Yearly Human Rights Report: 956 Kurds Imprisoned and 206 were Killed or Injured by Iran
by PDKI | on March 27, 2015 | in Human Rights |
According to data gathered by the PDKI, at least 956 Kurds have been arrested by Iranian authorities during the past year (which, according to the Kurdish calendar, is between 21 March 2014 to 21 March 2015). 206 Kurds have been either killed or injured by Iranian security forces or by landmines during the same period.
Of the 956 Kurds that have been arrested, 415 of them have not yet been convicted or released. 386 individuals were released after being interrogated and 79 were handed prison sentences.
During the past year, 74 Kurds were shot by Iranian security forces in different cities and towns. 79 Kurds were shot on the border with southern Kurdistan (Iraq) and north Kurdistan (Turkey) and 63 Kurds were victims of landmines.
Of the 79 Kurds that were shot on the border, 37 died and 42 were severely injured.
Out of the 74 Kurds that were shot by Iranian security forces in the different cities and towns of eastern Kurdistan (Iran), 20 died and 44 were injured.
Out of the 63 victims of landmines, 22 died and 41 were injured.
viernes, 8 de mayo de 2015
domingo, 19 de abril de 2015
Mohtadi (Komaleh) warns about Iranian Regime
Iran nuclear talks: Top Kurdish dissident warns Islamic regime 'are oppressors and liars'
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iran-nuclear-talks-top-kurdish-dissident-warns-that-islamic-regime-are-oppressors-liars-1494513
By Orlando Crowcroft Executive Editor
April 1, 2015 11:39 BST
Iranian Kurdish dissident Abdullah Mohtadi says that Iranian regime are oppressors and liars
Even in the swanky lobby of a five star hotel in London Victoria, Iranian Kurdish dissident Abdullah Mohtadi has to look over his shoulder. As secretary general of the Kurdish Komala party, he has not been able to return to his home in the north of Iran for three decades.
"I am one of the most wanted people in Iran. The Iranian regime has assassinated hundreds of people outside of their own country. I do not feel safe anywhere in the world," he told IBTimes UK during a brief visit to London from his home In Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Komala is one two main parties that represent between five and six million Kurds living in four Kurdish-majority provinces in Iran's North West. Kurds refer to this region as East Kurdistan, with the Kurdish areas of Iraq, Syria and Turkey known as South, West and North Kurdistan respectively.
“'I do not think the Iranian regime are part of the solution, they are part of the problem.'”
- Abdullah Mohtadi
Only in Iraq and to a certain degree Syria do Kurds have any real political autonomy. Turkish and Iranian Kurdish parties are banned and Kurds suffer severe restrictions on their language, traditions and culture. Mohtadi said that in 2015 that repression in Iran is worse than ever.
"Kurdish NGOs are not allowed in [Iranian] Kurdistan. The situation is still very hard. They execute young people for protesting. [Iranian] Kurdistan is reaching boiling point," he said.
Komala has not engaged militarily with Iran for 18 years, says Mohtadi, as the Kurdish movement supports pro-democracy movements in the country rather than violence.
As a young man, Mohtadi took part in the revolution in 1979 which saw the overthrow of the Shah, but when Ayatollah Khomeini returned and established the Islamic theocracy that rules Iran to this day, he fled to the north of the country and then, in 1983, left Iran completely.
The Kurds supported the Green Movement that swept Iran in 2009-2010, but since it was violently put down by the government the situation for democratic Iranian parties – the Kurds included – has been increasingly dire. A new generation of Iranian Kurds is growing increasingly angry and looking to parties such as Komala to stand up for them.
“'The international community forgets about the violations and the human rights abuses against its own people – especially against Kurds.'” - Abdullah Mohtadi
As such, a return to violence could be inevitable, Mohtadi fears.
"It is especially unbearable for the young generation. They want us to do something. They are arresting and executing people just for celebrating Newroz [Kurdish New Year] – how long can you tolerate this?" he said.
As the West looks poised to sign a nuclear deal with Iran and bring Tehran in from 40 years of isolation, Mohtadi said that the international community has overlooked the negative affect Iran has on the entire Middle East region.
"We're not against a nuclear deal as such but we hope they don't make so many concessions to Iran that could embolden them in their domestic and regional policies. Look at the balance sheet of this regime: they have been ruling the country for 36 years. They have ruined the country and its economy and its reputation. They have turned Iran into a prison for women, for the young, and for ethnic groups," he said.
"The international community forgets about the violations and the human rights abuses against its own people – especially against Kurds."
Mohtadi believes that the perception of President Hassan Rouhani as a reformer is a myth, and points out that there have been more executions under the leader than under his anti-Western predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iranian Kurdish militias made headlines in recent weeks after they joined Iraqi Kurdish fighters in the fight to liberate Kirkuk from IS. Komala fighters were part of the operation, pitting them effectively on the same side as Iran, who were pushing north to combat IS in Tikrit.
“'[Islamic State] is a terrorist group that is against everything that is dear to us.'”
- Abdullah Mohtadi
But Mohtadi said that the 60 Komala fighters currently on the front line in Kirkuk were defending Kurds, and said that Iranian Kurdish peshmerga would take no part in any operation to liberate non-Kurdish areas from IS – including Mosul, an IS stronghold since June 2014.
"They are a terrorist group that are against Kurds, against the Yazidis, against democracy, against everything that is dear to us," said Mohtadi.
He remains concerned about the role of Iranian-backed Shia militias and Iranian military commanders such as General Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, in the recent offensive to liberate Tikrit from Islamic State (IS).
"I do not think the Iranian regime are part of the solution, they are part of the problem. They should not be allowed to take part in any operation inside Iraq," he said.
As for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry – who have staked the Obama administration's legacy on a deal with Iran – Mohtadi only has words of warning.
"Even if they sign a deal with the US, still lots of problems will remain. They are sponsoring terrorism, interfering in many countries in the region. They are destabilising the whole region. The West must not forget that they are oppressors and liars," he said.
jueves, 26 de marzo de 2015
"What Are Iran's Goals in Iraq?" - Mustafa Hijri (PDKI)
What are Iran’s Goals in Iraq?
By: Mustafa Hijri
Currently, Iranian forces alongside with Shiite militias, who are funded and controlled by Iran, are fighting the Daash in Tikrit and other places in Iraq. The Daash , or Daesh, gained international attention following the seizure of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. However, more than a year before Daesh seized control of Mosul, our party publicly warned, based on credible intelligence, that Iranian agents had infiltrated Daesh and that if unchecked, the expansion of this terrorist group would serve Iranian interests in Syria and beyond. Media outlets in the Gulf countries, citing their own intelligence sources, also warned about this reality.
To some analysts and policymakers in the West, these claims might seem puzzling. Some might even dismiss them as yet another conspiracy theory emanating from the Middle East.
However, aside from the intelligence on Iran’s infiltration of Daesh, past Iranian actions, open sources and the consequences of the rise of Daesh can be cited in support of those claims.
First, Iran’s support and funding of various terrorist groups throughout the Middle East is well known. For example, in a report by the Library of Congress on Iran’s Minister of Intelligence and Security, it is stated that Iran “provides financial, material, technological, or other support services to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), all designated terrorist organizations under U.S. Executive Order 13224.”
While the Iranian regime adheres to a fundamentalist interpretation of Shiite Islam and is in conflict with the Sunnis, Tehran has on numerous occasions supported terrorist Sunni groups to destabilize strategically important countries in the Middle East. Iranian infiltration of and support for Daesh should therefore come as no surprise, although Iranian forces are fighting the group in Iraq.
Second, once the Iranian regime and its Syrian ally realized that secular forces who were taking the lead in the fight against the combined forces of Assad, Iran and Hezbollah could become a viable opposition force, they capitalized on Daesh’s split from al-Qaida and in various ways made sure that Daesh – which had set out to eliminate all other opposition groups – could become the dominant group in Syria. At the same time, Iraq’s former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, released many members of Daesh from prison that subsequently joined the group in Syria. Iran, the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq and the Assad regime in Syria were fearful that the secular forces in Syria could become an ideologically attractive ally for the Western powers.
To discredit the Syrian opposition and paint it as a radical Sunni movement dominated by a vicious terrorist organization like Daesh, their aim was to compel the Western powers to reconsider their plans for regime change and accept the Assad regime as the lesser evil compared to a possible Daesh takeover in Syria. To this end, Iran and the Assad regime gave Daesh free leeway to establish its control over Raaqah in Syria, from where it later could expand into other parts of Syria and, as it turned out, even Iraq. Although this too might sound as bizarre, reports had for some time indicated the expansion of Daesh was indeed facilitated by Iran and Syria. For example, the Washington Post reported on June 10, 2014, the following: “Moderate rebel groups complain that Daash ’s rise has been aided by the relative disinterest shown by Syrian government forces in the areas under the group’s control, which are rarely subjected to airstrikes and bombardment. That has helped the group set up its own version of a government.”
Third, irrespective of whether one finds existing intelligence or the open sources in that regard as credible, the rise and expansion of Daesh has as a matter of fact served the interests of the Islamic regime in Iran. In other words, irrespective of Iranian intentions and schemes, the consequences of Daesh’s emergence as a formidable fighting force in Syria and, later, its expansion into Iraq has served the interests of the regime in Tehran.
Although Iran is allied with some Shiite groups in Iraq, the regime in Tehran has defined its strategic interests in Iraq in three ways. The first is to preclude the emergence of a federal democracy in Iraq that is stable and economically and politically strong enough to become a regional power with the capacity to block Iranian hegemony. Although the regime in Tehran is rhetorically committed to “friendly” relations with Iraq, it pursues a policy of divide and conquer toward its Shiite-dominated neighbor. The second strategic objective of Iran in Iraq is to make sure that democracy does not take root. In fact, Iran’s concerted effort is to make sure that democracy is associated with chaos and instability. The third Iranian strategic interest in Iraq is to undermine the Kurdistan regional government and make sure that the Kurds do not progress further. Iran is fearful of the Kurdistan regional government and its drive toward independence because of its demonstration effect on other parts of Kurdistan.
It is noteworthy that Daesh first stated that it would seize Baghdad once it consolidated itself in Mosul. However, Daesh instead attacked South Kurdistan. This came at a time when the Iraqi-Kurdish leadership called for a referendum on independence.
In short, Daesh’s expansion into Iraq, which was facilitated by Iran, the Assad regime and the Maliki government, has made Iraq even weaker and thus more amenable to Iranian control. The Iraqi army has been reduced substantially. Meanwhile, Shiite militias that answer to Iran have become the most powerful military forces in Iraq. These militias terrorize the Sunni population and thus perpetuate the sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis. In fact, Daesh has helped the Shiite government in Iraq in this regard by eliminating prominent figures and tribal leaders with the Sunni community, thus making the Sunnis even more vulnerable. At the same time, the Kurdistan region’s war with Daesh has drained the limited resources of the Kurdish government, resulted in hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, several thousand dead and injured Peshmergas, as well as other dangerous consequences for Iraq at large and the Kurdistan region in particular.
In the midst of all this, there are naïve journalists, pundits and even some government officials in the Western world who have bought into the propaganda by the Iranian regime’s lobby that it is a force for “stability” in the region. The regime in Tehran, which is the major source of instability throughout the Middle East, is painted in some circles as a possible stabilizing factor in Iraq and elsewhere.
However, as recently warned by General David H. Petraeus, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, the strategic threat to stability, democracy and western interests in Iraq and Syria is the Iranian regime. According to Gen. Petraeus, Iran is on the verge of creating a terrorist proxy similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus posing a strategic threat to the balance of power in the region.
In spite of the economic siege on South Kurdistan, the Kurdish government and the brave Peshmerga forces have managed to not only withstand the multiple military attacks by Daesh, but also to push back this terrorist group from Kurdish territory. Once Daesh is defeated, a war between the Peshmerga Forces and the militias of Iran in Iraq is likely. This is likely to start in Kirkuk and other strategically important places.
To prevent a situation where the West has to decide whether to fight a war with Iran’s proxies in Iraq, the United States and its allies should increase their support for the Kurdistan region. Only through a visible presence in combination with financial and military support for the Kurdistan region can the West undermine Iran’s drive for hegemony in the Middle East.
By: Mustafa Hijri
Currently, Iranian forces alongside with Shiite militias, who are funded and controlled by Iran, are fighting the Daash in Tikrit and other places in Iraq. The Daash , or Daesh, gained international attention following the seizure of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. However, more than a year before Daesh seized control of Mosul, our party publicly warned, based on credible intelligence, that Iranian agents had infiltrated Daesh and that if unchecked, the expansion of this terrorist group would serve Iranian interests in Syria and beyond. Media outlets in the Gulf countries, citing their own intelligence sources, also warned about this reality.
To some analysts and policymakers in the West, these claims might seem puzzling. Some might even dismiss them as yet another conspiracy theory emanating from the Middle East.
However, aside from the intelligence on Iran’s infiltration of Daesh, past Iranian actions, open sources and the consequences of the rise of Daesh can be cited in support of those claims.
First, Iran’s support and funding of various terrorist groups throughout the Middle East is well known. For example, in a report by the Library of Congress on Iran’s Minister of Intelligence and Security, it is stated that Iran “provides financial, material, technological, or other support services to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), all designated terrorist organizations under U.S. Executive Order 13224.”
While the Iranian regime adheres to a fundamentalist interpretation of Shiite Islam and is in conflict with the Sunnis, Tehran has on numerous occasions supported terrorist Sunni groups to destabilize strategically important countries in the Middle East. Iranian infiltration of and support for Daesh should therefore come as no surprise, although Iranian forces are fighting the group in Iraq.
Second, once the Iranian regime and its Syrian ally realized that secular forces who were taking the lead in the fight against the combined forces of Assad, Iran and Hezbollah could become a viable opposition force, they capitalized on Daesh’s split from al-Qaida and in various ways made sure that Daesh – which had set out to eliminate all other opposition groups – could become the dominant group in Syria. At the same time, Iraq’s former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, released many members of Daesh from prison that subsequently joined the group in Syria. Iran, the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq and the Assad regime in Syria were fearful that the secular forces in Syria could become an ideologically attractive ally for the Western powers.
To discredit the Syrian opposition and paint it as a radical Sunni movement dominated by a vicious terrorist organization like Daesh, their aim was to compel the Western powers to reconsider their plans for regime change and accept the Assad regime as the lesser evil compared to a possible Daesh takeover in Syria. To this end, Iran and the Assad regime gave Daesh free leeway to establish its control over Raaqah in Syria, from where it later could expand into other parts of Syria and, as it turned out, even Iraq. Although this too might sound as bizarre, reports had for some time indicated the expansion of Daesh was indeed facilitated by Iran and Syria. For example, the Washington Post reported on June 10, 2014, the following: “Moderate rebel groups complain that Daash ’s rise has been aided by the relative disinterest shown by Syrian government forces in the areas under the group’s control, which are rarely subjected to airstrikes and bombardment. That has helped the group set up its own version of a government.”
Third, irrespective of whether one finds existing intelligence or the open sources in that regard as credible, the rise and expansion of Daesh has as a matter of fact served the interests of the Islamic regime in Iran. In other words, irrespective of Iranian intentions and schemes, the consequences of Daesh’s emergence as a formidable fighting force in Syria and, later, its expansion into Iraq has served the interests of the regime in Tehran.
Although Iran is allied with some Shiite groups in Iraq, the regime in Tehran has defined its strategic interests in Iraq in three ways. The first is to preclude the emergence of a federal democracy in Iraq that is stable and economically and politically strong enough to become a regional power with the capacity to block Iranian hegemony. Although the regime in Tehran is rhetorically committed to “friendly” relations with Iraq, it pursues a policy of divide and conquer toward its Shiite-dominated neighbor. The second strategic objective of Iran in Iraq is to make sure that democracy does not take root. In fact, Iran’s concerted effort is to make sure that democracy is associated with chaos and instability. The third Iranian strategic interest in Iraq is to undermine the Kurdistan regional government and make sure that the Kurds do not progress further. Iran is fearful of the Kurdistan regional government and its drive toward independence because of its demonstration effect on other parts of Kurdistan.
It is noteworthy that Daesh first stated that it would seize Baghdad once it consolidated itself in Mosul. However, Daesh instead attacked South Kurdistan. This came at a time when the Iraqi-Kurdish leadership called for a referendum on independence.
In short, Daesh’s expansion into Iraq, which was facilitated by Iran, the Assad regime and the Maliki government, has made Iraq even weaker and thus more amenable to Iranian control. The Iraqi army has been reduced substantially. Meanwhile, Shiite militias that answer to Iran have become the most powerful military forces in Iraq. These militias terrorize the Sunni population and thus perpetuate the sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis. In fact, Daesh has helped the Shiite government in Iraq in this regard by eliminating prominent figures and tribal leaders with the Sunni community, thus making the Sunnis even more vulnerable. At the same time, the Kurdistan region’s war with Daesh has drained the limited resources of the Kurdish government, resulted in hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, several thousand dead and injured Peshmergas, as well as other dangerous consequences for Iraq at large and the Kurdistan region in particular.
In the midst of all this, there are naïve journalists, pundits and even some government officials in the Western world who have bought into the propaganda by the Iranian regime’s lobby that it is a force for “stability” in the region. The regime in Tehran, which is the major source of instability throughout the Middle East, is painted in some circles as a possible stabilizing factor in Iraq and elsewhere.
However, as recently warned by General David H. Petraeus, former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, the strategic threat to stability, democracy and western interests in Iraq and Syria is the Iranian regime. According to Gen. Petraeus, Iran is on the verge of creating a terrorist proxy similar to Hezbollah in Lebanon, thus posing a strategic threat to the balance of power in the region.
In spite of the economic siege on South Kurdistan, the Kurdish government and the brave Peshmerga forces have managed to not only withstand the multiple military attacks by Daesh, but also to push back this terrorist group from Kurdish territory. Once Daesh is defeated, a war between the Peshmerga Forces and the militias of Iran in Iraq is likely. This is likely to start in Kirkuk and other strategically important places.
