Page 2 of
2 Roots of the Kurdish struggle run
deep By Sami Moubayed
hanged in public on March 31, 1947.
Iraqi Kurds fighting alongside Barzani were forced
back to Iraq, where they too were hanged on
charges of treason.
Barzani himself led a
five-week battle with the Iranian army, and was
then forced to flee to Armenia, not returning to
Iraq until October 1958, three months after a
bloody revolution toppled the regime of King
Faysal II. From Iraq, Barzani continued his fight for
Kurdistan - which was
completed by his son - who still uses a flag that
once was the flag of the Republic of Mahabad in
Iran.
President Theodore Roosevelt's
grandson, Archibald Roosevelt, wrote a book
entitled The Kurdish Republic of Mahabad,
saying: "A main problem of the People's Republic
of Mahabad was that the Kurds needed the
assistance of the USSR; only with the Red Army did
they have a chance. But this close relationship to
[Joseph] Stalin and the USSR caused most of the
Western powers to side with Iran (against the
Kurds). Qazi Mohammad, though not denying the fact
that they were funded and supplied by the Soviets,
denied that the Kurdistan Democratic Party was a
communist party, stating that this had been
fabricated by military authorities."
What
happened to Mahabad would be similar to what
happens to Iraqi Kurdistan if the Turks carry out
their threats and attack to root out the PKK. The
situation is - dramatically - very similar.
After the collapse of Mahabad, Kurdish
ambitions remained ripe - but practically
unattainable - until the Islamic Revolution broke
out in 1979, toppling the Peacock Throne in
Tehran. At first, Kurdish politicians embraced the
revolution, believing that it carried the keys to
their emancipation and that it would counter
everything done previously by the Shah. Within a
very short period they were proven wrong.
On August 17, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini declared jihad (holy war) against the
Kurds, denouncing their separatist claims based on
ethnicity as un-Islamic. There was no such thing
as Iranian Kurdistan, he noted, and never would be
under the Islamic Republic. That stance brought
him into immediate alliance - on this issue at
least - with Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Hafez
al-Assad of Syria and then-Turkish prime minister
Bulent Ecevit.
Khomeini denied Kurdish
politicians membership in the newly created
Assembly of Experts, commissioned to draft a
republican constitution. As a results, the Kurds
boycotted the elections of April 1979. By March
1979 they were in full rebellion against the new
masters of Tehran.
Two factions emerged by
the early 1980s. One was willing to settle for
limited concessions from Khomeini, headed by
Kurdish leader Ahmad Muftizadeh. The second
faction - more radical and vocal - wanted Kurdish
autonomy in Iran. It was headed by Abdul-Rahman
Qasemlu and demanded a share in Iran's oil wealth,
to be used explicitly for Kurdish districts. They
also demanded administrative autonomy of Iranian
Kurdistan, accepting Kurdish as an official
language, and stated that any communication being
sent from Tehran to Kurdistan be written in
Kurdish, rather than Persian.
Local
security would be in the hands of the Kurds, they
added, but national defense, foreign affairs and
banking would be left for the central government
in Tehran. Khomeini - a no-compromise autocratic
and stern man - refused every single one of their
demands and sent his army to crush the Kurdish
movement.
Iranian forces launched a
ruthless war against the Kurds but this gradually
came to an end after Iran went to war against
Saddam's Iraq in 1980. Pressure on Kurdistan
weakened, and the Kurds established semi-autonomy
in the countryside, causing Khomeini to launch a
second massive operation in 1983, forcing most
Kurdish leaders to flee - ironically - to Iraq.
They were received with open arms by Saddam, who
wanted to invest in any political element that
could de-stabilize the Islamic Republic.
Naturally, this temporary alliance was blessed
with US approval, given that the Ronald Reagan
administration was fully in support of Saddam
during the Iran-Iraq War. As a result, Khomeini
welcomed Iraqi Kurds wanting to carve up Saddam's
Iraq.
This tension remained until
president Mohammad Khatami came to office in 1997
and tried to normalize relations between Persians
and Kurds in Iran. He praised the "glorious
Kurdish culture" and listened to what the Kurds
had to say. They demanded permission to use their
language and a number of posts in the Iranian
government. Khatami responded promptly, appointing
Abdullah Ramezanzadeh as governor of Iranian
Kurdistan. He was the first Kurd to assume such a
symbolic post - with government blessing.
He also appointed several prominent Kurds
as cabinet ministers, advisors and allowed them to
run freely for Parliament. Tension rose once again
when Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocelan of the PKK was
arrested in 1999, prompting thousands to march in
protest in Iran and throughout Kurdish populated
areas in the Arab and Western world. The protests
were violently crushed in Tehran.
When the
US went to war in Iraq in 2003, this aroused the
ambitions of Kurds in both Turkey and Iran. They
believed that the US would grant them autonomy
similar to the one given to their Iraqi brothers
in northern Iraq. At the time, Time Magazine
quoted an Iranian official saying: "These Kurdish
parties hope that the US will send their soldiers
to attack Iran, and that they will then be able to
play the same sort of role as Maasoud Barzani and
Jalal Talabani [Iraq's Kurdish president]. They
told the Americans, 'We can arm tens of thousands
of men and liberate Kurdistan'." That project has
not materialized - at least - not to date.
Probably the best story explaining the
new-found interest in the PKK from both Ankara and
Tehran is a Kurdish-related issue that took place
exactly 80 years ago, in October 1927. It was
another self-proclaimed Kurdish state, the
Republic of Ararat, this time on Turkish
territory, centered in Agri province (known in
Kurdish as Ararat.) It was the product of a
Kurdish rebellion, much like the Republic of
Mahabad in the 1940s - a first step at carving up
55% of modern Turkey to create the full state of
Kurdistan.
The rebellion was led by Ihsan
Nuri Pasha, a former senior Kurdish officer in the
Ottoman army. By May 1927, the Turks invaded
Ararat (similar to what they are planning to do
today with Iraqi Kurdistan) with 10,000 troops to
crush the separatist movement. When the Kurds
mobilized for war, the Turks brought in an
additional 60,000 to the battlefront. The Persians
helped the Turks by giving them access into Iran
(Mount Ararat was located on the Turkish-Iranian
border) and closed down the border to prevent
Kurdish rebels from escaping. If Turkish Kurds
succeeded in Ararat, this would inspire their
brothers in Iran to demand similar concessions.
Ararat inspired Mahabad, and Mahabad
inspired Iraqi Kurdistan, 2007. Although
leaderships have changed (beyond recognition since
the 1920s in the case of Iran) yet the essence of
the problem - Kurdistan - remains a thorn for
Turkish and Iranian leaders.
Sami
Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
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