KurdistanObserver.com

With Kurds' success in Iraq, some Iranian Kurds itching to resume fight in their homeland

By Yahya Barzanji

May 22,2005

Qandill, (Southern Kurdistan) (AP) Some 200 Iranian Kurds marched in single file up an icy mountain path, carrying automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. They were training for the day when they hope to cross the nearby Iraqi border into Iran, recruit supporters and reopen a rebellion they reluctantly abandoned long ago.

After more than 20 years of calm, fighters based in northern Iraq are itching to resume the Iranian Kurds' campaign for greater autonomy, emboldened by the success of their brethren in post-Saddam Iraq.

''We want to break the peace we were forced to accept,'' Piryar Gabary told an Associated Press reporter visiting Qandil Mountain, the group's base in northeast Iraq.

Such talk, however, doesn't sit well with the Iraqi Kurdish leadership, which is wary of provoking Iran and disturbing its new stature in Iraq's government and has vowed to prevent cross-border attacks.

The situation illustrates the Iraqi Kurds' delicate position in the reshuffled deck that has emerged in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

Their policy of preventing attacks on Iran is not new. Already in 1991, when they won their Western-protected autonomy in Iraq, Kurdish leaders banned the exiles among them from mounting cross-border attacks.

But the empowerment of Iraq's Kurds since the U.S.-led invasion has inspired their brethren spread across an area from western Turkey and Syria to eastern Iran, who yearn for an independent unified Kurdistan that would take chunks out of all those countries.

That means heightened pressure on the Iraqi Kurds not to antagonize neighboring Turkey and Iran, which have both sent troops into Iraq in the past to put down Kurdish rebels. Moreover, Iraq's Kurds are now in a government alliance with Shiite parties closely tied to Iran's clerical rulers.

When the AP visited the base in March, Gabary, a leading figure in the rebels' Free Life Party, vowed to open hostilities after the snows melted. Then, on May 9, after the thaw began, he claimed that some fighters had already crossed into Iran and waged a small clash with Iranian troops. He gave no details, and the skirmish could not be independently confirmed.

But the strong response from mainstream Kurds illustrates how anxious they are to keep the peace.

''Iran is a neighbor country and we will not allow any side to use our borders for military operations,'' warned Mustafa Sayid Qadir of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two parties that rule Iraq's Kurdish provinces.

Other Kurdish leaders in Iraq said they did not know of any clashes. Iran refused to comment, but former lawmaker Abdollah Sohrabi was among several Iranian Kurdish activists who told the AP they haven't heard of the Free Life Party.

Qadir dismissed it as a ''very small'' organization. Gabary claimed to have around 2,000 fighters a number that could not be independently confirmed.

The four main Iranian Kurdish groups in Iraq said they had no plans to start a fight. Hassan al-Sharify, no. 2 in the largest one, the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, said: ''The Free Life Party consists of enthusiastic young men who cannot topple the regime alone.''

The last full-scale rebellion by Iranian Kurds broke out in 1979, and after intense fighting the Tehran government re-established control over its Kurdish areas in 1983.

Since then Iranian Kurdistan has been largely peaceful. Kurds, who make up about 11 percent of Iran's 70 million people, complain of discrimination but have made no significant moves to break away. When Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was chosen this month as Iraq's new president, some Kurds in Iran celebrated in the streets, and there were unconfirmed reports of arrests.

The U.N. counts 4,600 Kurdish refugees from Iran in the Kurdish provinces of Iraq, with more drifting there from camps in western and southern Iraq.

The Free Life Party, grouping separate factions of Kurds from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, was formed in 2003.

Its fighters are operating under the radar of Iraqi and Iranian officials. Qandil Mountain, in Iraq's northeast corner near Iran and Turkey, is a rugged, isolated region where Kurdish authorities have little control.

The AP reporter who visited saw about 50 fighters being taught to dismantle and reassemble an automatic rifle. Women wearing traditional male Kurdish clothes sat in a circle with the men. Other recruits jogged uphill carrying bags of rocks.

In one of several rooms with tables fashioned from mud, a teacher wrote on a chalkboard, instructing students how to carry out hit-and-run shootings.

The diplomatic issues mean little to fighters like Gabary, 42.

''Politics in the Middle East is of no avail without military forces,'' he said.