To prevent a situation where the West has to decide whether to fight a war with Iran’s proxies in Iraq, the United States and its allies should increase their support for the Kurdistan region. Only through a visible presence in combination with financial and military support for the Kurdistan region can the West undermine Iran’s drive for hegemony in the Middle East.
viernes, 13 de marzo de 2015
"A republic of the Mind"
REPUBLIC OF THE MIND
Although it was crushed soon after I left, the self-declared Republic of Iranian Kurdistan lives on for me as a republic of the mind that you can never completely destroy, writes Mark Colvin.
This is a story about five days I spent in a place that never existed.
It happened 35 years ago, on my first major assignment as a foreign correspondent.
It was five months in to the Iranian hostage crisis: just a couple of months after the events depicted in the film Argo.
April 1980.
If you've seen that film, although it bends the truth considerably as it goes on, its first half is a reasonable depiction of the chaotic, violent and utterly unpredictable atmosphere of Tehran at that time.
Then on April 24 came the US rescue raid, Operation Eagle Claw, which failed so spectacularly in the Dasht-e Kavir desert, with American aircraft crashing into each other in a sandstorm.
My cameraman Les Seymour and I covered the reaction to that, including an anti-American demonstration of an estimated half a million people when we were beaten up by young Hezbollah thugs.
After a few more days, the stories in the capital began to seem repetitive: another car bomb, another riot, but somehow nothing new to say.
Let's go and cover an actual war, was basically how the BBC correspondent Alex Brodie pitched it to me. Let's go to this place up in the north-west that's trying to make itself independent of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime.
The self-declared Republic of Iranian Kurdistan was a place that did not exist in the eyes of the country's central government, of the United Nations, or in the consciousness of most of the world.
But it was a place that had been fighting for its life since the spring of the previous year. A place whose capital had been besieged and sacked by the Iranian army, with its American equipment inherited from the Shah, but then retaken by ill-equipped Kurdish Peshmergan.
Alex's friend and interpreter, Bahram Dehqani Tafti, an Anglo-Iranian poet and teacher not long out of Oxford university, said he'd come with us and translate.
We took a plane to Tabriz, and drove towards Kurdistan with absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.
Eventually we reached a ramshackle sort of border post, an oddity given that officially there was no border: how could there be, to a place that didn't exist?
The sergeant told us to go and see his major, and detailed a young recruit to sit in the car as we drove there. He sat between me and Bahram, with his rifle between his knees, idly picking his teeth with the sight at the end of the barrel.
Don't look, said Bahram, but he's got the safety catch off.
The next five minutes on a bumpy track were spent praying he wouldn't blow his head off, in which case we'd undoubtedly get the blame.
It was the first time, but not the last, in my career that I was to reflect how closely foreign correspondent work still resembled Evelyn Waugh's great comic novel Scoop.
When we reached the major, Bahram somehow persuaded him to let us continue.
Before dusk we were in Mahabad, the capital, a neatly laid out town that bore few traces of the mighty battle to recapture it only a few months before.
What I remember, after the near anarchy of Tehran, was an aura of peace and military discipline: well-organised, neatly dressed soldiers who knew how to handle their weapons.
"A Kurd kills with one shot," one of them told me. "We have always been short of ammunition."
In Mahabad, we met the Kurds' spiritual leader, Sheikh Ezzedine Husseini, a man who had always argued for a secular republic and insisted that clergy like himself had no business running a country, and their political leader, Dr Qassemlou, a Sorbonne-educated democrat who spoke eight languages and espoused Kurdish nationalism all his life.
Then we drove south, because that's where the Iranian Army counter-attack was coming from.
We thought they were a long way off, south of Sanandaj, but before we got to Saqqez, halfway there, a helicopter gunship rose over a bluff about 100 metres away, its heavy machine gun pointed straight at us. It hovered for what seemed like an hour but was probably a minute, then peeled away.
I was congratulating myself on my own coolness not long after when we stopped. Then I got out off the car and my knees literally gave way. I was on the ground in a heap. Your body tells the truth about fear, even when you try to lie.
We got to Saqqez and debated whether to go on. There was a convoy leaving for Sanandaj straight away, and maybe not another till the next day.
We erred on the side of caution and sat talking to local Kurdish leaders, drinking small cups of this sweet coffee and smoking. We wondered if we should have just gone on in the convoy. Then a man, white-faced and shaking, came in and started talking to the chief. The remnants of the convoy we would have taken were on their way back.
We filmed the damaged trucks that had survived, the survivors and the charred bodies of the dead. An air-to ground rocket attack is an ugly thing.
I've seldom felt so remote from the world. We got lost on the way back to Mahabad, in the dead of night. We pulled into a hamlet and asked the way. It was the provincial capital, after all. "I've heard of it," came the unhelpful reply.
We found it the next morning.
Eventually we got back to Tabriz, then to Tehran. Two days later, on his way to my hotel to translate and transcribe the interviews, Bahram Dehqani Tafti was pulled over, driven to Evin prison, and murdered.
Sanandaj soon fell, then Saqqez. Mahabad held on a long time, but it fell, too. Sheikh Ezzedine spent his last 20 years in Swedish exile. Dr Qassemlou went into exile too, and Iranian government agents assassinated him in Vienna in 1989. No-one was ever charged.
Iranian Kurdistan never existed for the world. Neither Iran nor the big powers have ever wanted a Kurdish state: not in Iran, Iraq, Syria or Turkey, regardless of who's in power.
But it has lived on for me, always there, when I saw how Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds just over the border in Halabja, and now when I see ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa and driven at huge cost out of Kobane.
It wasn't a Utopia, just a reasonable attempt at a decent autonomous state, and although it was crushed, it lives on for me in a parallel reality, a republic of the mind of the sort that you can never completely crush.
This is an edited version of a speech delivered at the Melbourne Town Hall at a night of storytelling to mark the 5th anniversary of the Wheeler Centre, on the theme "Five".
Mark Colvin is the presenter of ABC Radio's current affairs program PM.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/colvin-a-republic-of-the-mind-my-visit-to-iranian-kurdistan/6115558
Although it was crushed soon after I left, the self-declared Republic of Iranian Kurdistan lives on for me as a republic of the mind that you can never completely destroy, writes Mark Colvin.
This is a story about five days I spent in a place that never existed.
It happened 35 years ago, on my first major assignment as a foreign correspondent.
It was five months in to the Iranian hostage crisis: just a couple of months after the events depicted in the film Argo.
April 1980.
If you've seen that film, although it bends the truth considerably as it goes on, its first half is a reasonable depiction of the chaotic, violent and utterly unpredictable atmosphere of Tehran at that time.
Then on April 24 came the US rescue raid, Operation Eagle Claw, which failed so spectacularly in the Dasht-e Kavir desert, with American aircraft crashing into each other in a sandstorm.
My cameraman Les Seymour and I covered the reaction to that, including an anti-American demonstration of an estimated half a million people when we were beaten up by young Hezbollah thugs.
After a few more days, the stories in the capital began to seem repetitive: another car bomb, another riot, but somehow nothing new to say.
Let's go and cover an actual war, was basically how the BBC correspondent Alex Brodie pitched it to me. Let's go to this place up in the north-west that's trying to make itself independent of Ayatollah Khomeini's regime.
The self-declared Republic of Iranian Kurdistan was a place that did not exist in the eyes of the country's central government, of the United Nations, or in the consciousness of most of the world.
But it was a place that had been fighting for its life since the spring of the previous year. A place whose capital had been besieged and sacked by the Iranian army, with its American equipment inherited from the Shah, but then retaken by ill-equipped Kurdish Peshmergan.
Alex's friend and interpreter, Bahram Dehqani Tafti, an Anglo-Iranian poet and teacher not long out of Oxford university, said he'd come with us and translate.
We took a plane to Tabriz, and drove towards Kurdistan with absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.
Eventually we reached a ramshackle sort of border post, an oddity given that officially there was no border: how could there be, to a place that didn't exist?
The sergeant told us to go and see his major, and detailed a young recruit to sit in the car as we drove there. He sat between me and Bahram, with his rifle between his knees, idly picking his teeth with the sight at the end of the barrel.
Don't look, said Bahram, but he's got the safety catch off.
The next five minutes on a bumpy track were spent praying he wouldn't blow his head off, in which case we'd undoubtedly get the blame.
It was the first time, but not the last, in my career that I was to reflect how closely foreign correspondent work still resembled Evelyn Waugh's great comic novel Scoop.
When we reached the major, Bahram somehow persuaded him to let us continue.
Before dusk we were in Mahabad, the capital, a neatly laid out town that bore few traces of the mighty battle to recapture it only a few months before.
What I remember, after the near anarchy of Tehran, was an aura of peace and military discipline: well-organised, neatly dressed soldiers who knew how to handle their weapons.
"A Kurd kills with one shot," one of them told me. "We have always been short of ammunition."
In Mahabad, we met the Kurds' spiritual leader, Sheikh Ezzedine Husseini, a man who had always argued for a secular republic and insisted that clergy like himself had no business running a country, and their political leader, Dr Qassemlou, a Sorbonne-educated democrat who spoke eight languages and espoused Kurdish nationalism all his life.
Then we drove south, because that's where the Iranian Army counter-attack was coming from.
We thought they were a long way off, south of Sanandaj, but before we got to Saqqez, halfway there, a helicopter gunship rose over a bluff about 100 metres away, its heavy machine gun pointed straight at us. It hovered for what seemed like an hour but was probably a minute, then peeled away.
I was congratulating myself on my own coolness not long after when we stopped. Then I got out off the car and my knees literally gave way. I was on the ground in a heap. Your body tells the truth about fear, even when you try to lie.
We got to Saqqez and debated whether to go on. There was a convoy leaving for Sanandaj straight away, and maybe not another till the next day.
We erred on the side of caution and sat talking to local Kurdish leaders, drinking small cups of this sweet coffee and smoking. We wondered if we should have just gone on in the convoy. Then a man, white-faced and shaking, came in and started talking to the chief. The remnants of the convoy we would have taken were on their way back.
We filmed the damaged trucks that had survived, the survivors and the charred bodies of the dead. An air-to ground rocket attack is an ugly thing.
I've seldom felt so remote from the world. We got lost on the way back to Mahabad, in the dead of night. We pulled into a hamlet and asked the way. It was the provincial capital, after all. "I've heard of it," came the unhelpful reply.
We found it the next morning.
Eventually we got back to Tabriz, then to Tehran. Two days later, on his way to my hotel to translate and transcribe the interviews, Bahram Dehqani Tafti was pulled over, driven to Evin prison, and murdered.
Sanandaj soon fell, then Saqqez. Mahabad held on a long time, but it fell, too. Sheikh Ezzedine spent his last 20 years in Swedish exile. Dr Qassemlou went into exile too, and Iranian government agents assassinated him in Vienna in 1989. No-one was ever charged.
Iranian Kurdistan never existed for the world. Neither Iran nor the big powers have ever wanted a Kurdish state: not in Iran, Iraq, Syria or Turkey, regardless of who's in power.
But it has lived on for me, always there, when I saw how Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds just over the border in Halabja, and now when I see ISIS in Mosul and Raqqa and driven at huge cost out of Kobane.
It wasn't a Utopia, just a reasonable attempt at a decent autonomous state, and although it was crushed, it lives on for me in a parallel reality, a republic of the mind of the sort that you can never completely crush.
This is an edited version of a speech delivered at the Melbourne Town Hall at a night of storytelling to mark the 5th anniversary of the Wheeler Centre, on the theme "Five".
Mark Colvin is the presenter of ABC Radio's current affairs program PM.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/colvin-a-republic-of-the-mind-my-visit-to-iranian-kurdistan/6115558
Remembering Sheikh Ezzaddin Hosseini
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF SHEIKH EZADDIN HOSSEINI
http://rojhelat.info/en/?p=8223
The characteristic Sheikh Ezaddin Hosseini (in Kurdish Şêx Êzedîn Hisênî) who was famous for its national and religious role, lost his life due to illness four years ago in a hospital in Sweden. This is a short presentation of his character. He was born in 1921 in the city Bane, East of Kurdistan (Rojhelat). He grow up in a religious family.
Sheikh Ezaddin and his father performed a constant struggle and process against Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was in power in Iran during that time. He also had a close and continuous contact with Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji (in Kurdish, Şêx Mehmud Berzencî) who was a Kurdish leader in town Silêmanî in Southern Kurdistan.
Despite of being a religious person, however he joined a Kurdish political community (JêKaf, Komeley Jiyanewey Kurdistan) as a member in Bokan city in 1943. After the Iranian revolution overthrew in 1979, fled the leader Reza Shah. During this time it was Kurdistan for a short time under control, and neither the Iranian forces or the government had no control of the Rojhelat. He was elected as a member of the Kurdistan diplomatic representative groups in order to negotiate with the new next in the Iranian regime, and he was elected as the all Kurdish political passenger portions and the people of Kurdistan. He was actively attended almost all the meetings with the Iranian regime existing rights of the Kurds in Rojhelat and Iran.
After the massacre and the bloody crimes of the Iranian regime in Sine in 1979, he attended a meeting with the regime’s leaders, Rafsanjani, Bani Sadr, Beheshti and Taleghani. He asked, what is the difference between a crown and a turban? Where he answer that they do not exist any difference, but that the crown has been replaced with a turban, they was no change and nothing has changed in reality, they both are same to the Kurds. After some ongoing and regular meetings with the Iranian regime, he pronounced that because of the lack of clarity about containing and quality of those authorities and the Iranian regime promised to the Kurdish parties, and Kurds decided to boycott the referendum of the Iranian Islamic regime.
About a month later, he was invited by the Iranian regime to a meeting in Tehran and Qom, during the journey to meet Khomeini, the Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and a number of officials in the Iranian Islamist regime. After Khomeini’s declaration of Jihad against Kurdish nation in November 1979, Sheikh with many fighters went to Kurdistan mountains.
Later on, because the Iranian governments responded Kurdish demand for freedom and their rights by attacks, mass killings and massacres, Sheikh Ezaddin invited Kurdish people to join the fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result, Thousands of Kurds in Rojhelat joined the Kurdish freedom fighters to protect themselves and fight for their rights and freedom.
In 1985 he went towards the border of South Kurdistan mountains and continued his struggling. Finally, he went to Sweden in 1990. Again he continued his national campaign for Kurdish question and played an important role in the establishment of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK).
Sheikh Ezaddin died on February 10, 2011, in “Akademiska sjukhuset” a hospital in Uppsala, city of Sweden
http://rojhelat.info/en/?p=8223
The characteristic Sheikh Ezaddin Hosseini (in Kurdish Şêx Êzedîn Hisênî) who was famous for its national and religious role, lost his life due to illness four years ago in a hospital in Sweden. This is a short presentation of his character. He was born in 1921 in the city Bane, East of Kurdistan (Rojhelat). He grow up in a religious family.
Sheikh Ezaddin and his father performed a constant struggle and process against Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was in power in Iran during that time. He also had a close and continuous contact with Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji (in Kurdish, Şêx Mehmud Berzencî) who was a Kurdish leader in town Silêmanî in Southern Kurdistan.
Despite of being a religious person, however he joined a Kurdish political community (JêKaf, Komeley Jiyanewey Kurdistan) as a member in Bokan city in 1943. After the Iranian revolution overthrew in 1979, fled the leader Reza Shah. During this time it was Kurdistan for a short time under control, and neither the Iranian forces or the government had no control of the Rojhelat. He was elected as a member of the Kurdistan diplomatic representative groups in order to negotiate with the new next in the Iranian regime, and he was elected as the all Kurdish political passenger portions and the people of Kurdistan. He was actively attended almost all the meetings with the Iranian regime existing rights of the Kurds in Rojhelat and Iran.
After the massacre and the bloody crimes of the Iranian regime in Sine in 1979, he attended a meeting with the regime’s leaders, Rafsanjani, Bani Sadr, Beheshti and Taleghani. He asked, what is the difference between a crown and a turban? Where he answer that they do not exist any difference, but that the crown has been replaced with a turban, they was no change and nothing has changed in reality, they both are same to the Kurds. After some ongoing and regular meetings with the Iranian regime, he pronounced that because of the lack of clarity about containing and quality of those authorities and the Iranian regime promised to the Kurdish parties, and Kurds decided to boycott the referendum of the Iranian Islamic regime.
About a month later, he was invited by the Iranian regime to a meeting in Tehran and Qom, during the journey to meet Khomeini, the Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and a number of officials in the Iranian Islamist regime. After Khomeini’s declaration of Jihad against Kurdish nation in November 1979, Sheikh with many fighters went to Kurdistan mountains.
Later on, because the Iranian governments responded Kurdish demand for freedom and their rights by attacks, mass killings and massacres, Sheikh Ezaddin invited Kurdish people to join the fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result, Thousands of Kurds in Rojhelat joined the Kurdish freedom fighters to protect themselves and fight for their rights and freedom.
In 1985 he went towards the border of South Kurdistan mountains and continued his struggling. Finally, he went to Sweden in 1990. Again he continued his national campaign for Kurdish question and played an important role in the establishment of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK).
