Rebel leader Ebrahim Alizada said: “Our armed struggle began in Iranian Kurdistan and will continue until we have freedom.”
Hundreds of young men and women armed with AK47 rifles, machine guns and RPGs are training in northern Iraq for this mission.
Many more are based across the border and group leaders say the rebels are already carrying out “covert actions” in Iran. link
from March 2003
In an agreement signed Tuesday with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), soldiers and their families loyal to the Komala political party will start evacuating Wednesday from the Halabja valley in order to clear the way for an attack against hundreds of Ansar al-Islam fundamentalists….
Mahammad Haji Mahmood, chair of the Kurdistan Democratic Socialist Party, who helped negotiate the evacuation, said the agreement allows Komala soldiers to keep their arms when they depart over a three-day period for northern territory along the Iranian border….
Mahmood said that the PUK, which had paid Komala nearly $200,000 a month in order to help keep stability in the region, agreed to pay the party upwards of $600,000 in back payments in order to seal the agreement. In addition, the PUK will ensure that any injured soldiers will receive immediate medical treatment and that all the soldiers and their families will be able to return to their lands about five months after the U.S.-led war against Iraq is over. Anwar Mohammad, a senior leader of the Komala group, said, “We’ve agreed to move out of the region so we don’t give another excuse for the Americans to attack us again — we are not surrendering. Someone gave the wrong information to the Americans. We think the bombing was a mistake.”…
“We have adopted a different ideology from Ansar, who were previously our friends,” said Mohammad. “We are not like them.” link
The Kurds sometimes remind me of the girl everybody knew at some point of youth, hopelessly clinging to a bad boyfriend, convinced that if she would just tolerate enough ill-treatment, he would show up one day on bended knee with ring in hand. (Actually Americans remind me of the same thing sometimes, too, but that’s another show).
There are approximately 4 million Kurds in Iran. They are the third most important ethnic group in the country after the Persians and Azarbaijanis and account for about 9 percent of the total population. They are concentrated in the Zagros Mountain area along the western frontiers with Turkey and Iraq and adjacent to the Kurdish populations of both those countries. Kurds also live in the Soviet Union and Syria. The Kurdish area of Iran includes most of West Azarbaijan, all of Kordestan, much of Bakhtaran (formerly known as Kermanshahan) and Ilam, and parts of Lorestan. Historically, the Kurds of Iran have been both urban and rural, with as much as half the rural population practicing pastoral nomadism in different periods of history. By the mid-1970s, fewer than 15 percent of all Kurds were nomadic. In addition, during the 1970s there was substantial migration of rural Kurds to such historic Kurdish cities as Bakhtaran (known as Kermanshah until 1979), Sanandaj, and Mahabad, as well as to larger towns such as Baneh, Bijar, Ilam, Islamabad (known as Shahabad until 1979), Saqqez, Sar-e Pol-e Zahab, and Sonqor. Educated Kurds also migrated to non-Kurdish cities such as Karaj, Tabriz, and Tehran.
There are also scatterings of Kurds in the provinces of Fars, Kerman, and Baluchestan va Sistan, and there is a large group of approximately 350,000 living in a small area of northern Khorasan. These are all descendants of Kurds whom the government forcibly removed from western Iran during the seventeenth century.
Most of the rural Kurds retain a tribal form of social organization, although the position of the chief is less significant among the majority of Kurds who live in villages than it is among the unsettled pastoralists. An estimated forty Kurdish tribes and confederations of tribes were still recognized in the mid-1980s. Many of these were organized in the traditional manner, which obligated several subordinate clans to pay dues in cash or produce and provide allegiance to a chief clan. The land reform program of the 1960s did not disrupt this essentially feudal system among most tribally organized Kurds.
The majority of both rural and urban Kurds in West Azarbaijan and Kordestan practice Sunni Islam. There is more diversity of religious practice in southern Kurdish areas, especially in the Bakhtaran area, where many villagers and townspeople follow Shia beliefs. Schismatic Islamic groups, such as the Ahl-e Haqq and the Yazdis, both of which are considered heretical by orthodox Shias, traditionally have had numerous adherents among the Kurds of the Bakhtaran region. A tiny minority of Kurds are adherents of Judaism.
The Kurds have manifested an independent spirit throughout modern Iranian history, rebelling against central government efforts to restrict their autonomy during the Safavid, Qajar, and Pahlavi periods. The most recent Kurdish uprising took place in 1979 following the Revolution. Mahabad, which has been a center of Kurdish resistance against Persian authority since the time of the Safavid monarch Shah Abbas (1587-1629), was again at the forefront of the Kurdish autonomy struggle. Intense fighting between government forces and Kurdish guerrillas occurred from 1979 to 1982, but since 1983 the government has asserted its control over most of the Kurdish area.
http://countrystudies.us/iran/40.htm
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What no one wanted but feared from the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq, unrest in the border region of Kurdish North Iraq and Turkey.
BBC News – April 15, 2005 – Turkish security forces have killed 21 members of the Kurdish paramilitary group, the PKK, in southeast Turkey, officials in the area say. Three members of the Turkish armed forces also died in the three-day operation in Siirt province, they said.
It is reported to be the biggest clash in the area since the PKK declared a unilateral truce in 1999. Turkey’s war with the separatist PKK guerrillas in the 1980s and 1990s left more than 30,000 people dead.
