|
From Iraqi Kurdistan mountains, Kurds
train for battle with Iran
3.2.2007 |
|
|
|
February 3, 2007
QANDIL MOUNTAIN RANGE, Kurdistan-Iraq, February
2, -- Deep in the mountains of eastern Iraq, a
cluster of mud huts and the chatter of machine gun
fire reveal another piece of the jigsaw puzzle
called Kurdistan.
Here, recruits are training to fight Iran, one of
the four countries that rule the fractured Kurdish
people. And although they belong to an organization
officially outlawed as terrorist by Washington, they
appear to be operating unhindered either by
Iraqi-Kurdish units or the limited U.S. force in
Kurdish areas.
A boulder-studded road spirals up through sun-soaked
mountains to a pale yellow building that flies the
flag of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), condemned
as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and its NATO
ally, Turkey.
A giant face of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK founder who
is serving a life sentence in Turkey, is painted on
the mountainside. Sixteen kilometers (10 miles)
farther on lies the Qandil range, which runs like a
snow-dusted spine along Iraq's northern border with
both Turkey and Iran.
In the camp, lugging heavy machine guns and AK-47
assault rifles, are men and women of the Party for a
Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK, an offshoot set up
by the PKK in 2004 to fight for Kurdish autonomy in
Iran. |
Women recruits of PEJAK, the Party for a Free Life
in Kurdistan, a splinter group of the PKK, the
Kurdistan Workers Party, chat
inside their tent in PEJAK training camp in the
Qandil mountain range, northern Iraq (Kurdistan),
Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006. Recruits are training to
fight Iran, one of the four countries that rule the
fractured Kurdish people. AP |
The PKK and its affiliates are spread through a
region of some 35 million Kurds that straddles
Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. PEJAK, the newest
group, claims to number thousands of recruits, and
targets only Iran — a mission which has made PEJAK
the subject of intense speculation that it is being
used to undermine the radical Islamic regime of
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In the Nov. 27 issue of The New Yorker magazine,
investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that
PEJAK was receiving support from the U.S. as well as
from Israel, which fears Iran's nuclear ambitions
and Ahmadinejad's call to wipe the Jewish state off
the map.
PEJAK says it regularly launches raids into Iran,
and Iran has fired back with artillery. In October,
the English-language Iran Daily, published by Iran's
official news agency, said Iran accused PEJAK of
killing dozens of its armed forces in insurgent
attacks.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a longshot Democratic
presidential hopeful who claims the White House is
overplaying the Iranian threat, last year wrote to
President George W. Bush expressing concern that the
U.S. was using PEJAK to weaken Ahmadinejad.
James Brandon, an analyst for the U.S.-based
Jamestown Foundation, an independent foreign policy
think tank, told The Associated Press that PEJAK has
refused to discuss its funding sources. But he said
its greatest threat to Iran is not military. It has
veins running deep into the Iranian Kurdish
population and is offering to join forces with other
restless minorities in Iran, he said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said
"Israel is not involved in any way in what's going
on there."
Meir Javedanfar, an Israel-based Iran expert, noted
however that Israel has a long-standing relationship
with Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani and said:
"It would not surprise me to discover that Israel is
using the Kurdish areas of Iraq to undermine Iran's
influence in Iraq and monitor what's going on along
the Iranian border, as well as to undermine the
Iranian government itself."
This AP reporter recently spent two winter days at a
PEJAK training camp tucked in the shadow of the
Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, listening to its
followers describe their goals and operations in
Iran.
According to a camp commander, Hussein Afsheen, "PKK
gives ideological and logistical support" while
funding comes from Iranian Kurds. He said he did not
know of any U.S. funding, but would gladly accept
it.
The camp is designed to toughen up the new recruits,
who numbered 38 during the recent visit. Beds are
single wool blankets spread over a rough concrete
floor, or over a narrow steel bench that hugs an icy
mud wall. The only heat comes from a wood-fired
potbelly stove.
It is still pitch dark and freezing at 5 a.m., when
the fighters line up and pledge allegiance to the
Kurdish cause.
Soztar Afreen, a 22-year-old Syrian with a quick
smile, says she joined five years ago and the first
months were tough.
