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The militant Kurds of Iran
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28 June 2006
The militant Kurds of Iran
By Graeme Wood
Members of the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan: PKK) founded the Kurdistan Free Life Party (Partiya Jiyana Azada Kurdistanê: PJAK) in 2004 as an Iranian equivalent to their leftist-nationalist insurgency against the Turkish government. Since 2004, as PJAK has expanded its presence in Iran and begun an insurgency that looks increasingly like its bloody counterpart in southeastern Turkey, Iran has prosecuted members of both groups with vigour.
PJAK has taken credit for a handful of reported attacks on Iranian military targets and numerous other attacks. The group claims to fight only in retaliation for attacks on its members or on Kurdish leaders in Iran, but in practice, they seem to regard almost any public suppression of Kurdish dissidence as grounds for retaliation. Zanar Agri, a member of PJAK's co-ordinating committee, said: "Many of our militants and supporters live in Iran. The government wants to hang them and we are obliged to defend their lives and welfare."
In March, after Iranian soldiers allegedly killed 10 Kurdish militants in Maku, PJAK claims to have raided three army bases in Kurdish areas of Iran. Iran's Fars News Agency confirmed another attack near the Iraqi border that killed three officers from the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) on 30 May. Agri said the total number of officers killed was in the hundreds, although this is most likely exaggerated.
Iran strikes back
In early May, Iran showered the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq with an artillery and rocket barrage that lasted about six hours and produced hundreds of impact craters. Iran had attacked PJAK bases in Iraq north of Qandil before and had made raids against other groups, particularly the anti-regime and Iraq-based Mujahideen-e-Khalq. However, this attack was the largest Iranian move against the Kurdish rebel bases in Qandil and the most significant incursion since the 2003 ousting of Saddam Hussein.
Agri said the party's response included operations that were continuing in late May. He said they had already launched attacks at Qala'a Rasht, Sar Dasht and Kamyaran, killing more than two-dozen Iranian officers in total. PJAK also claimed responsibility for a bombing on 8 May in Kermanshah that wounded five people at a government building.
Agri pointed out that PJAK had been given ample warning and said the group's willingness to respond militarily so quickly should convince Tehran of PJAK's resilience. He said: "Before this bombardment, Iran issued many warnings for us to stop, but we expanded our activities to other parts of Iran anyway. We are not vulnerable."
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