Sheikh Ezaddin died on February 10, 2011, in “Akademiska sjukhuset” a hospital in Uppsala, city of Sweden
Iranian Kurdistan News- March 9th
Home / Iran / Iranian Kurdistan News in brief / Iranian Kurdistan News in brief – March 9, 2015
Iranian Kurdistan News in brief – March 9, 2015
Posted on March 9, 2015 by Editorial Staff in Iranian Kurdistan News in brief
Iranian Kurds remember Halabja chemical attack
Students commemorated the anniversary of the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja in ethnically Kurdish cities in what is unofficially known as Iranian Kurdistan. Last week, Kurdish students at Tehran University’s Social Sciences Department organized an event for the 27th anniversary of the Halabja attack and another, less well-known, chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Sardasht, located in northwest of Iran. The commemoration was part of the annual tradition of remembering those died in the Halabja chemical attack in Iraqi Kurdistan. Warplanes of the government of former dictator Saddam Hussein dropped internationally banned chemical weapons on March 16, 1988, killing an estimated 5,000 civilians and injuring tens of thousands more. Last week, students in the Kurdish-populated regions organized similar activities in cities of Mariwan, Bokan, Jawanroud and elsewhere. According to news reports, about 1,000 students, academics, Iranian members of parliament and Halabja residents attended the anniversary in Tehran University. Sardasht and Piranshahr’s representative to the Iranian parliament also attended the commemoration…rudaw.net
Where are Kurdish political prisoners sentenced to death?
Despite the transfer of prisoners sentenced to death two week agao, Saman Nasim, Sirwan Najawi, Ibrahim Issapour, Ali Afshari, Habib Afshari and Younes Aghaiyan from section 12 of Urmiye prison, their relatives have not been given a clear answer so far. According to Human Righst Activists in Iran “HRANA”, all 6 political prisoners on Wednesday 18th February from section 12 of Urmiye prion were transferred to a unknown place. Because of the Saman was just 17 years during his detention and according to international law this is a subject to the convention for the Rights of Child, different organizations and human rights groups showed reaction because of the risk of execution. Now despite after 12 days of the transfer of the prisoners, there is no information available on the condition and the fate of the political prisoners. One of Saman’s close relatives said: ”We have not been given any information, we only got his items handed back to us.” An informed source regarding Younes Aghaiyan and Sirwan Najawi said: ”The families has been told verbally that their children are in the prison of Zanjan, despite several days since the claim have been mentioned, the families has not been able to confirm any meeting or contact or any information regarding their condition.”…diclehaber.com
23 Kurdish women activists in Iranian Prison
Local lawyers in Iranian Kurdistan say that 23 Kurdish women activists are currently behind bars in Iran. According to the lawyers, 21 of the women have been sentenced to a total of 68 years in prison. The remaining two women, Amal Sheikho and Zeynab Jalalyan, have been sentenced to life. Among the jailed women were two from the Iranian Kurdish city of Mahabad in east Kurdistan (Rojhelat) who were jailed for four years in total, and four from Bahai Urmia who received terms of seven years in total. The lawyers also revealed that nine other Kurdish women have been jailed, but neither the reason for their detention, nor the time they are slated to serve is known. More than 100 female Iranian activists are in jail, say the lawyers. Iranian authorities are often criticised for violating women’s rights. basnews.com | Ekurd.net
Free Jalalian
March 8, 2015
Rights groups call on UN experts to intervene on behalf of a Kurdish woman activist on the seventh anniversary of her arrest on Women’s Day
http://justice4iran.org/publication/call-for-action/rights-groups-call-on-un-experts-to-intervene-on-behalf-of-a-kurdish-womens-rights-activist/
London, 8 March 2015 – In a petition filed this week, REDRESS and Justice for Iran have urged the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to intervene on behalf of a female Kurdish activist who is currently serving a life sentence in Iran after she was arrested on International Women’s Day seven years ago.
In their petition, the organisations urge the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to call on the Iranian Government to grant Zeinab Jalalian a re-trial that complies with international standards for fair trial, including disregarding any evidence obtained under torture or other ill-treatment. They also request that she is protected from further torture and ill-treatment and given access to all the necessary medical treatment, including urgent care for a degenerative eye condition that is causing her to lose her sight.
In 2008, Jalalian was sentenced to death for “enmity against God” (moharebeh) by Kermanshah Revolutionary Court for her alleged membership in the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), an armed Kurdish opposition group. She was not granted access to a lawyer during her summary trial and was sentenced to death despite the lack of evidence about her participation in the armed activities of the PJAK. Her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2011.
The organisations state that Jalalian was targeted for her social activism and work promoting women’s rights in the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, where she had been assisting women by providing them education and social services since 2000 until her arrest.
The organisations state that Jalalian was targeted for her social activism and work promoting women’s rights in the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, where she had been assisting women by providing them education and social services since 2000 until her arrest. One of her last activities took place in an early visit to the Iranian Kurdistan prior to her arrest in March 2008, when she visited a girls’ high school in Kamiaran to talk about the importance of International Women’s Day and distributed flowers to the students.
Jalalian is currently serving a life sentence in Khoy Prison, western Iran. Prior to being transferred to Khoy Prison in early 2015, Jalalian was held in Dizel Abad Prison, near Kermanshah, where she received inadequate treatment for a series of ailments that her family believe result from the beating she has endured. Before her trial, Jalalian spent eight months in pre-trial detention in a Ministry of Intelligence detention centre, where she says she was subjected to severe torture and ill-treatment to force her to confess to false charges. This included long interrogations while being blindfolded, beatings, flogging under her feet, threats of rape and solitary confinement. She also says she was tortured during a period of detention in Evin Prison in 2010.
In their petition, the organisations urge the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to call on the Iranian Government to grant Zeinab Jalalian a re-trial that complies with international standards for fair trial, including disregarding any evidence obtained under torture or other ill-treatment.
Jalalian suffers from intestinal infections and internal bleeding. She also suffers from conjunctiva, but prison authorities have repeatedly refused to allow her access to an eye specialist outside of the prison to get the required surgical treatment. Her health has deteriorated to a point that she currently needs assistance to perform daily tasks. Her eye condition is reported to be rapidly deteriorating. On 16 June 2014, Amnesty International issued an urgent action calling on the Iranian authorities to give Jalalian the medical treatment she required.
Since Jalaian has been jailed her family has only been able to visit her a few times and has only been allowed to have two-minute telephone conversations with her once a week.
A copy of the Petition has also been submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
For further information, please contact: Shadi Sadr, Justice for Iran Executive Director, at shadi.sadr@justiceforiran.org; +44 (0) 2034411499 (office) and +44 07707049084 (mobile) and/or Eva Sanchis, REDRESS Communications Officer, at eva@redress.org; +44 (0) 207 793 1777 (office) and +44 07857110076 (mobile).
About the co-authors of the Petition:
REDRESS is an award winning human rights organisation based in London which works internationally to combat torture by seeking justice and reparation for torture survivors. Since 1992, it has consistently fought for the rights of torture survivors and their families in the UK and abroad. REDRESS has intervened in a range of leading torture cases.
About the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is a UN-mandated body of independent human rights experts that investigates cases of arbitrary arrest and detention that may be in violation of international human rights law. Currently under the purview of the UN Human Rights Council, it was established in 1991 by the former Commission on Human Rights as one of the Special Procedures created to monitor human rights violations. After verifying information from a variety of sources, including NGOs, inter-governmental agencies and victims’ families, the Working Group issues opinions on the compliance with international law and sends urgent appeals to governments to ascertain the whereabouts and condition of those allegedly detained. It can also conduct fact-finding visits to countries that have extended an invitation to the Working Group
Rights groups call on UN experts to intervene on behalf of a Kurdish woman activist on the seventh anniversary of her arrest on Women’s Day
http://justice4iran.org/publication/call-for-action/rights-groups-call-on-un-experts-to-intervene-on-behalf-of-a-kurdish-womens-rights-activist/
London, 8 March 2015 – In a petition filed this week, REDRESS and Justice for Iran have urged the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to intervene on behalf of a female Kurdish activist who is currently serving a life sentence in Iran after she was arrested on International Women’s Day seven years ago.
In their petition, the organisations urge the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to call on the Iranian Government to grant Zeinab Jalalian a re-trial that complies with international standards for fair trial, including disregarding any evidence obtained under torture or other ill-treatment. They also request that she is protected from further torture and ill-treatment and given access to all the necessary medical treatment, including urgent care for a degenerative eye condition that is causing her to lose her sight.
In 2008, Jalalian was sentenced to death for “enmity against God” (moharebeh) by Kermanshah Revolutionary Court for her alleged membership in the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), an armed Kurdish opposition group. She was not granted access to a lawyer during her summary trial and was sentenced to death despite the lack of evidence about her participation in the armed activities of the PJAK. Her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2011.
The organisations state that Jalalian was targeted for her social activism and work promoting women’s rights in the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, where she had been assisting women by providing them education and social services since 2000 until her arrest.
The organisations state that Jalalian was targeted for her social activism and work promoting women’s rights in the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan, where she had been assisting women by providing them education and social services since 2000 until her arrest. One of her last activities took place in an early visit to the Iranian Kurdistan prior to her arrest in March 2008, when she visited a girls’ high school in Kamiaran to talk about the importance of International Women’s Day and distributed flowers to the students.
Jalalian is currently serving a life sentence in Khoy Prison, western Iran. Prior to being transferred to Khoy Prison in early 2015, Jalalian was held in Dizel Abad Prison, near Kermanshah, where she received inadequate treatment for a series of ailments that her family believe result from the beating she has endured. Before her trial, Jalalian spent eight months in pre-trial detention in a Ministry of Intelligence detention centre, where she says she was subjected to severe torture and ill-treatment to force her to confess to false charges. This included long interrogations while being blindfolded, beatings, flogging under her feet, threats of rape and solitary confinement. She also says she was tortured during a period of detention in Evin Prison in 2010.
In their petition, the organisations urge the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) to call on the Iranian Government to grant Zeinab Jalalian a re-trial that complies with international standards for fair trial, including disregarding any evidence obtained under torture or other ill-treatment.
Jalalian suffers from intestinal infections and internal bleeding. She also suffers from conjunctiva, but prison authorities have repeatedly refused to allow her access to an eye specialist outside of the prison to get the required surgical treatment. Her health has deteriorated to a point that she currently needs assistance to perform daily tasks. Her eye condition is reported to be rapidly deteriorating. On 16 June 2014, Amnesty International issued an urgent action calling on the Iranian authorities to give Jalalian the medical treatment she required.
Since Jalaian has been jailed her family has only been able to visit her a few times and has only been allowed to have two-minute telephone conversations with her once a week.
A copy of the Petition has also been submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
For further information, please contact: Shadi Sadr, Justice for Iran Executive Director, at shadi.sadr@justiceforiran.org; +44 (0) 2034411499 (office) and +44 07707049084 (mobile) and/or Eva Sanchis, REDRESS Communications Officer, at eva@redress.org; +44 (0) 207 793 1777 (office) and +44 07857110076 (mobile).
About the co-authors of the Petition:
REDRESS is an award winning human rights organisation based in London which works internationally to combat torture by seeking justice and reparation for torture survivors. Since 1992, it has consistently fought for the rights of torture survivors and their families in the UK and abroad. REDRESS has intervened in a range of leading torture cases.
About the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention:
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is a UN-mandated body of independent human rights experts that investigates cases of arbitrary arrest and detention that may be in violation of international human rights law. Currently under the purview of the UN Human Rights Council, it was established in 1991 by the former Commission on Human Rights as one of the Special Procedures created to monitor human rights violations. After verifying information from a variety of sources, including NGOs, inter-governmental agencies and victims’ families, the Working Group issues opinions on the compliance with international law and sends urgent appeals to governments to ascertain the whereabouts and condition of those allegedly detained. It can also conduct fact-finding visits to countries that have extended an invitation to the Working Group
viernes, 6 de febrero de 2015
Iranian Kurdistan News in Brief- Feb 2nd
Iranian Kurdistan News in Brief
Ekurd.net
Kermashan: The head of Razi University in Kermashan in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) denying promotion of the well credited lecturer. Dr Muhammad Reza Hamzei in an interview with a local newspaper in Kermashan has expressed his dissatisfaction about dealing with his academic qualification by University Kermashan. He described this way of dealing and attitude by Kermanshah University managements as ignorance and meanness. Muhammad Reza Hamzei (Fariborz) has obtained two PhD, Post-Doctorate and professor rank in cultural sociology from Germany. This Kurdish academician in an interview with weekly magazine named ‘’Nagde Hal’’ revealed that his academic credential has not been approved. He said that he has got 400 research credits whereas with only 220 credits he should have been promoted. ‘’Unfortunately my right has still been violated’’ he said. Professor Hamzei has recently been named as a prominent researcher in Iran. This is due to his recent research in Kurdish Shah-Nameh (EPIC POETRY). This research is also about exploring cultural, linguistic and Gorani accent phenomenon in Kermashan region…kurdpa.net | Ekurd.net
Police Forces Collect Satellite Dishes in Paveh
Paweh: Iranian Police forces attacked poor neighbourhood area in Paweh (Paveh) in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) and attempted to collect satellite dishes. According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), on Wednesday 28th January at 8 am police forces attacked “Tapeh Koleh” in Paweh city and attempted to collect satellite dishes. An informed source in this regard said “while the parish was quiet, Police officers illegally by breaking people’s privacy and by defamation of residents, went on the roofs and collected their satellite dishes.” It is to say that, “Tapeh Koleh” is the poorest area in Paweh city. hra-news.org | Ekurd.net
Kurdish student Transferred to Ward 8 of Evin Prison
HRANA News Agency – Amir Amirgholi, a Kurdish student activist who was arrested two months ago, has been transferred from solitary confinement in ward 209 to ward 8. According to the report Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Amir Amirgholi has been transferred from solitary confinement in ward number 209 to cells of ward number 8, after 60 days of detention. Amir Amirgholi was arrested on December 1, 2014. An informed said that, “the interrogations were mainly about gatherings in solidarity with Syrian Kurdistan’ Kobani city”. Need to be mentioned, Amir Amirgholi is a student activist who was arrested following his political activities in 2009 and was expelled from university. hra-news.org | Ekurd.net
Ekurd.net
Kermashan: The head of Razi University in Kermashan in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) denying promotion of the well credited lecturer. Dr Muhammad Reza Hamzei in an interview with a local newspaper in Kermashan has expressed his dissatisfaction about dealing with his academic qualification by University Kermashan. He described this way of dealing and attitude by Kermanshah University managements as ignorance and meanness. Muhammad Reza Hamzei (Fariborz) has obtained two PhD, Post-Doctorate and professor rank in cultural sociology from Germany. This Kurdish academician in an interview with weekly magazine named ‘’Nagde Hal’’ revealed that his academic credential has not been approved. He said that he has got 400 research credits whereas with only 220 credits he should have been promoted. ‘’Unfortunately my right has still been violated’’ he said. Professor Hamzei has recently been named as a prominent researcher in Iran. This is due to his recent research in Kurdish Shah-Nameh (EPIC POETRY). This research is also about exploring cultural, linguistic and Gorani accent phenomenon in Kermashan region…kurdpa.net | Ekurd.net
Police Forces Collect Satellite Dishes in Paveh
Paweh: Iranian Police forces attacked poor neighbourhood area in Paweh (Paveh) in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) and attempted to collect satellite dishes. According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), on Wednesday 28th January at 8 am police forces attacked “Tapeh Koleh” in Paweh city and attempted to collect satellite dishes. An informed source in this regard said “while the parish was quiet, Police officers illegally by breaking people’s privacy and by defamation of residents, went on the roofs and collected their satellite dishes.” It is to say that, “Tapeh Koleh” is the poorest area in Paweh city. hra-news.org | Ekurd.net
Kurdish student Transferred to Ward 8 of Evin Prison
HRANA News Agency – Amir Amirgholi, a Kurdish student activist who was arrested two months ago, has been transferred from solitary confinement in ward 209 to ward 8. According to the report Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), Amir Amirgholi has been transferred from solitary confinement in ward number 209 to cells of ward number 8, after 60 days of detention. Amir Amirgholi was arrested on December 1, 2014. An informed said that, “the interrogations were mainly about gatherings in solidarity with Syrian Kurdistan’ Kobani city”. Need to be mentioned, Amir Amirgholi is a student activist who was arrested following his political activities in 2009 and was expelled from university. hra-news.org | Ekurd.net
PDKI Brigades 212 and 213
PDKI brigades graduating from training camps in the mountains of South Kurdistan last year.
The 212 Brigade (graduated in August)
The 213 Brigade (graduated In November)
The 212 Brigade (graduated in August)
The 213 Brigade (graduated In November)
domingo, 1 de febrero de 2015
Ahmadi (PJAK): Islamic State is a cancer and if not destroyed it’ll destroy everyone
Iranian Kurd leader: Islamic State is a cancer and if not destroyed it’ll destroy everyone
Ekurd.com
Posted on January 6, 2015 by Editorial Staff in Kurdistan
ERBIL-Hewlêr, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’,— Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi, co-chair of Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) spoke on the important issues that drove the latest development in Kurdistan, in his opinion Islamic State group IS is a cancer and if not destroyed it will destroy everyone. He also added that in the case of failure of the united forces of Kurdish resistance Hewlêr and Silêmanî will be occupied.
Haji Ahmadi in an interview with Roj Nnews said, East Kurdistan Defense Units (YRK) are ready to defend Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava). Co-chair of PJAK states that from now on more will be expected from the people of Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) to support the resistance and he hopes that Rojava will become a model for Rojhelat.
‘Erdogan planned a conspiracy against the Kurdish nation’
Haji Ahmadi on the situation in the Middle East said: “The Middle East, particularly Kurdistan is facing a crisis and there are two main reasons, one is that in today’s global society in every country where politics is not dominant dictatorship will be born and the country will be facing a crisis, when people lose their hopes in politics they turn to religion. All of the third world countries, particularly the Middle East is dictator made. We see the results today. Second is that the Middle East is the main source of energy for the world’s industrialized countries. 56% of the Oil Field in the world is from Kurdistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the rest is in other parts of the world, this percentage increases day by day and the Middle East is the main source of energy for the industrialized countries.” Haji Ahmadi on the conspiracies of Turkey adds: “Erdogan planned a conspiracy against the Kurdish nation based on the simplicity and the ignorance of the Kurdish allies, which has been a deceived wake up call for USA. USA soon started to work to form a front again ISIS. A front to prevent ISIS from creating a republic. USA also attracted the Arabic countries to join the front, nearly 60 countries are at war against ISIS now, in the shadow of the inhuman policy of Erdogan’s policies and the correct policies of the Kurds, the Kurds are part of the front.”
