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Kurdish PKK, PEJAK Rebels: "We Are Not
Terrorists"
18.10.2007
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
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October
18, 2007
Some have called them the “Iranian branch” of the
PKK, the Kurdish separatists who have been waging a
guerrilla war in eastern Turkey for over 20 years.
That’s certainly what the governments of Iran and
Turkey would like the world to believe.
Both are calling the Party of Free Life of Iranian
Kurdistan, better known as PEJAK, a "terrorist
organization," because of its reported ties to the
PKK, which is on the U.S. list of international
terrorist organizations.
But in extensive interviews at rebel bases deep in
the Qandil mountains on the Iraqi border with Iran,
PEJAK guerillas denied that they were a branch of
the PKK.
They called the PKK a “sister organization,” but
nothing more.
While they claimed “a strong affinity” with the
thinking of PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan, now in a
Turkish jail, they argued that their party is
totally separate from the PKK.
A Turkish Kurd named Xerat, who commands a PEJAK
guerrilla base within sight of the Iranian border,
said that he joined an Iranian rebel group that
ultimately became known as PEJAK in early 2000,
after Ocalan disbanded the PKK’s military wing.
“Since 1993, I had been with the PKK,” Xerat said.
“Once Ocalan disbanded the organization, I joined
PEJAK.”
Xerat brought with him extensive experience as a
former PKK guerilla leader, which he has been able
to pass on to new PEJAK recruits.
But as he and former PKK members made clear, the PKK
simply doesn’t exist any longer as a military
organization. PEJAK was built “out of the ashes of
the PKK,” guerilla leaders said.
The Kurdish guerillas whose bases Turkey now wants
to hit in Iraq are either PEJAK, or the self-defense
forces of the recently -created pan-Kurdish People’s
Congress, the KCK.
“After the PKK dissolved in 2000, separate parties
were set up in different parts of Kurdistan,”
Nilufer Koc, a vice-president of the KCK, told
News.max in an exclusive interview in Kurdistan
region 'northern Iraq'.
Among the newly-formed parties were PEJAK, the Party
for the Democratic Union of Syrian Kurdistan (PYD),
and the Party for a
Democratic Kurdistan (PCDK) in Iraq. In the latest
elections for the Kurdish Regional Government in
northern Iraq, the PCDK
got less than 1 percent of the vote.
Unlike the PKK, which sought to establish an
independent Kurdish entity, the newly-formed KCK and
its member groups have a different goal and use
different methods, she said. “Each is seeking to
establish a confederation within their country, and
to democratize all those regimes.”
Instead of launching broad offensive military
actions aimed against government troops and
facilities, the “People’s Defense Forces” (HPG) now
operating in Turkey seek “to prevent reprisals
against local families and activists,” she said.
But the Turkish Kurds still conduct sabotage
operations in response to Turkish military attacks.
On Oct. 9, the HPG claimed responsibility for an
attack that blew up a 100 meter section of the
Iran-Turkey natural gas pipeline between the
villages of Tewre and Takya\Dogubeyazit in eastern
Turkey, part of an effort to disrupt the growing
economic, diplomatic, and military ties between the
governments of Turkey and Iran. www.ekurd.net
The HGP takes orders not from PKK, which today
exists only as a rump political party, but from the
KCK leadership, which is comprised of a central
coordinating committee of 31 members.
Kurds are present in large numbers in Turkey, Iran,
and Iraq, with a smaller Kurdish population in
Syria. All four countries are represented in the KCK
leadership.
For its part, PEJAK seeks nothing less than to
“change the regime in Iran,” said Biryar Gabar, a
senior guerrilla leader who walked two hours down
rugged mountain paths to meet with News.max at a
rebel base near the Iraqi Kurdish village of Marado.
PEJAK also seeks to transform the culture of the
Iranian opposition, to make it more open and
democratic. “PEJAK wants to bring the opposition
into the culture of the 21st century,” he said.
PEJAK began to coalesce as a Kurdish resistance
movement in 1999-2000, although it wasn’t official
born until it held its founding conference in April
2004.
“The ideology and the philosophy of concentrating
first on political work, backed by self-defense
guerrilla forces, was a new
paradigm set out by Abdullah Ocalan after he was
jailed,” Biryar Gabar said.
“We gained all the experience of the PKK. But that
doesn’t mean that PEJAK is the PKK,” he added.
The irony that both Iran and Turkey would seek to
call PEJAK a “branch” of the PKK was not lost on
these guerrilla leaders, many of whom have advanced
university training and spend their spare time in
the mountains studying history and politics.
“Our country, Kurdistan, has been divided,” said
Biryar Gabar. “So have our people. If the enemy gets
together to fight the Kurds, there should be nothing
wrong with the different Kurdish parties getting
together to have a dialog and common strategy to
fight the enemy.”
The fact that Iran and Turkey were treating the
Kurdish resistance parties as a single entity argued
that they considered Kurdistan to be a single
entity, he said.
But neither PJEK nor the Kurdish People’s Congress
is seeking to establish a single Kurdish state.
Instead, all have focused on the struggle to achieve
political and cultural rights and the respect
internationally-recognized standards of human rights
in each country where Kurds are present in large
numbers.
PEJAK forces have played a strategic role in
protecting Iraq’s borders and preventing the
infiltration of arms and insurgents from Iran, Gabar
added.
“Between August 16-24, the Iranians tried to seize
the border line in the mountains, but we pushed them
back. If they had been successful, they would have
controlled this whole area and been able to open a
new smuggling route for arms and Islamists into
Iraq,” he said.
The report has been published by: newsmax com
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