KurdistanObserver.com
Kurdish Leader Seeks U.S. Help To Topple Regime
By David R. Sands
August 4, 2007
The Washington Times
The exiled president of Iran's largest Kurdish opposition
group appealed for U.S. political and military support for its campaign to
topple Iran's Islamic regime and create a new democratic, federal government in
Tehran.
In his first visit to Washington, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, president
of the three-year-old Kurdistan Free Life Party, told The Washington Times that
the Iranian regime faced a growing internal challenge to its power from the
Kurds, Azeris and other restive minority groups.
Mr. Haj-Ahmadi, who lives in Germany, said his movement, known
by its Kurdish acronym PJAK, was forced to take up arms and retreat to the
rugged highlands along the Iran-Iraq border in self-defense against the central
government.
"We certainly would not take to the mountains and live such a
difficult existence if the regime allowed us to pursue our struggle
politically," said Mr. Haj-Ahmadi, speaking through an interpreter, in an
interview Wednesday.
PJAK, he said, has only limited contact with the U.S.
government, but he appealed to Washington to push Iran harder on its human
rights record and said his party would welcome American military and financial
aid to carry on its fight.
"We obviously cannot topple the government with the ammunition
and the weapons we have now," he said. "Any financial or military help that
would speed the path to a true Iranian democracy, we would very much welcome,
particularly from the United States."
But the question of the Kurds, a stateless people with
significant communities in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, is one of the most
delicate facing the Bush administration.
Iraq's Kurds were key U.S. allies in the campaign to oust
Saddam Hussein and establish a stable Iraq. But Turkey, also a key U.S. ally in
the region, has fought a long, bloody war against Kurdish separatists to the
north and watches with increasing anger signs that Iraq's Kurds are moving to de
facto autonomy.
The Kurdish independence movement in Turkey, known as the PKK,
was officially designated a terrorist organization by the State Department.
Chris Zambelis, a terrorism analyst with the Washington-based Jamestown
Foundation, said there are multiple reports of operational and logistical links
between the PKK and PJAK.
PJAK officials traveling with Mr. Haj-Ahmadi said they tried
to set up meetings with the State Department and other administration officials,
but received "no answer" to their requests. Mr. Haj-Ahmadi said PJAK had good
relations with other Kurdish movements in the region, but insisted his party was
a "completely independent organization" from the PKK.
Iran's leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
accused the United States of secretly funding PJAK and other minority resistance
movements as part of a campaign to undermine their regime.
Mr. Haj-Ahmadi dismissed questions of whether PJAK was part of
a master plan to create new "Greater Kurdistan" in the region.
"Right now, for us, democracy inside Iran is the issue," he
said. "We will work with whoever we can to establish a just, democratic federal
government to replace the Islamic regime."
If and when democracy takes hold in Iran and throughout the
region, "we would then lean toward the idea of a greater Kurdistan as an
aspiration," he said. The PJAK president acknowledged that his group did not
have the numbers or the military might to challenge the Iranian regime on its
own.
"But I guarantee you, anyone who wants to do something about
Iran needs to reach out to us," he said. "We are working hard to make ourselves
known to other ethnic minorities in Iran. Without PJAK, you will not get
anywhere."