‘Shingal (Sinjar) is a black page in the history of the Kurds and will never be forgotten’
He said regarding the negative aspect of IS against the Kurds: “We were devastated that hundreds of our villages and towns were crushed. Thousands of Kurds were martyred and thousands were made refugees, thousands of girls and woman were abducted and sold. Still the Iraqi Government and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the Minister of Peshmerga, Parliament and the ruling party did not assume any responsibility for it, trying to make it seem like a normal and natural event. But Şengal is a black page in the history of the Kurds and will never be forgotten. IS is a force with a dangerous ideology that caused unique friendship and international support for the Kurds. No event in the history of Kurdistan and Kurdish resistance have been able to cause national unity amongst the Kurds more than now and enable us to come together. The second issue is that for the first time in human history that woman had an opportunity to prove their ability in practice and all areas of life independent of men. Today in Kobanê and Kurdistan and also in the Middle East and around the world in the future this will become undeniable truth.”
‘Our guerrillas are ready for protection of South Kurdistan under any circumstances’
Haji Ahmadi about role of YRK against IS in Shingal (Sinjar), Makhmour and Kirkuk said: “Although this question is related to KODAR (Free and Democratic Society of Eastern Kurdistan) but far as I am aware, KODAR before any Kurdistan parties have informed the Kurdish parties authorities their guerrillas are ready for the protection of South Kurdistan under any circumstances.” In regards with dispatch of Guerrilla forces, Haji Ahmadi pointed out: “KODAR knows it but if people of any part of Kurdistan need to help, all parties of other Kurdistan parts have a duty to help them as a national duty. YRK forces, although not directly but indirectly been involved in the resistance of the Kobanê because not least the martyrs come from Rojhelat.”
‘I hope they continue their support to victory in Syrian Kurdistan’
In association with donation by Rojhelat (Iranian Kurdistan) people to Shingal and Kobani he stated: “Expectation of the people who founded a republic (referred to the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad 1946) 70 years ago is much higher. I hope they continue their support to victory in Syrian Kurdistan.” “However some forces wanted to divert these donations but despite the policy of imprisonment and execution of Iran, Rojhelat people are aware. PJAK also has an experience and support of the people. PJAK knows when, how to act in manner”, Haji Ahmadi emphasized.
Erbil Treaty
PJAK co-chair described the Erbil Treaty very late but promising which led to the unification of Syrian Kurdistan wings. “We expect the heads of Syrian Kurdistan parties that has been living in Erbil return to Kobani to fight against IS”. In connection with the alliance between Rojhelat Parties he said: “Until now there is no alliance between parties but I hope Rojava to be a model for Iranian Kurdistan. Although KODAR has a few months ago meeting with all Kurdish parties lived in Iraqi Kurdistan to coordinate the Rojhelat forces”.
“Iran and Turkey in particular intervened directly or indirectly that does not hold the Kurdish National Congress but after the tragedy of Shingal and shock come on Erbil, also Kobani resistance and support of Kurdish and people around the world, we are hope the Congress to be held as soon as possible”, told PJAK co-chair.
PJAK
The PJAK, or the (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane) (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan), is a militant Kurdish nationalist group based on the border areas between Iraq’s Kurdistan region and Iran’s Kurdish region, that has been carrying out attacks Iranian forces in the Kurdistan Province of Iran (Eastern Kurdistan) and other Kurdish-inhabited areas. PJAK, the most active Kurdish group in Iranian Kurdistan, is a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (Koma Civaken Kurdistan or KCK), which is an alliance of Kurdish groups and divisions led by an elected Executive Council. Since 2004 the PJAK took up arms took up arms to establish a semi-autonomous Kurdish regional entities or Kurdish federal states in Iran, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. The PJAK has about 3,000 armed militiamen, half the members of PJAK are women. Estimate to over 12 million Kurds live in Iran.
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, diclehaber | Ekurd.net |
Ekurd.com
Posted on January 6, 2015 by Editorial Staff in Kurdistan
ERBIL-Hewlêr, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’,— Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi, co-chair of Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK) spoke on the important issues that drove the latest development in Kurdistan, in his opinion Islamic State group IS is a cancer and if not destroyed it will destroy everyone. He also added that in the case of failure of the united forces of Kurdish resistance Hewlêr and Silêmanî will be occupied.
Haji Ahmadi in an interview with Roj Nnews said, East Kurdistan Defense Units (YRK) are ready to defend Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava). Co-chair of PJAK states that from now on more will be expected from the people of Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat) to support the resistance and he hopes that Rojava will become a model for Rojhelat.
‘Erdogan planned a conspiracy against the Kurdish nation’
Haji Ahmadi on the situation in the Middle East said: “The Middle East, particularly Kurdistan is facing a crisis and there are two main reasons, one is that in today’s global society in every country where politics is not dominant dictatorship will be born and the country will be facing a crisis, when people lose their hopes in politics they turn to religion. All of the third world countries, particularly the Middle East is dictator made. We see the results today. Second is that the Middle East is the main source of energy for the world’s industrialized countries. 56% of the Oil Field in the world is from Kurdistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the rest is in other parts of the world, this percentage increases day by day and the Middle East is the main source of energy for the industrialized countries.” Haji Ahmadi on the conspiracies of Turkey adds: “Erdogan planned a conspiracy against the Kurdish nation based on the simplicity and the ignorance of the Kurdish allies, which has been a deceived wake up call for USA. USA soon started to work to form a front again ISIS. A front to prevent ISIS from creating a republic. USA also attracted the Arabic countries to join the front, nearly 60 countries are at war against ISIS now, in the shadow of the inhuman policy of Erdogan’s policies and the correct policies of the Kurds, the Kurds are part of the front.”
‘Shingal (Sinjar) is a black page in the history of the Kurds and will never be forgotten’
He said regarding the negative aspect of IS against the Kurds: “We were devastated that hundreds of our villages and towns were crushed. Thousands of Kurds were martyred and thousands were made refugees, thousands of girls and woman were abducted and sold. Still the Iraqi Government and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the Minister of Peshmerga, Parliament and the ruling party did not assume any responsibility for it, trying to make it seem like a normal and natural event. But Şengal is a black page in the history of the Kurds and will never be forgotten. IS is a force with a dangerous ideology that caused unique friendship and international support for the Kurds. No event in the history of Kurdistan and Kurdish resistance have been able to cause national unity amongst the Kurds more than now and enable us to come together. The second issue is that for the first time in human history that woman had an opportunity to prove their ability in practice and all areas of life independent of men. Today in Kobanê and Kurdistan and also in the Middle East and around the world in the future this will become undeniable truth.”
‘Our guerrillas are ready for protection of South Kurdistan under any circumstances’
Haji Ahmadi about role of YRK against IS in Shingal (Sinjar), Makhmour and Kirkuk said: “Although this question is related to KODAR (Free and Democratic Society of Eastern Kurdistan) but far as I am aware, KODAR before any Kurdistan parties have informed the Kurdish parties authorities their guerrillas are ready for the protection of South Kurdistan under any circumstances.” In regards with dispatch of Guerrilla forces, Haji Ahmadi pointed out: “KODAR knows it but if people of any part of Kurdistan need to help, all parties of other Kurdistan parts have a duty to help them as a national duty. YRK forces, although not directly but indirectly been involved in the resistance of the Kobanê because not least the martyrs come from Rojhelat.”
‘I hope they continue their support to victory in Syrian Kurdistan’
In association with donation by Rojhelat (Iranian Kurdistan) people to Shingal and Kobani he stated: “Expectation of the people who founded a republic (referred to the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad 1946) 70 years ago is much higher. I hope they continue their support to victory in Syrian Kurdistan.” “However some forces wanted to divert these donations but despite the policy of imprisonment and execution of Iran, Rojhelat people are aware. PJAK also has an experience and support of the people. PJAK knows when, how to act in manner”, Haji Ahmadi emphasized.
Erbil Treaty
PJAK co-chair described the Erbil Treaty very late but promising which led to the unification of Syrian Kurdistan wings. “We expect the heads of Syrian Kurdistan parties that has been living in Erbil return to Kobani to fight against IS”. In connection with the alliance between Rojhelat Parties he said: “Until now there is no alliance between parties but I hope Rojava to be a model for Iranian Kurdistan. Although KODAR has a few months ago meeting with all Kurdish parties lived in Iraqi Kurdistan to coordinate the Rojhelat forces”.
“Iran and Turkey in particular intervened directly or indirectly that does not hold the Kurdish National Congress but after the tragedy of Shingal and shock come on Erbil, also Kobani resistance and support of Kurdish and people around the world, we are hope the Congress to be held as soon as possible”, told PJAK co-chair.
PJAK
The PJAK, or the (Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane) (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan), is a militant Kurdish nationalist group based on the border areas between Iraq’s Kurdistan region and Iran’s Kurdish region, that has been carrying out attacks Iranian forces in the Kurdistan Province of Iran (Eastern Kurdistan) and other Kurdish-inhabited areas. PJAK, the most active Kurdish group in Iranian Kurdistan, is a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (Koma Civaken Kurdistan or KCK), which is an alliance of Kurdish groups and divisions led by an elected Executive Council. Since 2004 the PJAK took up arms took up arms to establish a semi-autonomous Kurdish regional entities or Kurdish federal states in Iran, similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. The PJAK has about 3,000 armed militiamen, half the members of PJAK are women. Estimate to over 12 million Kurds live in Iran.
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Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou
Photos:
http://www.saradistribution.com/abdurahmanqasimlo.htm
The Legacy of Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, 25 Years After His Assassination
24/7/2014
Rudaw
By Asso Hassan Zadeh
Dr Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, Secretary General of the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party was assassinated 25 years ago by the very people who were supposed to discuss with him, on behalf of the Islamic Republic, a political solution to the Kurdish issue in Iran.
Ghassemlou had devoted his entire life to the freedom of the Kurdish people and did everything to make this cause known at times when the Kurds were being repressed, their rights denied, and the international community was barely conscious of their plight and existence.
Ghassemlou’s charisma and exceptional and multifaceted personality is not the only reason that he is still so present in the political mind and collective memory of the Kurds, especially in Iran. It is also because Ghassemlou's story is a living and continuing story.
Ghassemlou imbued the cause of the Kurds in Iran with a number of features that made it more than a cause for their national rights. He embodied the very antithesis of the philosophy of governance of the Islamic Republic. The effectiveness of his struggle led the Iranian regime to put him as a main target on the list of opponents to be eliminated. Ghassemlou’s assassination marked the beginning of an intensive wave of killing opponents abroad in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war.
In a polarized Middle East Ghassemlou maintained rationality and balance. He wanted to be a conciliator of tensions and contradictions surrounding the Kurdish issue and the question of democracy in the region.
Ghassemlou who would later become an oriental Marxist and a nationalist leader, was born in 1930, to an Assyrian Christian mother and a feudal lord father who had been active in the creation of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in 1946.
Though he came from an underdeveloped society, when he began his dissident activities against the Shah's regime, Ghassemlou followed the path of modernity and knowledge in Paris and Prague where he studied Economics and Political Science. But his spirit and love for knowledge were such that his expertise went far beyond the scope of his specialty. Speaking a dozen languages, he was also accomplished in history and literature. Those who met him felt to be in the presence of a living encyclopedia of culture.
Ghassemlou was also a man of action, with rare courage and a great sense of initiative and risk-taking. Whether during his early academic life or political career, his courageous position often put him in difficult situations. Nevertheless, he always preferred this option than to trample his own principles the most important of which was political independence. He would never accept support or an alliance at the expense of his independence.
Ghassemlou was a firm believer in the Kurds’ right to self-determination so far as to say that if one day the Kurds were to one day establish an independent state encompassing all the Kurds, it wouldn’t constitute secession, but reunification. However, his understanding of the complexity of the Kurdish question and geopolitical realities of his time pushed him to strive for the national rights of the Kurds within a democratic Iran.
Inscribing his struggle within the boundaries of Iran did not make him indifferent to the need of solidarity between the Kurds of other countries. He believed that the Kurdish movement in every part of Kurdistan should keep in mind the interests of Kurds in other parts, especially in the context of their relations with the governments of the countries they lived in.
Despite his strong convictions and clear principles, Ghassemlou was a pragmatic politician who wouldn’t submit to the dictates of dogma. The deeply secular man that he was, following the 1979 Islamic revolution, he was still elected as the only lay representative to the first constituent assembly (Council of Experts). Iranian KDP candidates were also elected in the first parliamentary elections. However, the new regime invalidated their election and Ghassemlou never attended the sessions of the Assembly because of threats to his life by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Ghassemlou always preferred political and peaceful solutions. Even after Khomeini issued the fatwa to attack Iranian Kurdistan, Ghassemlou agreed to begin negotiations with a regime he considered anachronistic. He did this, once again, at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. But it turned out that the first negotiations were only a tactic by the regime to buy time to regain control of the Kurdish areas, and the second negotiations were a trap to kill Ghassemlou himself.
Political morality, so dear to Ghassemlou, also applied internationally. Despite the Communist domination of the world where had lived and studied, he did not hesitate to take a stand against the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nor did he hesitate to condemn the hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Given the anti-imperialist climate then, these stances were simply outstanding. Later, in the 1980s, while leading an armed resistance against the Iranian regime, he introduced “Democratic Socialism” into his party program. His goal was to distance himself and his party from the existing Socialism --particularly for its lack of democracy-- and also to better justify and facilitate the support he was seeking from the West.
Ghassemlou was the Kurdish leader who most contributed to internationalizing the Kurdish question. At a time when the outside world showed very little interest in the Kurdish cause, he thought that Kurds could not afford to base their external relations on purely ideological criteria. Hence, he developed friendly relations with European social democrats --most of whom remained very impressed by his extraordinary personality and vision. He was also supposed to go to the United States a week after the date he was assassinated. Despite the just and progressive character of Ghassemlou's struggle, the attention and support he obtained was only humanitarian.
Ghassemlou was passionate about life, a great humanist and a true democrat. He was opposed to the cult of personality and could live in harsh conditions like his Peshmargas. He believed that the struggle for national rights of the Kurdish people must not neglect ideals of social justice and equality, especially between men and women.
Fighting against a regime that had no regard for its own precepts or the international laws, he would say, should not make us violate our own values and human dignity. Thus he taught his Peshmargas to treat prisoners well, release them systematically, and refrain from terrorist methods, even though he knew this would mean a lack of interest in the world media.
For Iranian Kurds Ghassemlou's story is continuous because it represents an open wound. Not only they decry a crime that deprived them of an exceptional leader by abusing his good faith. They are also outraged by the scandal and injustice committed by the Austrian government that not only freed two of the murderers but also escorted one of them to the Iran Air flight at the airport.
There has been no justice, and no judiciary pursuit to this crime. But the economic and security blackmail to which the Austrian government surrendered could not prevent the German courts to declare in 1997, during the Mykonos Trial on the assassination of Ghassemlou's successor, Sadeq Sharafkandi, that the highest leaders of the Islamic Republic were responsible for the terror machine set up to eliminate its opponents abroad.
Today, Iranian Kurds feel anger and disappointment by the fact that the international community continues to turn a blind eye to their fate and that the whole question of human rights and democracy in Iran is still neglected and overshadowed by dealings between the Iranian regime and the international community around security issues.
To allow the reinstatement of Ghassemlou's murder case is not only fair and moral, but also politically productive. There will be no lasting or genuine international peace and harmony - on which national security and even economic interests of western powers depend - unless there are in the Middle East responsible governments who first respect the rights of their own citizens.
While the Middle East is in more turmoil than ever and new windows seem to be opening to the Kurdish question, all those who knew Ghassemlou believe that he was ahead of his time and that history has missed its date with him.
* Member of the Central Committee of KDP
Ghassemlou the Wise: Passionate Ambassador of a Desperate Cause
Posted on Medya News on 13 July 2011
Marc Kravetz
(Translated from Libération, August 7, 1989)
Abdel Rahman Ghassemlou, murdered in Vienna on July 13th 1989, was in every way an exceptional man, both as leader of one of the oldest and most deeply rooted national liberation movements and in his personal magnetism – his international influence, his rare if not unique ability to express the traditions and the struggle of a thousand-year-old people in terms of the values of the late 20th century: freedom, democracy, internationalism. But he was little known to the public, and many will have learned simultaneously of his existence and of his death.
Ghassemlou was not a man of shadows, nor surrounded by mystery. The Secretary General of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan of Iran, war leader when necessary but political leader above all, he saw himself as a man of contact and dialogue. He was a passionate and tireless ambassador for this cause, who travelled all over the world to make it better known. But he was happiest sharing mud hut with his peshmergas at the bottom of some remote valley on the Iran-Iraq border, where he was constantly on the move, taking his library with him.
He liked good books and good wine – but could do without the latter more easily than the former – and was at ease at a Parisian table as in the spartan loneliness of the harsh mountain winter. At nearly sixty, he would have been 59 next December, he combined the serenity of an eastern sage with the dynamism of a youth, the curiosity of an encyclopaedist with the appetite of a bon vivant. As firm in his convictions as he was pragmatic in action, Ghessemlou seemed to reconcile without strain the toughness required for a political-military struggle and the elegant scepticism derived from his long academic career.
He had a doctorate in economics, loved history and literature and was an expert on Kurdish, Persian and Arabic poetry; he also readily quoted Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Walt Whitman or T.S. Eliot. Warm, open, approachable, using irony and humour as easily as the six or seven languages he spoke and wrote fluently, he inspired the same reaction in everyone who met him. Sympathizers with his movement, intellectuals, doctors, ministers, ambassadors, politicians of left or right. All, even if recalling only one long-ago conversation, admit that they fell for his charm. Few people in this century could boast such unanimity.
