Page 2 of
2 The smugglers of Iran's
Kordestan By a Special
Correspondent
display him on TV as
an infiltrator? Stay tuned."
Last May, a
top Kurdish guerrilla threatened to launch
hit-and-run attacks on Iran after Iranian
artillery shelling of Mount Qandil.
"We
have the right to launch attacks against Iranian
forces," said Cemil "Cuma" Bayik, the de facto
leader of the PKK, a quasi-socialist rebel
movement entrenched in a decades-long guerrilla
war for
independence in the majority-Kurdish southeast of
Turkey. In 2005, Pejak killed at least 120 Iranian
soldiers in Iran, according to the Jamestown
Foundation. In 2006, the guerrilla attacks
continued undiminished. Also active is the
left-wing Komala (Revolutionary Toilers of Iran)
group that was founded in 1969 and was affiliated
with the also-banned Communist Party of Iran. Last
year, a senior Komala representative, Abdullah
Muhtadi, traveled to Washington for a conference
of Iranian minority groups amid speculation that
the US administration was exploring a way of
working with the group against Tehran.
On
January 16, a commentary by Aref Mohammadzadeh in
the conservative daily Jomhuri-ye Eslami accused
Washington of "devising a strategy against the
Islamic Republic similar to the one which had led
to the collapse of the Soviet Union" and which
aims at "fomenting and strengthening separatist
movements and tribalist groups".
"One of
the duties of these [recruited] individuals is to
make connections inside Iran in order to recruit
other people, and also to be in contact with
Western authorities, organizations and
institutions and present false and fabricated
reports on the situation of ethnic groups in
Iran," the commentary said.
Triumphant
Iranian soldiers encountered last summer on the
outskirts of Marivan in the Kurdish heartland
claimed to have been involved in a skirmish the
previous night in which "we killed the Khomeini of
the Kurds", a comparative reference to the late
ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. But very little news
filters out from Kordestan, and the Ministry of
Islamic Guidance in Tehran throws bureaucratic
obstacles in the path of foreign journalists
seeking to visit the province.
With the
region kept underdeveloped, smuggling provides a
lucrative source of income. The Kurds' unmatched
knowledge of the bandit-infested mountain passes
connecting Iran with Iraq allows them to feed
their neighbor's thirst for gasoline while
bringing in Western electrical goods, weapons and
alcohol.
If the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards are smuggling weapons into Iraq, it is more
likely to be happening through the southern border
crossing areas of Mehran and Basra, which connect
large Revolutionary Guard infrastructure projects
with majority-Shi'ite, pro-Tehran southern Iraq.
Any arms smuggling happening through the Kurdish
areas is more likely to be Kurdish-orchestrated
and private, rather than government-led.
"The fact that serial numbers were found
[on weapons in Iraq] and that they could be traced
to Iran production factories is not completely out
of the question," said Paul Sullivan, a professor
of economics at National Defense University in the
Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC.
"However, this does not necessarily prove Iranian
culpability. These could have rather easily been
sold on black markets, smuggled etc."
The
Iranian government tries to stop the
fuel-smuggling by posting armed guards at gasoline
stations, noting license plates (a pointless
action as the system is not computerized) and
rationing fuel to 30 liters (half the full-tank
capacity of a Nissan flatbed truck, the smugglers'
favorite mode of transport) per day
"You
have to get used to sleeping in the snow at night
when bringing in a shipment," said Umar, a driver
who uses his truck to bring goods into Iraq. "We
know where the checkpoints are and carry the goods
by hand across mountain paths before depositing
them again on the other side of the checkpoint and
bringing the empty truck to carry them the rest of
the way."
Soldiers are also co-opted, and
many look forward to a stint turning a blind eye
at mountain checkpoints or gasoline pumps in
Kordestan as a lucrative form of income.
"However pure a guard or a fuel attendant
is, they become corrupted within a day when they
are given the opportunity to make in one month
enough money to be able to marry when their duty
finishes," said one Kurdish official who requested
anonymity. Many of the most successful Kurdish
smugglers are collaborators with the government in
Tehran. The state allows them to conduct their own
activities unmolested in return for their loyalty.
One Kurdish family in the inaccessible village of
Oraman has grown wealthy from smuggling but lost
one of its sons, who was in the Revolutionary
Guard when he was killed in a guerrilla attack.
Note 1. The word "dervish",
especially in European languages, refers to
members of Sufi Muslim ascetic religious
fraternities, known for their extreme poverty and
austerity, similar to mendicant friars. -
Wikipedia
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