held territories, and he said that the PYD was inexperienced in governance and there was a war going on against Daesh. Rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have accused the PYD of committing rights violations in Syria, and many reports from the country have suggested that the PYD regularly bans opposition media groups, close political bureaus of other political parties, and imprisons political activists.

He also said the PYD should be invited to Istanbul where the Syrian Kurdish National Council (ENKS) will have a meeting this week to discuss the situation in Syria. "We could talk with them [about our] mistakes and remedy them," he said.