Ghassemlou began his political life as a communist in the Iranian Tudeh party, in which he rose to a position of leadership. After 15 years in Prague teaching economics, he broke with the Communist Party in August 1968 over the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia. Though he abandoned the certainties of Marxist dogma he did not renounce his background. Rather, he examined its mistakes as he analysed the political situation to understand where and when justice had slipped into injustice and truth into error, or even horror, and to draw the moral conclusion. He was particularly well placed to know the difficulties of political struggle in a society that was “backward”, as he used to say, because, from being cut off from the world and deprived of its right of decision and expression, even when of access to its own culture. But he was not prepared to use underdevelopment as an ideological justification for all kinds of excesses, such as the cult of violence for its own sake, the cult of the leader in an organization, or the dictatorship of an organization over the people.
Nor could he adopt the idea that it is quite all right to use one language for public relations and the media, and then forget about it in the field. His great pride, as he was never tired of saying, was that as far as humanly possible the ideals of the movement were reflected in its everyday conduct. The PDKI has never mistreated prisoners, never used force against civilians, never taken hostages, never hijacked aircraft or planted bombs in the buses or markets of the “enemy” towns, let alone outside the war zone. Though by no means a pacifist, Ghassemlou opposed terrorism on principle, knowing that he paid a price for that and sometimes remarking, with just a hint of bitterness, that it explained why the media showed so little interest in the Kurdish question. “Any little group can become famous by taking hostages or planting bombs,” he once wrote, “whereas liberation movements which abstain from terrorism are generally ignored.”
In November 1979 Ghassemlou condemned, on the very first day, the seizure of the diplomats and staff of the US Embassy in Tehran. For him the liberation of Iran from American control, or the Third World from great-power imperialism as the PDKI programme put it, was the objective of a long-term political struggle which entailed freedom and democracy for all.
Yet, contrary to the accusations of the Tehran regime, Washington was not won over to the Kurdish cause. Though American diplomacy had indeed been active during the Kurdish war in Iraq (1961-1975), for geostrategic reasons which Dr. Kissinger explains at length, and quite cynically in his memoirs, it never lifted a finger for the Kurds of Iran. Ghassemlou himself was banned from entering the US until the month of his death, when he was for the first time granted a visa. Just before leaving for Vienna he was preparing very carefully for his trip to the US, where he hoped to do a great deal to publicise the Kurdish problem, though he had no great illusions about the likely political result.
He knew all too well that however great the sympathy felt by a certain educated world opinion for the Kurdish cause, (not only that of the 5 million Iranian Kurds but of the 25 million scattered through five countries) the cause would never mobilise the diplomacy of the great powers, nor even of the European democracies, since they were concerned primarily with their own regional interests. He had learned this during his frequent travels abroad, especially in Europe. For although generally respected, he was rarely welcome in official circles. At best, by playing on old friendships and exploiting his membership of the Socialist International, he would now and then secure a little humanitarian aid for his people. Or, by whispering in a generous ear, would manage to resolve a problem of special importance to him. Jean-François Deniau, a minister in the Giscard government, described with some emotion how Ghassemlou had at one time laid siege of his office to get the French government to back a new edition of the only French-Kurdish dictionary, which had long been out of print.
He was a realist. I remember him telling me once that at the end of a century notable for the assertion and precarious stabilisation of different nationalisms it was no good expecting to “explode the map to allow the Kurds to build themselves an independent state on the ruins of three others”. So he demanded autonomy for Iranian Kurdistan, not independence for the Kurds. But his opponents in Tehran assumed that this was only a hypocritical tactic, crudely disguising a separatism which dared not speak its name – the first step towards a “Greater Kurdistan” uniting the Kurds of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, even Syria and the USSR. On this point, “laymen” such as [former Iranian president] Bani-Sadr were in full agreement with the fundamentalist mullahs.
Ghassemlou’s death warrant was signed as early as 1979, when he was elected as the only self-confessed secularist in Iran’s “constituent” assembly. For security reasons he refused to go to Tehran. Ayatollah Khomeiny publically regretted his absence in a televised speech, adding: “What a shame. We could have arrested him and had him shot at once.” July 13th 1989, the day when Muslims celebrated the Id al-Kabir or “feast of pardon”, was also observed by Shiites as the 40th day of mourning for the Imam. Was that only a coincidence? Or did the murderers, disguised as peace envoys with an official mandate from [former Iranian president] Hashemi-Rafsanjani and passports signed by [former Foreign Minister] Velayati, come from Tehran deliberately to carry out the sentence on that ritual day?
Source: “Dr. Abdoul Rahman Ghassemlou,” (Paris: Institut Kurde De Paris, Information and Liaison Bulletin, Special Issue 75 FF, July-August 1989), pp. 7-
The life and death of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930-1989)
http://www.pdk-iran.org/english/doc/kasemlu.htm
Abdul Rahman GHASSEMLOU
MAN of PEACE
and
DIALOGUE
ul Rahman Ghassemlou, the Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), was born on 22 December 1930 in Ourmiah, Kurdistan. He went to university in Paris and later Czechoslovakia, had a Doctorate in economics and was an associate professor, having taught in Prague and Paris.
In 1941, the Allies invaded Iran in a 'bridge of victory" operation that inevitably brought about the downfall of Reza Shah because of his relations with the Axis powers. A major political change was to take shape in the country. In Iranian Kurdistan the national movement came back to life and the PDKI founded on 16 August 1945, attracted young people in its masses. One of them was Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou - not yet 15 years old. On 22 January 1946 the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad came into existence by proclamation, but in December of the same year the imperial army with the help of the Western forces entered the city, and the killing and arrests that followed were as cruel as they were indiscriminate. The Republic had fallen; its President, Qazi Mohammad, and his close followers were taken prisoner, and then put to death on 30 March 1947.
Little by little the Kurdish people re-gathered their strength. The Republic of Mahabad may have been short-lived but in the collective memory it did not die. Running unlimited risks, the Kurdish leaders set about the vast task of protecting, educating and organising the population. Back from Europe in 1952, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou devoted his energies to these clandestine activities for several years. In the next decade, he split his time between Europe and Kurdistan working in double harness: his university career and his repeated missions to Kurdistan.
In 1959, the regional context appeared to be more hopeful; in neighbouring Iraq, the monarchy had been overthrown, and Molla Mostafa Barzani (leader of the Democratic Party of Iraqi Kurdistan) had returned to his country after eleven years of exile in former USSR. The government in Baghdad accepted the principle of autonomy for the Kurdish population of Iraq.
On the other side of the frontier, the PDKI steeled itself to renew the struggle. In 1968-69, the armed conflict was rife in Iranian Kurdistan and the period ended in a bath of blood with the massacre of the Kurdish leaders - and yet, even then, Kurdish resistance managed to raise its head again.The vice-like grip in which the Shah's armies were trying to hold it had to be broken. At the third Congress of the PDKI (1973), Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was elected Secretary-general and at those that followed he was invariably returned to office.
During the years that followed, the prestige of the Pahlavi monarchy continued to wane. The White Revolution was questioned by experts in international affairs; the greedy demands and extravagant behaviour of the court were criticised in the press, and the SAVAK was active throughout the country with no social class being spared its baneful attentions. Clearly, the regime was doomed. If that happened, what should be the position of PDKI ? In view of the complex nature of the problems in the region that position had to be clear-cut. The Party had to reply unambiguously to a number of questions about its identity, its allegiances, its aspirations and its options. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and his aides drew up as coherent and realistic a programme as they could which may be summarised, in essence, as follows :
- We are Kurds, we belong to a people that the vicissitudes of history have scattered over five states. A bond of brotherhood binds us, and will continue to bind us, to all other Kurds, wherever they live.
- We are the descendants of one of the oldest Indo-European civilisations. Our identity is defined by the fact that we have our own language and our own culture.
- We are the citizens of a country called Iran - on the same basis of the other peoples living on the Iranian territory : the Baluchs, Persians, Azeris, Arabs, Turkmens and so on.
- We are ardent defenders of the Declaration of Human Rights and the right of peoples as defined by the United Nations.
- We are for the freedom of worship and we respect all religions practiced by our co-citizens. Faith is an inviolable right. However, being resolutely modern in our outlook, we feel that a separation between the religious institutions and the state is desirable. A lay state is not, on that account, opposed to the faith or to those that serve it.
- For the living conditions of all to be improved, and customs from long ages past condemning women to a state of inferiority to be ended.
- To accelerate development in our country, it is necessary to establish a system providing free education of uniform quality throughout the country. A special effort should be made in the peripheral areas (Kurdistan, for example) that are clearly a long way behind.
- No attempt to leave poverty behind will succeed without the active participation of the people themselves. To feel concerned - so we believe - they have to feel free. Freedom of movement for goods and persons, freedom of association and freedom to form political parties or unions and to belong to such organisations are the indispensable preconditions for economic and cultural development. - For there to be trust between the population and the central authority, large-scale decentralisation is necessary.
- In Kurdistan's case, that decentralisation has to comprise a charter of autonomy for the region whose boundaries would need to be precisely defined. Within this Kurdish space, the administrative languages should be Kurdish and Farsi, which would both be official languages of the regional and local authorities. Primary education should be in Kurdish whereas the two official languages should be routine practice in secondary school. Lastly, after so many years of violence, the Kurdish people could not accept a police force that was not manned by Kurds. It is only on these conditions that there would be any chance of lasting peace in Iranian Kurdistan.
- Lastly, the "kurdification" of the administrative and 'production structures would demand major investment in the training of senior officials and staff and also - it goes without saying - a multidisciplinary university on Kurdish land.
In other words, what the leaders of the PDKI demand is genuine and effective autonomy. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, dictatorships hide behind pyramid-shape structures excluding all horizontal communication. Feeling themselves perpetually threatened (as indeed they are), they seek the support of foreign powers which, in the end, become their masters. Dictators are not free and they abuse the freedom of others. So the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan would be utopian unless Iran made the change to democracy. Without democracy in Iran there could be no guarantee for autonomy in Kurdistan.
Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou saw that these two concepts were inseparable and so they became the watchword of the PDKI: Democracy for Iran, autonomy for Kurdistan.
This policy statement in which chauvinism and sectarianism had no part won the PDKI the firm friendship of Third World countries and modern democracies alike. During his many trips abroad, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was always sure of a warm welcome. Many humanitarian organisations offered him help, eminent figures on the world stage in political and university life thought highly of him and human rights and religions militants encouraged him throughout his life. It was thanks to him that the Iranian Kurds were able to emerge from their isolation and make their voice heard in the international fora. Some of these sympathisers were surprised that the Iranian Kurds had "such modest" demands after such a bitter struggle. "It is really autonomy you want - nothing more ?" was a not uncommon reaction.
No secret clause was ever planned or hidden in this blueprint for autonomy because it was the fruit of long and profound thought about the world political context following World War Il. The Kurdish leaders took the view that major changes to frontiers were ruled out and that the general trend was towards the formation of large groupings rather that the fragmentation of existing units. In any case, once peace was restored, it would surely be natural for countries with common borders to seek to develop trade and cultural exchange. Therefore, in the long term, the existence of big Kurdish communities in various parts of the Middle East could be a positive factor in inter-regional relations. Everyone would stand to gain. It is well known that the big exporting countries pay considerable attention to the ethnic minorities, which often act as bridgeheads or relay stations in campaigns to win a foothold in new markets.
In short, the Kurdish thinkers concluded that only the short-sighted could see ethnic, linguistic or religious diversity as an obstacle to development. In the future the big middle-eastern house would derive its energy from the many different elements of which it was built. This pattern was particularly true of Iran itself with its 45 million inhabitants of which only 40 % were of Persian origin. (Today Iran has over sixty million inhabitants). At that time, towards 1975, this type of thinking sounded at least advanced, not to say fanciful. The Kurds were still under the heel of the Shah, but nothing is eternal, dictators included.
One day in February 1979 Mohammed Reza Pahlavi finally gave up the throne. At that time the PDKI had a solid base and a real impact in Iranian Kurdistan. However, to run the territory properly and control its administration the police had to be removed and the army thrown out down to the very last man. This was the task of the "peshmergas" or partisans, who attacked army barracks and seized large stocks of arms and ammunition. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was then able to claim that, in a large part of Kurdistan, the Kurds were their own masters.
It was reasonable to hope that the Iranian revolution would have brought men to power able to realise that the interests of the central authority and those of the Kurds were compatible. Elections were planned and a new constitution was being written for the country.
Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was elected to the Assembly of experts and made ready to carry to the capital the message of the Kurds - a simple message: there is room for all in this country where everything needs doing or re-doing. Imam Khomeini, unfortunately, saw things differently, he labelled the newly elected representative of the Kurds an "enemy of God" and declared a "holy war" on Kurdistan. This was in 1979. Sudden though it was, this call to arms was, in retrospect, not surprising. How, after all, could this grim gerontocrat with the cruelty of another age be prepared to give his attention to the history and wants of the Kurds ? How could Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou be expected to stay silent at the hostage-taking, occupation of foreign embassies and other terrorist activities launched in 1979 by an Imam who had recently returned from Neauphle-le-Château to sow the seeds of hate and insanity.
The Gulf War broke out the following September. Perhaps these unsubdued Kurds would be forgotten during this conflict between Iran and Iraq (1980-88). On the contrary, in fact, it cost them dearly, for their villages lay on either side of the frontier where the fighting was at its fiercest. They were accused, too, of being anti-patriotic : their settlements were destroyed and the people living there reduced to a wandering existence. The ultimate purpose of these crimes against humanity was obvious : to use the war as an excuse for exterminating a people whose authenticity was denied as strongly as it was proclaimed by the Kurds.
Iran came out of the war with Iraq exhausted and the Imam at death's door. The facts had to be faced and Tehran had to find a compromise in Kurdistan. For his part, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou had been saying for years that the fighting had been imposed on him, that neither side would ever lose or win and that, sooner or later, the Kurdish problem would have to be solved across the negotiating table. After flying a few kites, Tehran issued a concrete proposal for a meeting in Vienna on 28 December 1988 and the PDKI accepted. The talks lasted two days, 28 and 30 December and the results must have been promising because it was agreed to hold another meeting the following January. On 20 January, at the end of the first round of negotiations, the representatives of Tehran were fully acquainted with the Kurdish demands. The principle of autonomy seemed to have been agreed. The details of how it was to be put into effect had yet to be defined.
Six months later, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou returned to Europe to attend a congress of the Socialist International. Tehran tried to contact him again in order, he was told, to pursue the negotiations that had begun the previous winter. The PDKI accepted the offer sent to it. The meeting took place on 12 July 1989 in Vienna. The Tehran delegation was as before, namely Mohammed Jafar Sahraroudi and Hadji Moustafawi, except that this time there was also a third member : Amir Mansur Bozorgian whose function was that of bodyguard. The Kurds also had a three-man delegation : Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, his aide Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar (member of the PDKI Central Committee) and Fadhil Rassoul, an Iraqi university professor who had acted as a mediator.
The next day, 13 July 1989, in the very room where the negotiation took place Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was killed by three bullets fired at very close range. His assistant Abdullah Ghaderi-Azar was hit by eleven bullets and Fadhil Rassoul by five. Hadji Moustafawi succeeded in escaping. Mohammad Jafar Sahraroudi received minor injuries and was taken to hospital, questioned and allowed to go. Amir Mansur Bozorgian was released after 24 hours in police custody and took refuge in the Iranian Embassy.
Indignation was at its height. How, in this age, in the heart of Europe, could it happen for the representatives of a member country of the United Nations to open fire at point blank range on the representatives of a country with whom it was at war and had entered into peace negotiations?
On 19 July two representatives of the political bureau of PDKI came to Paris to attend the funeral. At a press conference they announced, among other things, that the higher authorities of the PDKI had appointed Sadegh Charafkandi to perform the duties of Secretary-general. Sadegh Sharafkandi (who was also assassinated on 17 September 1992 by the Iranian terrorists) was in his fifties and had a doctorate in industrial chemistry from Paris University. He was Deputy Secretary-general of the Party up to the death of Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou .
The two murdered men of the PDKI were buried on 20 July in Paris in the presence of a throng of some two thousand people from all parts : Kurds and Armenians, Azeris and Turks, Persians and Europeans, poets and doctors, ministers and workpeople, representatives of humanitarian organisations and members of parliament. Leading the funeral procession, the peshmergas in their Kurdish resistance fighters' uniform advanced with difficulty in the torrid heat of the Parisian summer. They were all there, all that had been able to travel on their crutches and in their wheelchairs, having come from the various capitals of Europe where they were recovering, as best they could, from the wounds received in the conflict. Tehran denied all connection with this triple murder and told Austria to look for clues in other directions than Iran. But the findings of the ballistics experts were conclusive.
In late November 1989 the Austrian courts issued a warrant for the arrest of the three Iranian representatives and the Austrian Government expressly accused the Iranian Government as having instigated the attack on Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and the two other Kurds.
Thus died this man who was no warmonger but a man of letters, master of several languages and persuasive speaker. Overflowing with enthusiasm and energy, he was an intellectual of his time, this end of the twentieth century when the triumph of democracy seems really within reach.
sábado, 31 de enero de 2015
Ghassemlou’s Widow: ‘I Know Very Well That Iran Killed My Husband’
Ghassemlou’s Widow: ‘I Know Very Well That Iran Killed My Husband’
By Deniz Serinci 9/7/2014
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Twenty five years ago, when Kurdish-Iranian leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was shot dead by suspected agents of the Islamic Republic in Vienna, it took his widow all her strength to bear the news.
"I did not believe it. I thought I was asleep and it was all a nightmare,” Helen Krulich told Rudaw. “If I had had a bad heart I would have suffered a heart attack,” she said of the day on July 13, 1989 when she lost her husband.
Ghassemlou, secretary general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (PDKI), was killed in a Vienna flat where he was in secret talks with representatives of the Islamic Republic.
The 81-year old Krulich, also known by her Kurdish name of Nasrin, was in Paris when she heard the news. A PDKI friend called her to say that the man she had been married to for 37 years was dead.
