Kurds Say Uprising is Possible In Iranian-Occupied
Kurdistan
Kenneth R. Timmerman
Friday, Aug. 3, 2007
An Iranian Kurdish group whose fighters have clashed
frequently with government forces in Iran has sent its top leader to Washington,
D.C., to seek assistance from the United States government.
Rahman Haj Ahmadi, president of the Kurdistan Free Life Party
(PJAK), told NewsMax in an exclusive interview that he hoped to meet with senior
administration officials to discuss the situation inside Iran and how the U.S.
could help the opposition.
"PJAK has thousands of fighters in the mountains of Iran and
deep inside Iranian-occupied Kurdistan cities," he said. "With U.S. help, we
will lead the Kurdish people in an uprising that could spread to the whole of
Iran."
PJAK fighters seized government buildings in Marivan briefly
in the summer of 2005, in armed clashes with regime security forces that spread
to major cities and towns through the Kurdish region. The clashes were sparked
by the brutal murder of a Kurdish human rights activist.
Ahmadi and his group have been accused by the Tehran regime of
being lackeys of the U.S. government. The July-August 2005 clashes occurred
after PJAK officials met with U.S. military leaders in northern Iraq, Tehran
alleged.
Such accusations make Ahmadi smile. "Actually, this is the
first time we have had contacts here in Washington," he told NewsMax. "We would
love to have received U.S. help, but until now we have had no direct contacts
with the U.S. government."
"We, the 12 to 14 million Kurds in Iranian-occupied Kurdistan,
will be the dependable and loyal allies of the USA and the democratic world," he
added.
PJAK claims that its armed resistance fighters control the
streets of major towns and cities in northwestern Iran after the Revolutionary
Guards troops return to barracks in the late afternoons.
Forty percent of their fighters are women, Ahmadi claims.
Women also make up 50 percent of the group's political leadership. "We are a
decidedly modern party," he said.
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he is waiting for
the badieh zaman," the legendary 12th imam of Shia Islam whose return brings
justice to the world.
"We also believe in the badieh zaman," he chuckled. "For us,
he is George W. Bush."
Based in Europe, Ahmadi recently returned from a three-month
tour of his fighters' positions inside Iran.
He told NewsMax that his organization is seeking to join
forces with other opposition groups, from republicans to monarchists, to forge a
common program of action to topple the regime."
"In our mountains, we can train people from all the other
groups. We can train them politically, and militarily," he said. "They can then
act in their own name, under their own banner."
The immediate goal, he said, was to get rid of the system of
absolute clerical rule, known as velayat-e faghih. "We want Iran to become a
secular democratic republic," he said.
"In the longer term, we would like to see Iran become a
confederation, where the rights of all ethnic groups will be guaranteed within a
single, united Iran."
He specifically rejected charges that his group was
"separatist," or that it favored in any way the break-up of Iran.
But Ahmadi also warned that when Iran's ethnic minorities
launch their uprising, the temptation by some groups to establish
ethnically-pure autonomous areas would be great.
"We must avoid ethnic cleansing at all costs," he said.
Iran's 70 million population is ethnically diverse, and
includes millions of Azeris, Kurds, Balouch, Ahwazi Arabs, Turkomans, and
others. Approximately 35 percent of the population is ethnically Persian.
But over the centuries, Iran's various populations have moved
around, intermarried and intermingled. Iran's Kurdish areas, for example, are
home to hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azeris. Roughly 1 million Kurds live in
Tehran.
This complex ethnic mosaic makes internal borders, or a
Yugoslav-style partition of the country into separate ethnic states both
"unrealistic" and "undesirable," Ahmadi said.
Instead, PJAC favors a loosely structured confederation along
the lines of Belgium or Switzerland. "But of course, all of that is long in the
future. It will take fifty years of negotiations!" he said.
