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QANDIL MOUNTAIN RANGE, Iraq (AP) Some 200
Iranian Kurds marched in single file up an icy
mountain path, carrying automatic rifles and
rocket-propelled grenades. They were training for
the day when they hope to cross the nearby Iraqi
border into Iran, recruit supporters and reopen a
rebellion they reluctantly abandoned long ago.
After more than 20 years of calm, fighters based in
northern Iraq are itching to resume the Iranian
Kurds' campaign for greater autonomy, emboldened by
the success of their brethren in post-Saddam Iraq.
''We want to break the peace we were forced to
accept,'' Piryar Gabary told an Associated Press
reporter visiting Qandil Mountain, the group's base
in northeast Iraq.
Such talk, however, doesn't sit well with the Iraqi
Kurdish leadership, which is wary of provoking Iran
and disturbing its new stature in Iraq's government
and has vowed to prevent cross-border attacks.
The situation illustrates the Iraqi Kurds' delicate
position in the reshuffled deck that has emerged in
post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.
Their policy of preventing attacks on Iran is not
new. Already in 1991, when they won their
Western-protected autonomy in Iraq, Kurdish leaders
banned the exiles among them from mounting
cross-border attacks.
But the empowerment of Iraq's Kurds since the
U.S.-led invasion has inspired their brethren spread
across an area from western Turkey and Syria to
eastern Iran, who yearn for an independent unified
Kurdistan that would take chunks out of all those
countries.
That means heightened pressure on the Iraqi Kurds
not to antagonize neighboring Turkey and Iran, which
have both sent troops into Iraq in the past to put
down Kurdish rebels. Moreover, Iraq's Kurds are now
in a government alliance with Shiite parties closely
tied to Iran's clerical rulers.
When the AP visited the base in March, Gabary, a
leading figure in the rebels' Free Life Party, vowed
to open hostilities after the snows melted. Then, on
May 9, after the thaw began, he claimed that some
fighters had already crossed into Iran and waged a
small clash with Iranian troops. He gave no details,
and the skirmish could not be independently
confirmed.
But the strong response from mainstream Kurds
illustrates how anxious they are to keep the peace.
''Iran is a neighbor country and we will not allow
any side to use our borders for military
operations,'' warned Mustafa Sayid Qadir of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two parties
that rule Iraq's Kurdish provinces.
Other Kurdish leaders in Iraq said they did not know
of any clashes. Iran refused to comment, but former
lawmaker Abdollah Sohrabi was among several Iranian
Kurdish activists who told the AP they haven't heard
of the Free Life Party.
Qadir dismissed it as a ''very small'' organization.
Gabary claimed to have around 2,000 fighters a
number that could not be independently confirmed.
The four main Iranian Kurdish groups in Iraq said
they had no plans to start a fight. Hassan al-Sharify,
no. 2 in the largest one, the Democratic Party of
Kurdistan, said: ''The Free Life Party consists of
enthusiastic young men who cannot topple the regime
alone.''
The last full-scale rebellion by Iranian Kurds broke
out in 1979, and after intense fighting the Tehran
government re-established control over its Kurdish
areas in 1983.
Since then Iranian Kurdistan has been largely
peaceful. Kurds, who make up about 11 percent of
Iran's 70 million people, complain of discrimination
but have made no significant moves to break away.
When Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was chosen this
month as Iraq's new president, some Kurds in Iran
celebrated in the streets, and there were
unconfirmed reports of arrests.
The U.N. counts 4,600 Kurdish refugees from Iran in
the Kurdish provinces of Iraq, with more drifting
there from camps in western and southern Iraq.
The Free Life Party, grouping separate factions of
Kurds from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, was formed
in 2003.
Its fighters are operating under the radar of Iraqi
and Iranian officials. Qandil Mountain, in Iraq's
northeast corner near Iran and Turkey, is a rugged,
isolated region where Kurdish authorities have
little control.
The AP reporter who visited saw about 50 fighters
being taught to dismantle and reassemble an
automatic rifle. Women wearing traditional male
Kurdish clothes sat in a circle with the men. Other
recruits jogged uphill carrying bags of rocks.
In one of several rooms with tables fashioned from
mud, a teacher wrote on a chalkboard, instructing
students how to carry out hit-and-run shootings.
The diplomatic issues mean little to fighters like
Gabary, 42.
''Politics in the Middle East is of no avail without
military forces,'' he said.
AP
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