The rendezvous in Vienna, in which Ghassemlou was accompanied by two associates -- Fadhil Rassoul and Abdullah Ghaderi Azar – had come after several such meetings had already taken place.
"The meeting was about stopping the war in Kurdistan,” his widow said. “Ghassemlou welcomed the meetings because he had always been against the war."
Two men, introduced as journalists, shot and killed Ghassemlou and his two friends during the meeting.
Austrian police arrested the two suspects, revealed to be diplomats assigned to the Iranian Embassy in Vienna. The Austrians allowed them to leave for Tehran. When, four months later an Austrian court issued arrest warrants, the suspects were gone.
In September 1992 Ghassemlou’s successor to the PDKI, Sadegh Sharafkandi, was also killed by two gunmen at a restaurant in Berlin, along with three companions.
Krulich and PDKI protested against the Austrian authorities and launched a campaign against the Iranian government, but without much effect.
“In 1990, I began legal proceedings against the government in Vienna. But two years later the Austrian Supreme Court rejected my lawsuit,” Krulich said. “I felt defeated and alone. It was a very difficult time for me.”
But she is grateful for the support of many at that time, including the former French first lady Danielle Mitterand.
Mitterrand was known as a good friend of Ghassemlou, and declared after the assassination that the French Embassy in Vienna was to serve as "The embassy of the Kurds." She had Ghassemlou’s body transported to Paris, where the Kurdish leader was buried.
Krulich said that the government of mullahs in Iran should be overthrown.
“The regime does what they want and ignores protests by Kurds and the international community. Therefore, the regime has lost legitimacy," she said.
The Kurds are one of the largest minorities in Iran, with an estimated eight million population. But they have no legal political party in the country, and Kurdish education in public schools is not allowed. The Kurds have often been in conflict with the government in Tehran over the right to self-government, as well as cultural and linguistic rights.
Krulich believes that the solution is a new democratic Iran, with autonomy or federation for ethnic minorities, including the Kurds. “It will create equality for all groups in Iran and it was also what Ghassemlou fought for."
Krulich remembers the early 1980s, when PDKI Peshmerga forces were locked in a war with the Iranian regime, and controlled several areas of the country’s Kurdish regions in western Iran.
The Czech-born Krulich joined her husband in the Kurdish mountains and taught English to a classroom of Peshmergas. Besides her native Czech, she also speaks Kurdish, Persian, English and French.
Although the assassinations are history, 25 years after the murder suspects in the Ghassemlou case have still not been brought to justice. But the Iranian Kurdish leader’s legacy lives on, Krulich stressed.
“They killed my husband, but not his legacy as a leader of PDKI. The idea about freedom still lives on among millions of Kurds.”
Iran still denies being involved in the killings.
"I know very well that Iran killed my husband," his widow said
By Deniz Serinci 9/7/2014
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Twenty five years ago, when Kurdish-Iranian leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was shot dead by suspected agents of the Islamic Republic in Vienna, it took his widow all her strength to bear the news.
"I did not believe it. I thought I was asleep and it was all a nightmare,” Helen Krulich told Rudaw. “If I had had a bad heart I would have suffered a heart attack,” she said of the day on July 13, 1989 when she lost her husband.
Ghassemlou, secretary general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (PDKI), was killed in a Vienna flat where he was in secret talks with representatives of the Islamic Republic.
The 81-year old Krulich, also known by her Kurdish name of Nasrin, was in Paris when she heard the news. A PDKI friend called her to say that the man she had been married to for 37 years was dead.
The rendezvous in Vienna, in which Ghassemlou was accompanied by two associates -- Fadhil Rassoul and Abdullah Ghaderi Azar – had come after several such meetings had already taken place.
"The meeting was about stopping the war in Kurdistan,” his widow said. “Ghassemlou welcomed the meetings because he had always been against the war."
Two men, introduced as journalists, shot and killed Ghassemlou and his two friends during the meeting.
Austrian police arrested the two suspects, revealed to be diplomats assigned to the Iranian Embassy in Vienna. The Austrians allowed them to leave for Tehran. When, four months later an Austrian court issued arrest warrants, the suspects were gone.
In September 1992 Ghassemlou’s successor to the PDKI, Sadegh Sharafkandi, was also killed by two gunmen at a restaurant in Berlin, along with three companions.
Krulich and PDKI protested against the Austrian authorities and launched a campaign against the Iranian government, but without much effect.
“In 1990, I began legal proceedings against the government in Vienna. But two years later the Austrian Supreme Court rejected my lawsuit,” Krulich said. “I felt defeated and alone. It was a very difficult time for me.”
But she is grateful for the support of many at that time, including the former French first lady Danielle Mitterand.
Mitterrand was known as a good friend of Ghassemlou, and declared after the assassination that the French Embassy in Vienna was to serve as "The embassy of the Kurds." She had Ghassemlou’s body transported to Paris, where the Kurdish leader was buried.
Krulich said that the government of mullahs in Iran should be overthrown.
“The regime does what they want and ignores protests by Kurds and the international community. Therefore, the regime has lost legitimacy," she said.
The Kurds are one of the largest minorities in Iran, with an estimated eight million population. But they have no legal political party in the country, and Kurdish education in public schools is not allowed. The Kurds have often been in conflict with the government in Tehran over the right to self-government, as well as cultural and linguistic rights.
Krulich believes that the solution is a new democratic Iran, with autonomy or federation for ethnic minorities, including the Kurds. “It will create equality for all groups in Iran and it was also what Ghassemlou fought for."
Krulich remembers the early 1980s, when PDKI Peshmerga forces were locked in a war with the Iranian regime, and controlled several areas of the country’s Kurdish regions in western Iran.
The Czech-born Krulich joined her husband in the Kurdish mountains and taught English to a classroom of Peshmergas. Besides her native Czech, she also speaks Kurdish, Persian, English and French.
Although the assassinations are history, 25 years after the murder suspects in the Ghassemlou case have still not been brought to justice. But the Iranian Kurdish leader’s legacy lives on, Krulich stressed.
“They killed my husband, but not his legacy as a leader of PDKI. The idea about freedom still lives on among millions of Kurds.”
Iran still denies being involved in the killings.
"I know very well that Iran killed my husband," his widow said
Some photos
The following links have some more photos and travel accounts of E.K.:
http://askgudmundsen.travellerspoint.com/47/
http://www.heartmybackpack.com/blog/kurdistan-iran/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/solo-travel/10560739/Inside-Iran-the-Kurdish-of-Hawraman.html
http://askgudmundsen.travellerspoint.com/47/
http://www.heartmybackpack.com/blog/kurdistan-iran/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/solo-travel/10560739/Inside-Iran-the-Kurdish-of-Hawraman.html
Robert Baer on Iran
Robert Baer, author and CIA veteran, gives his analysis of Iran and its role in the Middle East.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tehran/interviews/baer.html
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Robert Baer was a CIA case officer in the Directorate of Operations from 1976 to 1997, where he served in Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq and Lebanon. He is the author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism (Crown Publishers, 2002). Here, Baer says that there is evidence linking Iran to attacks on American interests, including the Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 U.S. soldiers in 1996. He says that Iran has been mishandled by U.S. diplomats since the 1980s and that American foreign policy regarding the Islamic Republic is based on myths and misinformation. Baer was interviewed by FRONTLINE producer Neil Docherty on March 22, 2002.
... Maybe you could paint me a political picture of Lebanon in the 1980s, when you first got there. What was happening?
When I first went to Lebanon, it was in December 1982. A seminal event had occurred about six months before I got there, and that was the kidnapping of three Iranian diplomats, the charge d'affaires, and a Lebanese translator. They were murdered and they were buried in a Lebanese forces parking lot -- that's the Christian Lebanese forces -- in a part of Beirut. What we didn't realize as Americans, because we didn't understand Iran, is we were going to get blamed for that kidnapping.
The way it went down is the Iranians assumed, since the Lebanese Christian forces were our allies and the allies of Israel, that we had to be responsible for those kidnappings and the murders later. ... Even though we knew nothing about it -- the CIA didn't know about it, American government didn't know about it, we ourselves were asking what happened to these people -- for the Iranians, it was a key event which for them broke the contract.
So they started kidnapping, and shortly after that they kidnapped David Dodge, the acting president of the American University of Beirut and took him to Tehran. They got caught. We found out about it. We went to the Syrians; the Syrians forced his release. After [Dodge] was released, the Iranians then arranged to use surrogates in order to have plausible denial. ... They used the Hezbollah, a group in Hezbollah, to kidnap hostages.
Why do you think the Iranians were taken and killed?
Maybe it was for robbery. We don't know. We're not sure. ...
How, at that time, are the Iranians looking at the world?
First of all, you've got to look at the 6 June invasion of Lebanon. The Israelis came across the border because of an Abu Nidal assassination attempt in London. For the Iranians, it looked as a pretext for Israel to attack an Islamic country, and they looked at Lebanon as an Islamic country, or a country that should be an Islamic country. So they looked at this as Israeli aggression, but backed by the United States. They simply do not believe that Israel invaded Lebanon without a green light from Washington. I don't know about a green light. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. But the point is, the Iranians held us responsible.
... [Then the kidnapping of] these three Iranian diplomats. Not only did they kidnap three Iranian diplomats, but the charge d'affaires ... is very close to [then-President] Rafsanjani. They're almost related. ... He takes it personally. The Iranian government holds the Lebanese forces and the United States responsible.
So you have these two events. And Iran says, "All right, we're at war. Undeclared war, but nonetheless we're at war." Their objective at that point is to drive the Americans out of Lebanon.
The first embassy bombing [in April 1983] I think they were involved in; the Marine [barracks] bombing in October 1983; September 1984, the second embassy bombing. And you know what? The Americans [then] leave. This is a successful policy for them [the bombers]. And what comes in place [after that]? Hezbollah is found in 1985. It's an alternative to the Lebanese government; it's an Islamic party. It mirrors the government in Tehran. ... And then you add on to this that Hezbollah drives Israel out of Lebanon, the first victory against the Israelis ever.
So what we have today, if you want to expand this analysis, [is] Hamas, the Islamic Jihad in Palestine and Gaza carrying out war successfully against Sharon. And the Iranians back in Tehran say, "We're winning. This is the way you fight a war. This is how you defeat F-16s, this is how you defeat aircraft carriers. We beat the United States, we beat the Israelis in Lebanon, and we're going to beat 'em in Palestine."
This is a strong message. I don't care how secular Iran becomes. They still look at the United States, Britain, and France as colonizing powers, and this is the final war ending colonization in the Middle East, using Islam. So for the Iranians, it's very, very logical. We as Americans say, "Well, it's not. We were peacekeepers in Lebanon." They don't look at it that way. Or as Americans, we say, "You can't kidnap innocent people, journalists, priests, people like that. It's wrong." They look at it differently. It's a war of civilizations for them. And it was very successful, frankly, and cheap.
Right. And what about Iranian fingerprints on Hezbollah? What is the evidence that Iran influenced Hezbollah?
Well, we know they influenced Hezbollah because they accept Khomeini and Khamenei as the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, [not Sheik] Fadlallah. Fadlallah is the senior cleric in Lebanon, but he was not the main impetus of Hezbollah. It was Iran. I mean, it's acknowledged; it's public that the religious authority is found in Qom in Iran, and the Iranian clerics. It's a very hierarchical religion.
The fingerprints on Iran in terrorism? There are a few of them. The Marines [bombing of the Marine barracks in October 1983], kidnapping of Charlie Glass, the American journalist, the death of Bill Buckley [the CIA station chief who was kidnapped in March 1984] , the fact that Dodge, the American University of Beirut acting president, was held in Iran in a prison, kidnapped by the Pasdaran [Iran's Revolutionary Guards].
The evidence is there. The fact that Father [Martin] Jenco saw Iranians deliver food to the place he was held in the Bekaa Valley, that was in 1984, I think. The evidence is just there. I mean, it's incontrovertible when you have a hostage seeing the people, you're watching this stuff by satellite, and you've got this intelligence information. And I think the only people that would deny this are people who haven't really followed the issue, or just made up their minds otherwise.
Or Iran itself -- it certainly claims it doesn't [and] won't sponsor terrorism.
The fact is, in 1984 and 1985, they were in control of the Sheik Abdullah Barracks in Baalbek. I saw with my own eyes, journalists saw with their own eyes, that the Pasdaran was guarding the places where the hostages were held. When [Jerry] Levin escaped, he escaped out of one of the buildings at the Sheik Abdullah barracks. They saw the Iranians deliver the food. It's just denying reality. The Iranians can't say, "We didn't know anything about it." It's crazy.
Fast-forwarding to today, what's your impression or your knowledge about their support for Islamic Jihad?
Early in the 1990s, they supported it. They provided training, weapons in the Bekaa Valley, supported morally. They've stated publicly they support these guys, the Qods force, which is part of the Pasdaran.
What they're doing today, I don't know. The Israelis claim that an agreement was made between Arafat and the Pasdaran in Moscow six months ago. I don't know. ... I don't trust the Israelis. They're in the middle of this fight. I no longer do intelligence. I have no way to measure the facts from propaganda. I think the Israelis would know. But are they going to tell us the truth? Who knows?
What about Buckley? Can you expand a little on what happened -- why he was taken, and what happened to him?
Buckley, the Iranians knew who he was. When he would go to the airport at Beirut International Airport and send visitors to the United States with intelligence connections, it was very clear. He lived in one apartment, always wore a suit, always meticulously dressed, always left at the same time. For the Iranians or their surrogates, the token surrogates who took him, he was a very attractive target.
You could get the ambassador; it would be great for the Iranians, but he was too hard to get. He had protection and an armored car. Buckley didn't. He was held for a while in Beirut and taken to the Sheik Abdullah Barracks where he was held. The winter of, I believe it was 1984-1985, he caught pneumonia. He'd been really roughed up, beaten up, tortured during interrogation. Combination of pneumonia and torture; his whole system collapsed, and he died in captivity.
Doesn't do much for Iran-American relations, does it?
No. Well, I mean, the Iranians have their case of the shah, the overthrow of [nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad] Mossadeq, the corruption of American companies and bribing people in Iran, our feting the shah, overlooking human rights violations. It was during the Cold War. And the Iranians say, "Well, so what if it was during the Cold War? You supported the dictator, you kept him in power." Washington's argument's going to be, "Well, we didn't keep him power. He was the Shah of Iran. He was there before we ever got involved. Iranians kept him in power because they tolerated his behavior."
There are cases for both sides. I have my own feelings, you know. I just don't think that you should attack innocents, like the World Trade Center. It's not the Western way. But my opinions are irrelevant in this. We have to look at it from the Iranian standpoint, why they did [the things they did] ... and what they want. ...
In the Middle East, it's about a people, the Arabs and the Iranians, who feel humiliated from the 19th century. It's got nothing to do with the United States. But all of a sudden in 1948, the United States inherited all these colonial problems. It inherited the Gulf from Britain in 1970. But we weren't capable of managing an empire in the Middle East. It's just not the American way. So we tweaked something here, send money, send troops.
And now we're dealing it militarily, which you can't solve this problem [militarily]. ... Afghanistan's been a failure so far. ... [W]e are gradually moving into a war unconsciously against Islam -- which you don't want to do. There's just too many people, there's too many countries. They own the oil, most of the world's oil resources, and hope we sidestep this.
But it's not because of the ill will of the White House, the State Department, or the CIA. It's a basic misunderstanding of what's happening in the Middle East, and it doesn't have to do with Democrats or Republicans. And one side is support for Israel -- that's the way [others] perceive it. ...
And how important is Israel in American foreign policy?
It's extremely important. But it's because we look at Israel as a democracy, one. ... And the Holocaust is very important in the American conscience, political conscience. It's a gut reaction. We support Israel for those two reasons, the Holocaust and democracy.
And Americans say, "Why can't the Arabs see this?" The Arabs, on the other hand, are saying, "We're not responsible for the Holocaust. We protected the Jews during the Second World War. They fled there. We didn't bother them. They are the ones that set up a country."
And then the more radicalized [the] Muslims become, the more they look at [Israel] as a colonial appendage of the United States that is meant to oppress them. The terms of their dialogue are being degraded by the day, too. And so [you get] these people that ran the airplanes into the World Trade Center, saying, "The West is hostile to us, and we've got to fight it."
But at the moment, we're talking war on terror.
Well, that's a mistake, because yes, it is war on terror. But we are going to need the Muslims to fight this war on terror. We need Saudi Arabia; we need to make Saudi Arabia feel comfortable. We need Saudi Arabia to go back to its schools and reform them and stop preaching jihad. We need Saudi Arabia to join the 21st century, give jobs to these people equally, and cut back on the corruption ... start giving these people in the south, Asir province, where the suicide bombers came from, a stake in life. But we can't do it with bombs. ...
And how important [is] Hezbollah? ...
It's extremely important. Hezbollah's divided into many parties. There's the Islamic Resistance in the south, which beat the Israelis. They attacked the Israeli army. They defeated the Israeli army on Lebanese soil. I do not know how we can describe that other than a national liberation movement.
I don't agree that Hezbollah itself is a terrorist organization. It delivers powdered milk; it takes care of people. It's a social organization; it's a political organization. It fights corruption.
Then there's the Islamic Resistance, which is an army, which is a guerrilla force, fighting for control of its own country. And then, under the Hezbollah umbrella, was the Islamic Jihad, which I call their special security, which was controlled by Iran, which carried out terrorism against the West. And you can paint Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. You can do that for political reasons, but strictly speaking, it is many things. Just as [with] the IRA, you got Sinn Fein and you've got the real IRA, which is conducting terrorism.
And is the distinction important?
It's very important.
Why?
Well, I mean if you're going to retaliate against terrorism -- what we call terrorism, [which is] the attacking of innocent people for political motives, not liberating your own country -- we have to distinguish the two groups. Fadlallah is not a terrorist. ... He was a spiritual leader in his organization. ... We can't label him a terrorist and fight Hezbollah as an organization in its entirety. We have to isolate the murderers and fight them.
