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Iran tries to keep the Kurdish revolt war
a secret
12.9.2007
By Amir Taheri
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September 12, 2007
For the past year at least, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the backbone of
the Islamic Republic in Iran, has been engaged in a
bloody war against Kurdish rebels in four provinces
bordering Iraqi Kurdistan.
Initially, the authorities in Tehran tried to keep
the war a secret, referring to it only occasionally
as " operations against evil -doers".
However, things changed last February when
"evil-doers" destroyed an IRGC combat helicopter
killing nine officers, including the regional
military commander General Saeed Qahhari. The
incident took place in a place called
Jahannam-Darreh (Hell Valley) close to Khoy, a town
in West Azerbaijan province where Kurds, though
present in big numbers, form only a minority. |
Amir Taheri |
The IRGC retaliated with a series of attacks against
alleged Kurdish rebel positions in the mountainous
area around the border town of Salmas in which at
least 17 "Kurdish evil-doers", including their
overall local commander, a naturalised German
citizen of Turkish-Kurdish origin, code-named Doctor
Meraat, were killed.
Since then, the IRGC has issued cryptic reports
about dozens of other "engagements" in which scores
of policemen, border patrols and IRGC members have
been killed or wounded while killing at least 100
Kurdish PEJAK insurgents.
There is no doubt that what is known in Tehran as
"the Kurdish threat", represents one of the key
security concerns of the Islamic Republic leaders as
they prepare for a broader regional war. In response
to the insurgency, the IRGC has set up a special
command centre at the Hamza Base, near the Iraqi
border, and committed one full division plus a unit
of airborne Special Forces to curb the insurgency.
The IRGC claims that the rebels are based in Iraqi
Kurdistan. The fact, however, is that all the
fighting reported until earlier this month has taken
place well inside Iranian territory, often in areas
with a non-Kurdish majority.
In June, the IRGC started shelling Iraqi Kurdish
villages. An unknown number of Kurds, both Iraqis
and Iranians who had sought refuge in Iraq, were
killed. Despite protests by the Iraqi government,
including one delivered face-to-face by Prime
Minister Nouri Al Maliki in his meeting with the
Iranian "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei in Tehran
earlier this summer, the IRGC has continued its
attacks on Iraqi villages.
The shelling has forced thousands of Kurdish
villagers, both Iranians and Iraqis, to abandon
their homes and join the flow of "displaced persons"
heading for towns deeper inside Iraq. The areas most
affected by the fighting are within the strongholds
of Iraqi Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani and
Iraqi president Jalal Talabani. Both have a history
of close ties with Iran going back four decades.
Nevertheless, because both allied themselves with
the US in toppling Saddam Hussain in 2003, Tehran
suspects them of trying to foment a Kurdish
insurgency in Iran as part of a bigger "American
plot" to destabilise Iran. However, the three
Kurdish groups involved in the insurgency can hardly
be regarded as vassals of either of the two Iraqi
Kurdish chiefs.
New outfit
The group most active in the recent fighting is a
new outfit named Kurdistan Free Life Party, better
known under its Kurdish acronym of PEJAK. Judging by
its literature, PEJAK is an offshoot of the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a guerrilla movement
of Turkish Kurds that has been fighting for a
Kurdish state in eastern Anatolia since the 1970s.
Ironically, Tehran has given the PKK shelter and
support against Turkey for years, as a means of
bleeding Nato's lone regional member. Some analysts
claim that Ankara may have decided to repay Tehran
in its own currency by creating PEJAK. Others,
however, regard PEJAK as an effort by PKK to expand
its constituency beyond the Kurdish minority in
Turkey.
What is certain, however, is that most of PEJAK's
leaders are not Iranian Kurds. Some of the party's
key figures are Turkish Kurds who have lived in
exile in Germany for at least a quarter of a
century. The fact that PEJAK has been operating in
areas in Iran that are close to PKK strongholds in
Turkey and Iraq is another indication that the two
parties may well be one with two names.
In the Kurdish heartland of Iran, the two provinces
of Kurdistan and Kermanshahan, where ethnic Kurds
are in majority, PEJAK appears to have little
support.
There, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK), created
62 years ago, enjoys the largest support, followed
by Komalah, a formerly Communist outfit that claims
to have converted to democracy after the fall of the
Soviet empire.
The PDK, a self-styled social-democratic group, has
campaigned for greater autonomy for Iranian Kurds
since the 1940s.
After the mullahs seized power in 1979, PDK helped
their regime in the hope of obtaining concessions.
The mullahs, however, banned the PDK and organised
the assassination of two successive generations of
its Kurdish leaders in exile in Vienna and Berlin in
1989 and 2002.
Since the murders, the PDK has joined Iranian
opposition groups that call for the overthrow of the
Islamic Republic, but has not preached armed
uprising as a means of achieving that goal.
Komalah, however, has waged a guerrilla war against
the Islamic Republic for the past 25 years, paying a
high price in human terms.
The Tehran rumour mill claims that the replacement
of the senior IRGC leaders, including its overall
commander, is a sign that the " Supreme Guide" is
unhappy about the spreading Kurdish insurgency along
the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
As always in the Islamic Republic, however, Tehran's
claims of a US-hatched plot to incite the Kurds
against the mullahs should be taken with a pinch of
salt. The Tehran leadership may be using the claim
to justify building a string of fortifications along
the border with Iraq in anticipation of conflict
with the US. The idea is that, if attacked, Iran
would retaliate by entering Iraq from the three
Kurdish provinces most loyal to Washington and
regarded as the only "safe haven" for American
forces there, while inciting the Iraqi Shi'ites to
rise in revolt in the central and southern
provinces.
Talk of a Kurdish insurgency also helps Tehran
impose what amounts to a state of emergency in parts
of the four provinces with large Kurdish
populations. This has enabled the authorities to
arrest hundreds of opponents, including trade
unionists, student leaders, journalists, lawyers,
and Sunni Muslim clerics without bothering about
legal formalities.
There is no doubt that the areas where Iran's
estimated 4.5 million ethnic Kurds live are in
turmoil, posing a challenge to the leadership in
Tehran. The challenge, however, comes from political
dissidents, especially working class activists, not
guerrillas operating from bases in Iraq.
Iranian author Amir Taheri is based in Europe and
is a member of
Benador Associates.
gulfnews com
Iranian Kurdistan
**
Iranian Kurdistan (Kurdish: Kurdistana Īranź or
Kurdistana Rojhilat (Eastern Kurdistan) or Rojhilatź
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.
More about Iranian Kurdistan
The present leader of the organisation is Haji
Ahmadi. According to the Washington Times, half the
members of PEJAK 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 PEJAK is strongly
supportive of women's rights. PEJAK 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
KDPI
The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran in Kurdish
(Hīzbī Dźmokiratī Kurdistanī Źran) is a Kurdish
opposition group in Iranian Kurdistan which seeks
the attainment of Kurdish national rights within a
democratic federal republic of Iran.
The current
General Secretary of the Democratic Party of Iranian
Kurdistan is Mustafa Hijri
More about KDPI- Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran
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