Brad Pitt and the Girl Guerrillas
News: The celibates of Ocalan
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The green and brown scrub brush in the Qandil Mountains acquires a thick layer of snow by late fall. In happier times, these peaks at the border between Iraq and Iran would offer tourists spectacular views, but these days the only sightseers are men and women with AK-47s slung over their shoulders. They are Iranian Kurdish guerrillas based among their Kurdish brethren in northern Iraq, and at the moment, they may be the closest thing the Bush administration has to an ally in its confrontation with Tehran.
Kurdish and American sources say the United States has been supporting guerrilla raids against Iran, channeling the money through organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan; last fall, The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported that Israel is also providing equipment and training. When I arrived in Sulaymaniyah, the Kurdish city closest to the Iranian border, it was hard to miss the Green Berets in civvies walking down the main street. "Suli is like some Balkan city years ago," one U.S. officer told me. "You've got spies everywhere. Everyone wants to know what everyone else is doing." The seedy Ashti Hotel looked like something out of a Graham Greene novel, its smoke-filled lobby a meeting place for obscure diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, and spies. Men sat around staring at glasses of strong tea; every now and again they'd pour a bit of tea into their saucers, let it cool, and slurp it down. I met a Kurdish military adviser at the Ashti, and when the U.S. Army came to escort me for a story on its operations, Humvees pulled up by the hotel.
Getting to the actual guerrilla camps was relatively easy. Kurdish officials unconvincingly insisted they had no idea how to find the fighters, but cabdrivers had no trouble pinpointing the camps. As my four-wheel-drive vehicle climbed the mountainside, young women in green pants and the distinctive twisted Kurdish headscarf appeared along the road. They were fighters with the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or pjak, which claims its troops are almost 50 percent female.
Part underground movement, part cult, pjak requires its fighters to eschew sex and study the teachings of Abdullah Ocalan, a Nietzsche-quoting Turkish Kurd who is its spiritual leader. Ocalan's political organization, the radical Kurdistan Workers Party (pkk), is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. pjak's relationship with the party is supposed to be arm's length, but I had to pass through two pkk checkpoints on my way to the guerrillas' camp, each of them relaying information up the line via walkie-talkie. Finally, the fighters welcomed me into a room with a threadbare carpet on the floor and a kerosene stove blasting heat; posters of Ocalan hung on the wall along with the pkk flag. While waiting for their leaders to descend from the mountains, I asked one of the women what they did to stave off boredom. "We watch satellite TV," she said, insisting that they cared only for news programs before confessing, with a shy smile, "We like Brad Pitt and Mel Gibson."
That was about the only American influence anyone at the camp would admit to. The fighters' commander had recently died in a flash flood, and his replacement—a fortysomething man with prematurely gray hair who stood perhaps 5 feet 5 inches—introduced himself as Zenar Agri. He informed me that in 2006 the guerrillas had killed about 100 Iranians in their cross-border skirmishes. He said they were not getting U.S. help, then smiled, "But we would love to have American support." He also told me that before the pkk's emergence, "the Kurds didn't know about their history and how to struggle," but now Kurds could follow Ocalan's road to liberation.
Back in the valley, I found a different kind of Kurdish organizing at the University of Sulaimani, where many Iranian Kurdish activists have come to study. The scene could have been any U.S. campus; almost everyone wore blue jeans, and only a few of the women had their heads covered. I sat down with two Iranian students who said they had come to Iraq illegally, following smugglers' trails over the mountains. They talked openly about the competition between Iranian Kurdish parties to attract U.S. support. Hiwa, a film student who described himself as the future Stanley Kubrick of Kurdistan, told me Washington ought to be ecumenical: "All parties should have connections with the U.S."