But when [Hezbollah] was taking American hostages...
It wasn't Hezbollah; it was the Islamic Jihad organization which was taking [hostages]. It was a very distinct organization, which was separate from Hezbollah because you had the consultative council which only had a vague idea of what the hostage-takers were doing. The hostage-takers were taking orders from Iran. Hezbollah itself does not care about American citizens running around Lebanon, as it doesn't care today. I mean, as an ex-CIA officer, I can go see Hezbollah, I can talk to them. They don't care. ...
But explain that there is actually a different management structure here [that] we're talking [about]?
Absolutely. And it's very clear that special security in Hezbollah took its orders for all the important years from the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [in Iran]. Hezbollah itself accepted money and spiritual leadership from Iran, but it had nothing to do with terrorism. Ninety-nine percent of Hezbollah, people in Hezbollah, know nothing about it. They don't have the slightest idea how it works, who's behind it -- the Iranian role. And that nuance, I think, is missed in Washington today.
I think it's a mistake in U.S. foreign policy, first of all, to paint Islam as an enemy, because you get dragged into a cultural war which we can't win. You have to isolate the people who really do sponsor mass murder or kidnappings or individual murders of people, that are killing Americans in Kuwait today, that flew the airplanes in. Those are isolated individuals which don't have anything to do with Islam in general. Same way in Hezbollah. It's a small group of people kidnapping, murdering. But Hezbollah itself is not a terrorist organization.
And what about Iran? In that context, how worried should we be about Iran?
Well, if you drive Iran into the corner, Iran has the means to retaliate all it wants. ... Iran -- if it feels it's backed into the corner, it's at war again with the United States -- will resort to terrorism, because the people who were involved are still in Iran. They're free. They don't agree with the policies, [with] the way Iran's going now. They think there should be more attacks against Americans. Where they're going to be depends on how we treat them.
In that context, how did you respond to the State of the Union address and the "axis of evil" speech?
Well, that's American politics. I think the United States has no intention of attacking Iran or provoking Iran. ...
But was it a wise selection of words?
I think Iran has been mishandled by the United States since the 1980s, since 1979. We should have determined responsibility for taking over that embassy. It was an act of war, and we should have responded accordingly. By not responding to taking over that embassy in a graduated fashion, by that dumb hostage rescue thing, by not responding to that, we only encouraged people who advocated terrorism in Iran. And it wasn't the whole country that did [advocated terrorism].
We should have dealt with that, nation to nation, state to state. They violated sovereign law of the United States. So it's a series of mistakes. But now, to paint Iran as this evil country, we don't know what's going to happen, because we don't know what's happening in Iran. Will this encourage the moderates to change Iranian policy? I don't know. ...
Do you feel America doesn't know Iran?
No, it doesn't know anything about it. Doesn't know anything about it. I have seen no dialogue in this country, in the press, or in academia to suggest to me that we really know what's going on in Iran. We are dealing with myths, misinformation, a press that has no idea. It boils down to women's rights or wishful thinking about Khatami or misperceptions.
As a professional intelligence person, how would you rate American intelligence in Iran?
It's lousy ... because we don't have any people in Iran. You really need people on the ground in a country to give you ground truth. You complement that with other intelligence from other countries, from technical intelligence, and you can get a good picture. But once you don't have people on the ground, you really lose track of what's happening in a country.
I mean, North Korea has always been a black hole for us, because we don't have people there. We don't have people talking to the North Koreans. You have to hear people complain about the price of milk, you have to hear people. How do they view the United States? It's very important to get a feel for a country. I mean, I lost track of the United States because I was gone for so many years, and I'm an American. ...
Tell me about [Imad Mughniyah] and his importance.
He's very important but there's certain myths about him -- that he's running the whole thing, he's the master. There are no master terrorists. They're just a whole group of people. He's very effective, very efficient. He runs commando-style operations. He's got incredible security. He can tap people, go where he wants, change IDs. He was involved in many kidnappings. I'm not sure he was involved in the first embassy bombing; he probably was, but I know that from inference. It's very hard to pin these people down, because it takes patience. But anyhow, Mughniyah is very important. He's an important player, is involved in all sorts of terrorism operations.
What's his relationship to Iran?
He was paid by Iran. He had direct connection with a couple of Iranians. ... He was recruited in the Islamic Jihad movement in 1982-1983, like that, and agreed to carry out operations against United States. He's a believer, undoubtedly. But most of all, he's very effective. He can compartment[alize] operations, he's got people that are loyal. He's ruthless and he's ready to lose people. He's ready for himself to die, too, which makes him a formidable opponent. ...
Mughniyah is a professional terrorist. I've never heard an explanation [of] what really makes the guy tick. But it was very clear to us in the 1980s that he took his orders directly from [Iran's] Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. ... He was paid by them, he took orders, he put out communiqués. Occasionally he would do things on his own, when he'd get angry about something. He was an independent player. He was probably a nightmare to run for the Iranians, but he carried out their orders. And I don't think there's anybody in the American intelligence community [who] would disagree with that. ...
What do you do with Iran when you're posturing against Iraq, when it's likely you may be taking some action against Iraq? If you're a CIA intelligence expert in the region, you must be getting a little worried about how we handle all this.
... What you have to do is put yourself in the position of the Iranians. ... An invasion of Iraq is going to cause resentment in the Islamic world, which is going to help the radicals in Tehran, who are going to say, "Listen, we told you all along. It's the United States against Islam. Stop this reformist stuff and let's liberate Jerusalem." ...
What about the Iran-Iraq war and America's position on that? How important is that?
It's very important. Iraq was under threat. The Reagan administration knew that if Iraq was overrun by Iran, there'd be total chaos in the Gulf. We provided help to Iraq during the war -- material help and information help -- which was extremely helpful to the Iraqis. The problem is, it built up resentment in Iran because the radicals said, "Look, they've always been against us. We've got to stop this." ...
What are the current links, do you think, between Iran and terrorism? How would you characterize or summarize it currently?
... Last thing I saw before I left the CIA was this intention to set up a relationship with bin Laden. There was a meeting which occurred in July 1996 in Afghanistan, where the Iranians went in to propose a strategic comprehensive alliance against the United States. And what that involved, whether it came to fruition or not, I don't know. In 1996, that was their intention. And that after that, anything I have to say is pure speculation. ...
Iran and the Taliban were not friends, right?
In the Middle East, my enemy's enemy is my friend. Just don't ever forget that rule. ...
[But] other than what you've said, we haven't really heard of any direct links with Al Qaeda. I guess the last one was they were letting some [Al Qaeda fugitives] escape into Iran. But we're not suggesting that Iran's fingerprints were on Sept. 11.
No. How would we ever know, though? Again, put yourself in the position of the Iranians, or an Iranian. Maybe not Iran as a state, maybe it's an individual Iranian that's carrying on this war. Would you convey these by telephone, by Internet, a decision to participate in Sept. 11? It's done orally, face to face, probably outside, so there's no room audio.
So we'll never know. It's just one of those questions we'll never know because the people involved will never talk. They don't keep a record of it. They don't need to submit receipts on their tax forms at the end of the year. We'll just never know. ...
And take me back to Khobar Towers. What do we know about Khobar Towers and Iran?
We know Iran was involved. We know Iran trained, gave alias passports, helped provide surveillance of American facilities in Saudi Arabia, and that Khomeini gave a fatwa to blow up Khobar. This has been acknowledged in the indictment, it's been acknowledged by Louis Freeh in The New Yorker.
Saudi Arabia didn't want to look too closely into it, because at that point, there was a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and they certainly didn't want to indict Iran. It was another terrorism attack that was passed over. It was overlooked because we didn't want to do anything against Iran.
Iran is the third rail of American foreign policy in the world. Brought down Jimmy Carter, Iranian crisis, and almost brought down Reagan, almost, close, with Iran-Contra. So every president since then says, "Iran is bad, but we're not going to do anything about it. It's a sleeping dog, don't wake it up."
And along comes the latest president, George W. [Bush], and he strongly intimates we are going to do something about it, this evil empire.
What can we do about it? We can only cope with these problems inasmuch as we solve the problem of Israel and Palestine. If we can implement U.N. Resolution 242, we can internationalize Jerusalem, do something about the right of return of Palestinians to Palestine. And then go to the Middle East and say, "All right, now it's time to implement other U.N. resolutions." ... But it really does boil down to Israel, in a lot of ways. ...
And when you were in the CIA, was there an awareness of this? ...
No, but it's not CIA's business. These are the politics we saw, but we were never involved in this. We never had to worry about resolutions, U.N. 242. I mean, [we] read about it and cared about it. And I know when it was passed and I know this dialogue's always been going on between Syria and United States, Lebanon.
Our objective was to find out who was taking hostages in Lebanon, who blew up our embassy, who blew up the Marines -- and predict future attacks. At the same time, we were listening to our agents, people on the ground. That's how we spent our entire life.
... When we began, you mentioned the misunderstanding about the Iranians being killed in Lebanon. ... It struck me when you were saying that, that the relationship between America and Iran seems to be one completely fostered on misunderstandings of this sort. ...
... Yes, the misunderstandings go back to Mossadeq. [Editor's note: Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who wanted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and limit foreign involvement in Iran's internal affairs, was removed from office in a CIA-supported coup in 1953, which allowed the shah -- who was friendly to Western powers -- to return to Tehran. See the timeline for more background on Iran's history.]
The Iranians are generally, as people, pro-American. A lot of Iranians live here. The Iranian music industry is based in Los Angeles. There's a lot of travel back and forth. The Iranians have been normally in history pro-Israel as a balance to the Arabs.
But along came Mossadeq. And then you had the corruption in Tehran, all the American companies, this supplying of arms to Iran to fight the Cold War, all the military bases. The Iranians looked at this as if we were participating in the corruption of their society, American companies and American government. And then you had the revolution and then you had the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, which split off from the revolution, and a lot of them set up in the United States.
Then you had the Iran-Iraq war, and then our continued support to Israel. And the Iranians look at us as a hostile country, just as we look at the Soviet Union as a hostile country. ... There was a lot of misperceptions. And there's no dialogue.
So faced with that situation, what does one do? ... The hawks would argue, "Well, we've tried dialogue; we've tried blandishments. We've reduced sanctions on pistachios and other things. We've tried to talk to them, and these mullahs keep slapping us in the face. What are we to do?"
Well, I think that you set some clarity for standards of behavior vis-a-vis Iran. I think by not holding the Iranians accountable for taking over [the U.S.] embassy, by not holding them accountable for what happened in Lebanon, only encouraged the radicals. At the same time, we should have had a carrot, opened up some back channel with the mullahs, talk[ed] to them. Once you stop talking to people, you're lost. And I think the American tendency is, as is the Iranians', once this level of hostility arises, [to] stop talking.
The Iranians have desperately wanted a secret channel to the United States for years -- all the Iranians have -- to work out the problem, work out the problems in Jerusalem, work out the problems of oil, work out the problems of Iraq. We've always said, "No, here's our conditions for dialogue: Stop terrorism." ... There used to be three [criteria], I used to remember them.
Well, a big one is weapons of mass destruction and Iran building them. ... That fear has been around. ...
Well, look at the dialogue today, where we're talking about using tactical nuclear weapons against North Korea and the rest. Once this stuff leaks out, the Iranians say, "Well, look, they're going to use nuclear weapons against us. We need missiles."
And how credible is it in your experience that the Iranians are up to building weapons of mass destruction?
I have no idea. ... It's a big issue. They were getting a lot of stuff, but how advanced they are, I really don't know. Whether they're one year away from a nuclear bomb or 20 years away, I have no idea.
But presumably that seems to be one of the biggest issues for people in Washington: "How much time do we have before these guys end up with a weapon? What are we going to do?"
What about Pakistan? What about India? I don't trust either one of them, too. It's a catastrophe if Iran and Iraq get nuclear weapons. [They] will use them against each other one day. ...
I think what we're all talking about is, we all regret the end of the Cold War. In the Cold War, things were predictable, and you could have worked these things out. ...
This is such a slippery subject, terrorism, and if you start painting the whole Islamic world as terrorists, or there's the Russians as supporting terrorism, where does it all end? I don't know. ... There are terrorists, there are mass murderers, but we don't know who they are and who supports them and we don't know how to stop it. ..
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tehran/interviews/baer.html
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Robert Baer was a CIA case officer in the Directorate of Operations from 1976 to 1997, where he served in Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq and Lebanon. He is the author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism (Crown Publishers, 2002). Here, Baer says that there is evidence linking Iran to attacks on American interests, including the Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 U.S. soldiers in 1996. He says that Iran has been mishandled by U.S. diplomats since the 1980s and that American foreign policy regarding the Islamic Republic is based on myths and misinformation. Baer was interviewed by FRONTLINE producer Neil Docherty on March 22, 2002.
... Maybe you could paint me a political picture of Lebanon in the 1980s, when you first got there. What was happening?
When I first went to Lebanon, it was in December 1982. A seminal event had occurred about six months before I got there, and that was the kidnapping of three Iranian diplomats, the charge d'affaires, and a Lebanese translator. They were murdered and they were buried in a Lebanese forces parking lot -- that's the Christian Lebanese forces -- in a part of Beirut. What we didn't realize as Americans, because we didn't understand Iran, is we were going to get blamed for that kidnapping.
The way it went down is the Iranians assumed, since the Lebanese Christian forces were our allies and the allies of Israel, that we had to be responsible for those kidnappings and the murders later. ... Even though we knew nothing about it -- the CIA didn't know about it, American government didn't know about it, we ourselves were asking what happened to these people -- for the Iranians, it was a key event which for them broke the contract.
So they started kidnapping, and shortly after that they kidnapped David Dodge, the acting president of the American University of Beirut and took him to Tehran. They got caught. We found out about it. We went to the Syrians; the Syrians forced his release. After [Dodge] was released, the Iranians then arranged to use surrogates in order to have plausible denial. ... They used the Hezbollah, a group in Hezbollah, to kidnap hostages.
Why do you think the Iranians were taken and killed?
Maybe it was for robbery. We don't know. We're not sure. ...
How, at that time, are the Iranians looking at the world?
First of all, you've got to look at the 6 June invasion of Lebanon. The Israelis came across the border because of an Abu Nidal assassination attempt in London. For the Iranians, it looked as a pretext for Israel to attack an Islamic country, and they looked at Lebanon as an Islamic country, or a country that should be an Islamic country. So they looked at this as Israeli aggression, but backed by the United States. They simply do not believe that Israel invaded Lebanon without a green light from Washington. I don't know about a green light. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't. But the point is, the Iranians held us responsible.
... [Then the kidnapping of] these three Iranian diplomats. Not only did they kidnap three Iranian diplomats, but the charge d'affaires ... is very close to [then-President] Rafsanjani. They're almost related. ... He takes it personally. The Iranian government holds the Lebanese forces and the United States responsible.
So you have these two events. And Iran says, "All right, we're at war. Undeclared war, but nonetheless we're at war." Their objective at that point is to drive the Americans out of Lebanon.
The first embassy bombing [in April 1983] I think they were involved in; the Marine [barracks] bombing in October 1983; September 1984, the second embassy bombing. And you know what? The Americans [then] leave. This is a successful policy for them [the bombers]. And what comes in place [after that]? Hezbollah is found in 1985. It's an alternative to the Lebanese government; it's an Islamic party. It mirrors the government in Tehran. ... And then you add on to this that Hezbollah drives Israel out of Lebanon, the first victory against the Israelis ever.
So what we have today, if you want to expand this analysis, [is] Hamas, the Islamic Jihad in Palestine and Gaza carrying out war successfully against Sharon. And the Iranians back in Tehran say, "We're winning. This is the way you fight a war. This is how you defeat F-16s, this is how you defeat aircraft carriers. We beat the United States, we beat the Israelis in Lebanon, and we're going to beat 'em in Palestine."
This is a strong message. I don't care how secular Iran becomes. They still look at the United States, Britain, and France as colonizing powers, and this is the final war ending colonization in the Middle East, using Islam. So for the Iranians, it's very, very logical. We as Americans say, "Well, it's not. We were peacekeepers in Lebanon." They don't look at it that way. Or as Americans, we say, "You can't kidnap innocent people, journalists, priests, people like that. It's wrong." They look at it differently. It's a war of civilizations for them. And it was very successful, frankly, and cheap.
Right. And what about Iranian fingerprints on Hezbollah? What is the evidence that Iran influenced Hezbollah?
Well, we know they influenced Hezbollah because they accept Khomeini and Khamenei as the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, [not Sheik] Fadlallah. Fadlallah is the senior cleric in Lebanon, but he was not the main impetus of Hezbollah. It was Iran. I mean, it's acknowledged; it's public that the religious authority is found in Qom in Iran, and the Iranian clerics. It's a very hierarchical religion.
The fingerprints on Iran in terrorism? There are a few of them. The Marines [bombing of the Marine barracks in October 1983], kidnapping of Charlie Glass, the American journalist, the death of Bill Buckley [the CIA station chief who was kidnapped in March 1984] , the fact that Dodge, the American University of Beirut acting president, was held in Iran in a prison, kidnapped by the Pasdaran [Iran's Revolutionary Guards].
The evidence is there. The fact that Father [Martin] Jenco saw Iranians deliver food to the place he was held in the Bekaa Valley, that was in 1984, I think. The evidence is just there. I mean, it's incontrovertible when you have a hostage seeing the people, you're watching this stuff by satellite, and you've got this intelligence information. And I think the only people that would deny this are people who haven't really followed the issue, or just made up their minds otherwise.
Or Iran itself -- it certainly claims it doesn't [and] won't sponsor terrorism.