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, in a campaign to create a Kurdish homeland in [Kurdistan] which includes south-east part of Turkey. PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan was jailed by Turkey in 1999.
Reports say the fighting broke out about 40km (25 mi.) from the Iraq border near the town of Pervari, when a group of PKK rebels responded with gunfire after being ordered to surrender by Turkish security forces. Turkish officials said guns, hand grenades, mines, rounds of ammunition and explosives were seized in rebel hideouts in the area.
Turkey and Eurasia region
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
We’ll just ignore it along with all the other hypocrisy when it doesn’t suit our real mission. The only Kurd of importance it the Iraqi Kurd.
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The EU has recently signed an economic partnership with Syria, despite pressure from big brother the US.
Turkish Weekly — Assad said he would discuss with Sezer the role of the United States and European countries, in the region which he said resembled “the colonial era.” “We can reduce the dangers to the minimum only if we act together. The dangers are threatening all of us… They started with Iraq and have now targeted Syria … They are trying to intervene in Turkey’s internal affairs. I believe all countries in the region are under threat. All we can do is to act together…,” the Syrian president added.
[…]
On the issue of Iraq, Assad said he still feared the breakup of the country under the pressure of its feuding ethnic and religious groups. “This could pose a direct threat to Syria and Turkey…If Iraq breaks up, we will pay a very heavy bill. It is difficult even to guess what dangers we may encounter.”
Undoubtedly, an important issue on their agenda will be the Kurds in their respective countries. Syria had great difficulties last year with Kurd uprising.
Global Security – KURDISTAN MAPS
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
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He started at an early age, when he was 13 years old, Talabani became member of the student underground movement and took up arms against Iraqi rule over Kurdish region in North Iraq.
Born in 1933 in a village named Kelkan, Talabani led the struggle to gain autonomy. In a call for use of arms in 1961, Talabani became a Kurd leader. Not only on the battlefield, but also as an academic with a law degree, he fought during the sixties in Europe and the US for the cause of the Kurds.
[Translated from Dutch News item]
As the tranquility of post-election Iraq evaporates.
60 Iraqis taken hostageOui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
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following Talabani’s election as Iraq’s president.
KurdishMedia.com – By Bryar Mariwani
London 16 April 2005: Clashes have erupted between the supporters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan PUK, headed by the elected Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and the supporters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party KDP, headed by Massoud Barzani in several areas in south Kurdistan, according to the Kurdish weekly Hawlati.
As television channels worldwide covered the election of Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani to the position of President of Iraq, widespread celebrations were organised by the PUK across southern Kurdistan. The PUK’s satellite television station, KurdSat, ran a 4-day campaign promoting Talabani, and parties and celebrations at the PUK headquarters were broadcast live.
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
I started to ask why the U.S. was involved [Special Forces], but remembered who’s commander-in-chief. Another tactical and strategic error. And another example of failure to follow the money.
If proven and reported by the rest of the world press, there may finally be enough pressure applied to stop the madness. The world would justifiably accept Iranian accusations of U.S. hostile intent. The house of cards would fall. As long as the U.S., the Kurds, the Iranians and/or Israelis don’t do anything stupid. What’re the odds?
its hostile intent in Iran. Sending in rentaKurds is sort of a tradition in this particular crusade theatre.
They did it a few months before the original invasion of Iraq, and they did it again in the winter of 2002-03.
The Michael Jackson trial should wind up in about 6 weeks, then the first softening up bombing raids on Tehran can begin.
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More than 250 young Iranians, from a group committed to toppling Iran’s leaders, are back in Tehran.
By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor | March 22, 2005
TEHRAN, IRAN – 31 Iranian families awaited a reunion they thought would never come. They were reuniting with sons who had joined anti-Iran militants, officially tagged “terrorists” by both the US and Iran.
One of 31 returning combatantsThe journey of one of those sons, Hamid Khalkali, is typical: He went to Turkey five years ago for work, but ended up at a military training camp in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He was recruited by the Mujahideen-e Khalq, the “People’s Holy Warriors”, or MKO, Iran’s largest opposition group, which aims to overthrow the government. The anti-Iran militants were supported by Saddam Hussein for two decades.
But now Mr. Khalkali is being officially welcomed home. He’s one of more than 250 former combatants who have returned home since December – among the first to test Iran’s offer of amnesty. Even as hawks in Washington debate tapping the group to help engineer regime change in Iran, a growing disillusionment within the MKO, coupled with a new Shiite- dominated government in Iraq that has little sympathy for it, has thinned the ranks of this once-feared militant group.
MEK | MKO ALERT
The US State Department has singled out the Iranian Mujaheedin Khalq Organization (MKO) as a terrorist group, but some administration hawks think its members could be useful, Newsweek said in its latest edition.
According to Iran Daily, at a camp south of Baghdad, known as Ashraf, 3850 MKO members have been confined but gently treated by US forces since the 2003 invasion of Iraq [once they were allies of Saddam against their own country in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war]. Now the administration is seeking to cull useful MKO members as operatives for use against Tehran,…
Iran focus April 14 - Convention in DCUS supporting terrorists group in Iraq – handing militia in Iraq weapons cache bought in secret in Pakistan! US Foreign policy par excellence for the 21st century under Bush | Cheney | Rumsfeld.
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