samedi 9 avril 2011

IRAN's SECRET WAR

An Attack on a police post in Meriwan ignited a new cycle of shellings on Autonomous Kurdistan's tense border with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The PJAK rebels claimed responsibility for the attack, and assert their determination to pursue their struggle.

The spring period, when villagers from the mountainous area between autonomous Kurdistan and Iran are going back to their fields and pastures after a winter spent indoor, coincides with the Iranian artillery resuming its shelling on the border areas. These shelling are targeting the PJAK, which recently resumed its raids on the Iranian security forces.

The PJAK has been engaged since its formation in a bitter struggle against the Iranian state. Its guerrilla army, estimated to be 3000-strong (PJAK representatives refuse to confirm this number - military secret), fights a war of squirmishes with the pasdaran units on the border provinces. Its cadres are disseminated amongst the population, relaying to activists the decisions of the party. Several of its members have been sentenced to death and are awaiting their fate in Iranian jails, as many hostages to be hanged at the slightest sign of unrest in Iranian Kurdistan.
It is precisely in retaliation for the execution of one of its members in january, Hossein Khedri, that the PJAK recently carried an attack on a police station in Meriwan. As a response, Iran bombed several Kurdish villages. Shortly before those operations to occur, the 28/03/2011, Amir Karimi, member of the PJAK coordination committee, expressed the views of his organisation about this shelling policy. "The iranians are pursuing a double objective. At first, in shelling civilians, they create a refugee problem for the local authorities. A whole village becomes homeless overnight. Its people have to be sheltered and fed, must be provided support, which puts autonomous Kurdistan's already scarce resources under strain. It so exposes the KRG vulnerability and keeps it off balance. It is as wella message: if the Iranian artillery can destroy one village,it can as well destroy 3 or 4 more" But there is, says Mr Karimi, another purpose: "The Iranian army aims to empty the border zone, to change it in a no-man's-land to be patrolled by proxy forces, like Ansar al-Islam - merely an auxilliary of the Islamic regime."
The PJAK nonetheless doesn't intend to tone down its struggle. "Our militants are thrown in jail,tortured, hanged", was saying in july 2010 Mr Soran, then spokesperson in europe for the PJAK. "The Tehran government must know there willbe a price topay." Mr Karimi agrees. "In Iran we are facing a militarisation of the society. The Islamic regime lives in a logic of permanent war, and this since the beginning. In 79 it targeted the Kurds and the leftists, after it has been the liberals, today it is the reformists. Their way to address a problem is with repression; they will never give up this mentality. As a resultthe only option left is war, for the only dialogue the Islamic regime understands is the dialogue of weapons.". PJAK people do not like the term of war. They rather use the one of 'self-defence" and insist a lot on this concept. "You must understand that we at the PJAK are not warmongers. Kurdish identity is under attack, Kurdish activists from all ways of life are considered as military targets: we need a military answer."

The border clashes pose the problem of the Iranian military presence inside Iraq. "There has been military incursion during the past two years: at Shino and Piransehir, and around Halabja this year. Each time it is the HRK, PJAK's military wing, which chased the agressors back to Iran" says Mr Karimi. He confirms the existence of Iranian army posts on Iraqi soil. He explains Iraq government's passivity about this violation of national territory by the gripIran has on the present cabinet. "The Iraqi government has been formed after months of crisis by an Iranian-engineered agreement between Nouri al-Maliki and Moqtada al-Sadr, until then sworn enemies. It allowed them to bypass their sunni and secular nationalist rivals. The government owes its very existence to Iran, and so carefully avoids to confront it on anything. Especially a couple of outposts in autonomous Kurdistan". The Iranian military presence on iraqi soil is anyway not much of an issue, was thinking Mr Soran back in july. "The Itlat (iran's secret services ministry) has thousands of agents in Iraqi Kurdistan. Whatever Iran has or not a couple of outposts there is irelevant" The Iranian secret services have a centre in autonomous Kurdistan, operating with the agreement of the KRG, claim PJAK representatives. "Basically, they are turning Sulaimaniya governorate in an Iranian protectorate. Sulaimaniya lives from the trade with Iran. Tehran, if it decides it, can asphyxiate the province in no time."
More interesting than the Iranian military outposts is the issue of the security wall Iran is building along the border, was saying Mr Soran. "It is not a new idea, it dates from the Shah. The Islamic regime reanimated it 3 years ago." "The effect of this wall, says Mr Karimi, is to cripple the trans-border economy. Frontier villagers from both sides often have no other income than transborder trade, and take great risks to avoid border guards, who do not hesitate to shot them. This wall is to enclose Kurds in their poverty. The only employment left will be to become a collaborator of the regime. There is, parallely, pressures in the factories to force Kurdish workers into the militias of the state. The wall comes in completion of these pressures." A section has been completed in Piransehir. But Amir Karimi dismisses the plan as irealistic. "How do you want this wall to be efficient? Can you imagine building a wall on such a difficult border? As well, our gerrillas , our cadres, are already present deep in Iran, amongst our population. It can not succeed." Mr Soran was more cautious. "This wall is dangerous. It is to the PJAK to prevent its completion. For if we let it being built, there will be other walls, this time around Kurdish towns. Step by step Tehran will make us prisoners inside our own cities."

PJAK thinks other opposition groups in Iran will soon arm themselves. "The reformists will have to take arms or be eliminated one by one. It will be a matter of survival.", says Mr Karimi. He then expresses his party's views on the reformist movement. "We think those demonstrations are legitimate, and represent a progress. Whatever the outcome, they are a positive step. But we note this opposition has not taken any clear position about the Kurdish issue in Iran. The problem is that persians are seeing the Kurdish issue from a nationalist angle and consider Iran as a Persian-centred entity." There is as well a problem of trust towards the reformist leaders. "Mr Moussavi and the ayatollah Khatami were part of the regime. The merely agree to adapt it, while Iran actually needs a regime change - a radical one." What the PJAK wants, he says, is a confederalist system. "Our goal is to free Kurds from the centralist state, from the colonialist influence which kept them in submission during centuries. We want self administration inside a confederacy." Then he concludes: "The PJAK is ready to assume a role in the overall Iranian opposition movement to the Islamist dictatorship, provided this movement acknowledges the Kurds as equal partners and abandons the concept of a persian central state. There is not just Mr Moussavi or the ayatollah Khatami amongst the reformists, there is a new line which is building up at the moment. They interest us. We are ready to bring them the support of our experience and of our structures."