The fact is, in 1984 and 1985, they were in control of the Sheik Abdullah Barracks in Baalbek. I saw with my own eyes, journalists saw with their own eyes, that the Pasdaran was guarding the places where the hostages were held. When [Jerry] Levin escaped, he escaped out of one of the buildings at the Sheik Abdullah barracks. They saw the Iranians deliver the food. It's just denying reality. The Iranians can't say, "We didn't know anything about it." It's crazy.
Fast-forwarding to today, what's your impression or your knowledge about their support for Islamic Jihad?
Early in the 1990s, they supported it. They provided training, weapons in the Bekaa Valley, supported morally. They've stated publicly they support these guys, the Qods force, which is part of the Pasdaran.
What they're doing today, I don't know. The Israelis claim that an agreement was made between Arafat and the Pasdaran in Moscow six months ago. I don't know. ... I don't trust the Israelis. They're in the middle of this fight. I no longer do intelligence. I have no way to measure the facts from propaganda. I think the Israelis would know. But are they going to tell us the truth? Who knows?
What about Buckley? Can you expand a little on what happened -- why he was taken, and what happened to him?
Buckley, the Iranians knew who he was. When he would go to the airport at Beirut International Airport and send visitors to the United States with intelligence connections, it was very clear. He lived in one apartment, always wore a suit, always meticulously dressed, always left at the same time. For the Iranians or their surrogates, the token surrogates who took him, he was a very attractive target.
You could get the ambassador; it would be great for the Iranians, but he was too hard to get. He had protection and an armored car. Buckley didn't. He was held for a while in Beirut and taken to the Sheik Abdullah Barracks where he was held. The winter of, I believe it was 1984-1985, he caught pneumonia. He'd been really roughed up, beaten up, tortured during interrogation. Combination of pneumonia and torture; his whole system collapsed, and he died in captivity.
Doesn't do much for Iran-American relations, does it?
No. Well, I mean, the Iranians have their case of the shah, the overthrow of [nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad] Mossadeq, the corruption of American companies and bribing people in Iran, our feting the shah, overlooking human rights violations. It was during the Cold War. And the Iranians say, "Well, so what if it was during the Cold War? You supported the dictator, you kept him in power." Washington's argument's going to be, "Well, we didn't keep him power. He was the Shah of Iran. He was there before we ever got involved. Iranians kept him in power because they tolerated his behavior."
There are cases for both sides. I have my own feelings, you know. I just don't think that you should attack innocents, like the World Trade Center. It's not the Western way. But my opinions are irrelevant in this. We have to look at it from the Iranian standpoint, why they did [the things they did] ... and what they want. ...
In the Middle East, it's about a people, the Arabs and the Iranians, who feel humiliated from the 19th century. It's got nothing to do with the United States. But all of a sudden in 1948, the United States inherited all these colonial problems. It inherited the Gulf from Britain in 1970. But we weren't capable of managing an empire in the Middle East. It's just not the American way. So we tweaked something here, send money, send troops.
And now we're dealing it militarily, which you can't solve this problem [militarily]. ... Afghanistan's been a failure so far. ... [W]e are gradually moving into a war unconsciously against Islam -- which you don't want to do. There's just too many people, there's too many countries. They own the oil, most of the world's oil resources, and hope we sidestep this.
But it's not because of the ill will of the White House, the State Department, or the CIA. It's a basic misunderstanding of what's happening in the Middle East, and it doesn't have to do with Democrats or Republicans. And one side is support for Israel -- that's the way [others] perceive it. ...
And how important is Israel in American foreign policy?
It's extremely important. But it's because we look at Israel as a democracy, one. ... And the Holocaust is very important in the American conscience, political conscience. It's a gut reaction. We support Israel for those two reasons, the Holocaust and democracy.
And Americans say, "Why can't the Arabs see this?" The Arabs, on the other hand, are saying, "We're not responsible for the Holocaust. We protected the Jews during the Second World War. They fled there. We didn't bother them. They are the ones that set up a country."
And then the more radicalized [the] Muslims become, the more they look at [Israel] as a colonial appendage of the United States that is meant to oppress them. The terms of their dialogue are being degraded by the day, too. And so [you get] these people that ran the airplanes into the World Trade Center, saying, "The West is hostile to us, and we've got to fight it."
But at the moment, we're talking war on terror.
Well, that's a mistake, because yes, it is war on terror. But we are going to need the Muslims to fight this war on terror. We need Saudi Arabia; we need to make Saudi Arabia feel comfortable. We need Saudi Arabia to go back to its schools and reform them and stop preaching jihad. We need Saudi Arabia to join the 21st century, give jobs to these people equally, and cut back on the corruption ... start giving these people in the south, Asir province, where the suicide bombers came from, a stake in life. But we can't do it with bombs. ...
And how important [is] Hezbollah? ...
It's extremely important. Hezbollah's divided into many parties. There's the Islamic Resistance in the south, which beat the Israelis. They attacked the Israeli army. They defeated the Israeli army on Lebanese soil. I do not know how we can describe that other than a national liberation movement.
I don't agree that Hezbollah itself is a terrorist organization. It delivers powdered milk; it takes care of people. It's a social organization; it's a political organization. It fights corruption.
Then there's the Islamic Resistance, which is an army, which is a guerrilla force, fighting for control of its own country. And then, under the Hezbollah umbrella, was the Islamic Jihad, which I call their special security, which was controlled by Iran, which carried out terrorism against the West. And you can paint Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. You can do that for political reasons, but strictly speaking, it is many things. Just as [with] the IRA, you got Sinn Fein and you've got the real IRA, which is conducting terrorism.
And is the distinction important?
It's very important.
Why?
Well, I mean if you're going to retaliate against terrorism -- what we call terrorism, [which is] the attacking of innocent people for political motives, not liberating your own country -- we have to distinguish the two groups. Fadlallah is not a terrorist. ... He was a spiritual leader in his organization. ... We can't label him a terrorist and fight Hezbollah as an organization in its entirety. We have to isolate the murderers and fight them.
But when [Hezbollah] was taking American hostages...
It wasn't Hezbollah; it was the Islamic Jihad organization which was taking [hostages]. It was a very distinct organization, which was separate from Hezbollah because you had the consultative council which only had a vague idea of what the hostage-takers were doing. The hostage-takers were taking orders from Iran. Hezbollah itself does not care about American citizens running around Lebanon, as it doesn't care today. I mean, as an ex-CIA officer, I can go see Hezbollah, I can talk to them. They don't care. ...
But explain that there is actually a different management structure here [that] we're talking [about]?
Absolutely. And it's very clear that special security in Hezbollah took its orders for all the important years from the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [in Iran]. Hezbollah itself accepted money and spiritual leadership from Iran, but it had nothing to do with terrorism. Ninety-nine percent of Hezbollah, people in Hezbollah, know nothing about it. They don't have the slightest idea how it works, who's behind it -- the Iranian role. And that nuance, I think, is missed in Washington today.
I think it's a mistake in U.S. foreign policy, first of all, to paint Islam as an enemy, because you get dragged into a cultural war which we can't win. You have to isolate the people who really do sponsor mass murder or kidnappings or individual murders of people, that are killing Americans in Kuwait today, that flew the airplanes in. Those are isolated individuals which don't have anything to do with Islam in general. Same way in Hezbollah. It's a small group of people kidnapping, murdering. But Hezbollah itself is not a terrorist organization.
And what about Iran? In that context, how worried should we be about Iran?
Well, if you drive Iran into the corner, Iran has the means to retaliate all it wants. ... Iran -- if it feels it's backed into the corner, it's at war again with the United States -- will resort to terrorism, because the people who were involved are still in Iran. They're free. They don't agree with the policies, [with] the way Iran's going now. They think there should be more attacks against Americans. Where they're going to be depends on how we treat them.
In that context, how did you respond to the State of the Union address and the "axis of evil" speech?
Well, that's American politics. I think the United States has no intention of attacking Iran or provoking Iran. ...
But was it a wise selection of words?
I think Iran has been mishandled by the United States since the 1980s, since 1979. We should have determined responsibility for taking over that embassy. It was an act of war, and we should have responded accordingly. By not responding to taking over that embassy in a graduated fashion, by that dumb hostage rescue thing, by not responding to that, we only encouraged people who advocated terrorism in Iran. And it wasn't the whole country that did [advocated terrorism].
We should have dealt with that, nation to nation, state to state. They violated sovereign law of the United States. So it's a series of mistakes. But now, to paint Iran as this evil country, we don't know what's going to happen, because we don't know what's happening in Iran. Will this encourage the moderates to change Iranian policy? I don't know. ...
Do you feel America doesn't know Iran?
No, it doesn't know anything about it. Doesn't know anything about it. I have seen no dialogue in this country, in the press, or in academia to suggest to me that we really know what's going on in Iran. We are dealing with myths, misinformation, a press that has no idea. It boils down to women's rights or wishful thinking about Khatami or misperceptions.
As a professional intelligence person, how would you rate American intelligence in Iran?
It's lousy ... because we don't have any people in Iran. You really need people on the ground in a country to give you ground truth. You complement that with other intelligence from other countries, from technical intelligence, and you can get a good picture. But once you don't have people on the ground, you really lose track of what's happening in a country.
I mean, North Korea has always been a black hole for us, because we don't have people there. We don't have people talking to the North Koreans. You have to hear people complain about the price of milk, you have to hear people. How do they view the United States? It's very important to get a feel for a country. I mean, I lost track of the United States because I was gone for so many years, and I'm an American. ...
Tell me about [Imad Mughniyah] and his importance.
He's very important but there's certain myths about him -- that he's running the whole thing, he's the master. There are no master terrorists. They're just a whole group of people. He's very effective, very efficient. He runs commando-style operations. He's got incredible security. He can tap people, go where he wants, change IDs. He was involved in many kidnappings. I'm not sure he was involved in the first embassy bombing; he probably was, but I know that from inference. It's very hard to pin these people down, because it takes patience. But anyhow, Mughniyah is very important. He's an important player, is involved in all sorts of terrorism operations.
What's his relationship to Iran?
He was paid by Iran. He had direct connection with a couple of Iranians. ... He was recruited in the Islamic Jihad movement in 1982-1983, like that, and agreed to carry out operations against United States. He's a believer, undoubtedly. But most of all, he's very effective. He can compartment[alize] operations, he's got people that are loyal. He's ruthless and he's ready to lose people. He's ready for himself to die, too, which makes him a formidable opponent. ...
Mughniyah is a professional terrorist. I've never heard an explanation [of] what really makes the guy tick. But it was very clear to us in the 1980s that he took his orders directly from [Iran's] Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. ... He was paid by them, he took orders, he put out communiqués. Occasionally he would do things on his own, when he'd get angry about something. He was an independent player. He was probably a nightmare to run for the Iranians, but he carried out their orders. And I don't think there's anybody in the American intelligence community [who] would disagree with that. ...
What do you do with Iran when you're posturing against Iraq, when it's likely you may be taking some action against Iraq? If you're a CIA intelligence expert in the region, you must be getting a little worried about how we handle all this.
... What you have to do is put yourself in the position of the Iranians. ... An invasion of Iraq is going to cause resentment in the Islamic world, which is going to help the radicals in Tehran, who are going to say, "Listen, we told you all along. It's the United States against Islam. Stop this reformist stuff and let's liberate Jerusalem." ...
What about the Iran-Iraq war and America's position on that? How important is that?
It's very important. Iraq was under threat. The Reagan administration knew that if Iraq was overrun by Iran, there'd be total chaos in the Gulf. We provided help to Iraq during the war -- material help and information help -- which was extremely helpful to the Iraqis. The problem is, it built up resentment in Iran because the radicals said, "Look, they've always been against us. We've got to stop this." ...
What are the current links, do you think, between Iran and terrorism? How would you characterize or summarize it currently?
... Last thing I saw before I left the CIA was this intention to set up a relationship with bin Laden. There was a meeting which occurred in July 1996 in Afghanistan, where the Iranians went in to propose a strategic comprehensive alliance against the United States. And what that involved, whether it came to fruition or not, I don't know. In 1996, that was their intention. And that after that, anything I have to say is pure speculation. ...
Iran and the Taliban were not friends, right?
In the Middle East, my enemy's enemy is my friend. Just don't ever forget that rule. ...
[But] other than what you've said, we haven't really heard of any direct links with Al Qaeda. I guess the last one was they were letting some [Al Qaeda fugitives] escape into Iran. But we're not suggesting that Iran's fingerprints were on Sept. 11.
No. How would we ever know, though? Again, put yourself in the position of the Iranians, or an Iranian. Maybe not Iran as a state, maybe it's an individual Iranian that's carrying on this war. Would you convey these by telephone, by Internet, a decision to participate in Sept. 11? It's done orally, face to face, probably outside, so there's no room audio.
So we'll never know. It's just one of those questions we'll never know because the people involved will never talk. They don't keep a record of it. They don't need to submit receipts on their tax forms at the end of the year. We'll just never know. ...
And take me back to Khobar Towers. What do we know about Khobar Towers and Iran?
We know Iran was involved. We know Iran trained, gave alias passports, helped provide surveillance of American facilities in Saudi Arabia, and that Khomeini gave a fatwa to blow up Khobar. This has been acknowledged in the indictment, it's been acknowledged by Louis Freeh in The New Yorker.
Saudi Arabia didn't want to look too closely into it, because at that point, there was a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and they certainly didn't want to indict Iran. It was another terrorism attack that was passed over. It was overlooked because we didn't want to do anything against Iran.
Iran is the third rail of American foreign policy in the world. Brought down Jimmy Carter, Iranian crisis, and almost brought down Reagan, almost, close, with Iran-Contra. So every president since then says, "Iran is bad, but we're not going to do anything about it. It's a sleeping dog, don't wake it up."
And along comes the latest president, George W. [Bush], and he strongly intimates we are going to do something about it, this evil empire.
What can we do about it? We can only cope with these problems inasmuch as we solve the problem of Israel and Palestine. If we can implement U.N. Resolution 242, we can internationalize Jerusalem, do something about the right of return of Palestinians to Palestine. And then go to the Middle East and say, "All right, now it's time to implement other U.N. resolutions." ... But it really does boil down to Israel, in a lot of ways. ...
And when you were in the CIA, was there an awareness of this? ...
No, but it's not CIA's business. These are the politics we saw, but we were never involved in this. We never had to worry about resolutions, U.N. 242. I mean, [we] read about it and cared about it. And I know when it was passed and I know this dialogue's always been going on between Syria and United States, Lebanon.
Our objective was to find out who was taking hostages in Lebanon, who blew up our embassy, who blew up the Marines -- and predict future attacks. At the same time, we were listening to our agents, people on the ground. That's how we spent our entire life.
... When we began, you mentioned the misunderstanding about the Iranians being killed in Lebanon. ... It struck me when you were saying that, that the relationship between America and Iran seems to be one completely fostered on misunderstandings of this sort. ...
... Yes, the misunderstandings go back to Mossadeq. [Editor's note: Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who wanted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and limit foreign involvement in Iran's internal affairs, was removed from office in a CIA-supported coup in 1953, which allowed the shah -- who was friendly to Western powers -- to return to Tehran. See the timeline for more background on Iran's history.]
The Iranians are generally, as people, pro-American. A lot of Iranians live here. The Iranian music industry is based in Los Angeles. There's a lot of travel back and forth. The Iranians have been normally in history pro-Israel as a balance to the Arabs.
But along came Mossadeq. And then you had the corruption in Tehran, all the American companies, this supplying of arms to Iran to fight the Cold War, all the military bases. The Iranians looked at this as if we were participating in the corruption of their society, American companies and American government. And then you had the revolution and then you had the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, which split off from the revolution, and a lot of them set up in the United States.
Then you had the Iran-Iraq war, and then our continued support to Israel. And the Iranians look at us as a hostile country, just as we look at the Soviet Union as a hostile country. ... There was a lot of misperceptions. And there's no dialogue.
So faced with that situation, what does one do? ... The hawks would argue, "Well, we've tried dialogue; we've tried blandishments. We've reduced sanctions on pistachios and other things. We've tried to talk to them, and these mullahs keep slapping us in the face. What are we to do?"
Well, I think that you set some clarity for standards of behavior vis-a-vis Iran. I think by not holding the Iranians accountable for taking over [the U.S.] embassy, by not holding them accountable for what happened in Lebanon, only encouraged the radicals. At the same time, we should have had a carrot, opened up some back channel with the mullahs, talk[ed] to them. Once you stop talking to people, you're lost. And I think the American tendency is, as is the Iranians', once this level of hostility arises, [to] stop talking.
The Iranians have desperately wanted a secret channel to the United States for years -- all the Iranians have -- to work out the problem, work out the problems in Jerusalem, work out the problems of oil, work out the problems of Iraq. We've always said, "No, here's our conditions for dialogue: Stop terrorism." ... There used to be three [criteria], I used to remember them.
Well, a big one is weapons of mass destruction and Iran building them. ... That fear has been around. ...
Well, look at the dialogue today, where we're talking about using tactical nuclear weapons against North Korea and the rest. Once this stuff leaks out, the Iranians say, "Well, look, they're going to use nuclear weapons against us. We need missiles."
And how credible is it in your experience that the Iranians are up to building weapons of mass destruction?
I have no idea. ... It's a big issue. They were getting a lot of stuff, but how advanced they are, I really don't know. Whether they're one year away from a nuclear bomb or 20 years away, I have no idea.
But presumably that seems to be one of the biggest issues for people in Washington: "How much time do we have before these guys end up with a weapon? What are we going to do?"
What about Pakistan? What about India? I don't trust either one of them, too. It's a catastrophe if Iran and Iraq get nuclear weapons. [They] will use them against each other one day. ...
I think what we're all talking about is, we all regret the end of the Cold War. In the Cold War, things were predictable, and you could have worked these things out. ...
This is such a slippery subject, terrorism, and if you start painting the whole Islamic world as terrorists, or there's the Russians as supporting terrorism, where does it all end? I don't know. ... There are terrorists, there are mass murderers, but we don't know who they are and who supports them and we don't know how to stop it. ..
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