"I had trouble keeping up. You have to toughen
yourself. The physical work is difficult but once
you get used to it life here gets easier," she said.
She recalled that her parents, PKK sympathizers,
sent her off with this plea: "Don't let down the
struggle; make us proud."
Gunfire and explosions echo off mountainsides as
recruits learn to fire artillery and rocket
launchers and automatic rifles. They are taught to
lay ambushes and to endure long hours isolated and
in hiding.
Food is spartan — potatoes, tomato broth, onions and
a lot of flat bread baked in a deep stone oven.
Much time is spent in ideological training and
studying Ocalan's vision of a united Kurdistan,
which the guerrillas say has gradually shifted from
demanding full-blown independence to settling for
autonomy as a distinct culture within the various
countries where they live.
PEJAK ideology is rigorously leftist and includes
equality of the sexes — unusual in this region. The
camp has two leaders, a man and a woman.
The male one, Afsheen, is a Turkish Kurd who joined
the PKK in 1990, at age 19. He said he enlisted
after Turkish soldiers herded him, his family and
his neighbors into the town square and burned down
their homes.
Four shepherds were coming home and "The soldiers
just opened fire on them. I had inside of me a lot
of anger. I promised I would get my revenge," said
Afsheen.
In training, he said, "Recruits were put in a cave
and left there for a month, allowed out only for
half an hour each day. We walked for hours in frigid
water."
Afsheen said he has made several forays into Iran,
including one monthlong trek to the Iranian town of
Shahha three months ago, not to attack Iranians but
to organize Kurds. "We were discovered. There was a
firefight and it went on until dark. We were pinned
down, trapped," he said.
"At nightfall we found an opening and we tried to
slip out but we were discovered. The firing went on
again and they called in their helicopters. One of
our friends was wounded and three Iranian security
men were killed."
Afsheen's co-leader is Beridon Dersim, who grew up
in Austria and found her identity with the PKK.
"What I wanted I couldn't find from Turkey. I
couldn't find from Europe. The PKK offered me
answers about myself, about my ethnicity."
Dersim, 32, said she wanted to pick up a gun the day
she joined the PKK at 17 but it was just before her
20th birthday that she was allowed into the
guerrilla ranks.
Unlike Afreen of Syria, she did not have her
family's blessing, she says, and her father, a
Turkish civil servant, was tortured and left in a
wheelchair. She said she has since fought in
gunbattles.
The guerrillas vow not to marry or visit their
families lest they put them in danger or be
distracted from their struggle. Afsheen said he has
not seen his parents since their village was
destroyed 16 years ago. "I was the youngest of nine
children, but maybe there are more now. I don't
know."
Dersim says her presence encourages Kurdish women
but also frightens the men.
"We go to a village and when we speak they are
surprised and they ask us: 'Where do you get such
power to do this? How can you speak like this and in
front of men?'"
AP
*
The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan"
Southeast Turkey. The Kurds have no rights in
Turkey.
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan but
unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag is
banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it is
a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
Iranian Kurdistan
Iranian Kurdistan (Kurdish: Kurdistana Îranę or
Kurdistana Rojhilat (Eastern Kurdistan) or Rojhilatę
Kurdistan (East of Kurdistan)) is an unofficial name
for the parts of Iran inhabited by Kurds and has
borders with Iraq and Turkey. It includes the
greater parts of West Azerbaijan province, Kurdistan
Province, Kermanshah Province, and Ilam Province.
Kurds form the majority of the population of this
region with an estimated population of 4 million.
The region is the eastern part of the greater
cultural-geographical area called Kurdistan.
The present leader of the organisation is Haji
Ahmadi. According to the Washington Times, half the
members of PJAK are women, many of them still in
their teens, and one of the female members of the
leadership council is Gulistan Dugan, a psychology
graduate from the University of Tehran. This is due
primarily to the fact that PJAK is strongly
supportive of women's rights. PJAK believes that
women must have a strong role in government and must
be on an equal level with men in leadership
positions.
More about PEJAK- Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan
More about Iranian Kurdistan
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the content of news
information on this page
|
® 