So far, Washington seems to feel the same way. The two main Iranian Kurdish parties, Komala and the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (kdpi), have been allowed to operate openly in northern Iraq; both say their focus is on political organizing within Iran. "We have not opposed armed struggle," Mustafa Hejri, leader of the kdpi, told me. "But for now we believe political activity benefits the party more." Hejri, along with other top kdpi and Komala officials, went to Washington last year for meetings at the State Department and on Capitol Hill. They "listened to us and asked questions," Komala leader Abdullah Mohtadi told me. "It was a step forward." Most other Iranian opposition leaders I spoke to were critical of U.S. policy toward Tehran and said the administration's allocation of $85 million to "promote democracy" in Iran had backfired by making the population rally around the embattled Islamist government. The Kurdish Iranian parties, on the other hand, told me they were looking forward to getting U.S. funding. "We're pragmatists," Mohtadi told me. The United States "can't make democracy by force, but it can topple dictators."
Reese Erlich's book, "The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of US Policy and the Middle East Crisis," will be published in September 2007. See his interviews with Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and other Iranian opposition leaders at: motherjones.com/iran_dissidents.
Photo: Reese Erlich
This has been recognized by the US European Unity and many other countries.
There are many cases, which clearly show PKK directs attacks on civilians and even to their own people. Recently PKK a militant’s suicide bomb attack in Diyarbakir killed four young grammar school children and angered even PKK supporters. 1993 They butchered whole Kurdish family, women and children. There is a strong feudal social structure in Kurdistan which undermines human life and women rights.
This doesn’t hide the oppression of Kurds in three countries. They have right to speak their language, get education in their own universities, economically prosper and liberate themselves from feudal Kurdish rule, educate their girls and women.
The two feudal Sikhs or leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan were they were killing each other during Saddam's regime. Sometimes they collerabated with oppressive Iran Shah’s regime. Sometimes with Soviets and KGB. Ironically Turkish Government stopped this infighting between Barzani and Talabani. They even fought against PKK. They are corrupt and oppressive feudals where women’s rights are nil. Whole government structure is filled with their corrupt relatives.
Now they are becoming fast as a peon of war powers in the regions
The US imperial pipe dream needs ally in the midst of Arab nations and
Israel needs ally to weaken and attack on Syria, Iran and control the region and expand the dreams of greater Israel and Zionism.
In Iraq 650 000 people died based on lies and manipulations of Bush and neocons who are a war criminals to my understanding and one day my people will stop this abusive war and select a decent president who can chance the direction of this nation.
If Israel is planning to use Turkish PKK, and Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian regions to attack those countries and backstab the Arabic countries Kurds will suffer the most because they are landlocked and only food and other technological material comes in from Turkish border.
Also it is a shame to my Jewish brothers in Israel who lost six million people to Holocaust, racism and prejudice, should stop acting like invading Nazis to the Palestinian land. Gaza reminds me Warsaw Ghetto every day which shames all decent human beings.
Shooting Pope by Nazi militant was one of those cases.
Turkey and her people never overcame this jingoistic militaristic nationalism. Argentine, Greece, Chile took generals to court. Unfortunately weak or destroyed intellectuals in Turkey were never able to do this.
Turkish military is very corrupt, neglects democratic rules and able to discuss or threat democratic parties are still heroes.
Turkey will never able to reach democratic levels of modern society unless they control generals. When the general learn to shut up that is the first step for democracy.
I ask you to read a little bit more of neutral literature. First of all, it is not very hard to guess that you come from one of those imperialistic countries that have tried to share Turkish lands after WW1 but which were driven out by turkish patriotism. In history it has always been attempted to break Turkish territory apart especially by the English which have done a good job colonizing the Middle East. Thus, its big losses and the fact that the "sick man" of anatolia won its war of independance against a much stronger enemy made them aigain support terrorism. Besides, Turkish people have lived in todays Turkey for ca. 1000 years in harmony with all ethnic groups even though they have been the ruling ethnicity they have never oppressed anyone. When people in Europe burned women accused of witchcraft, the Ottomans obeyed the principle of freedom of religion. No doubt that the Turkish govt has forbidden the Kurds live their culture but only because it tried to maintain its territory which is not only inhabited by kurds but also by arabs armenians turks persians and all other ethnic groups. The Turkish govt gives everyone the same rights regardless where they come from and of which race they are. Consequently, its natural that there is only one offical language that is to learn by everyone.(how could the govt teach all languages of all ethnic groups??in which is taht the case??why arent indian or spanish offical languages of the us??)