"The Iranian government is strong. But not that strong."
Akif Zagros, 28, a former journalist and a founding member of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK)
News: In the mountains with a Kurdish opposition group trying to bring democracy to Iran.
March 29, 2006
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KANDEEL, Iraq—The simple, cinderblock and sod-roof, dwellings of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) don't look much different from those of the surrounding villages in Iraq's Zagros mountains. The plumbing is outdoors and the water comes from mountain streams. Nor do the men and women in the village look much different from those elsewhere in the region—most wear traditional Kurdish clothing, baggy coveralls sashed at the waist, and it's not uncommon to see people with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.
It's only in conversation that the men and women of the PJAK camp, most of whom hail from Iran, begin to distinguish themselves from Iraqi Kurds, who tend to be subsistence farmers with little education. My first night in the PJAK camp, I was treated to a broken-English crash course in the group's ideology—a variant of democratic socialism combined with a call for the Iranian government to adhere to the European Union's convention on human rights.
The group has been exiled to the mountains of northern Iraq during its struggle to bring democracy to Iran, but the members of PJAK remain surprisingly optimistic. They began organizing underground cells and demonstrating in Iran in the mid-1990s, but after facing persecution by the Tehran government in 1999, many members fled and set up a base in Kandeel. In 2004, the group began carrying out small-arms attacks inside Iran against military targets, in response to Iranian aggression against Kurds in the country's western provinces. BBC Persia reported that PJAK killed 120 Iranian police officers during a six-month period in 2005. It is currently one of the largest—if not the largest—Iranian opposition group, claiming 4,000 members in Kandeel and thousands more inside Iran.
PJAK claims that its numbers have risen steadily since its formation, and that its existence is convincing many of Iran's approximately 3.7 million Kurds—about 7 percent of the country's total population—that the theocratic government in Tehran can be challenged both militarily and politically.
"The Iranian government is strong," says Akif Zagros, 28, a former journalist and a founding member of PJAK. "But not that strong."
Since the creation of modern Iran, the Kurdish minority inside the country has endured oppression—as have Kurds in neighboring countries. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 initiated a jihad by the Shiite government against the Sunni Kurds. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that Kurds were not autonomous and had no reason to seek cultural rights. Such discrimination continues to this day. Kurds in Iran, for instance, are not allowed to receive Kurdish-language education in school—as was the case in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and, until 2004, in Turkey.
In addition to cultural discrimination, Iranian Kurds complain that they do not receive the same services—such as petrol subsidies—as Iranians in other parts of the country, and that the Kurdish provinces, despite being oil-rich, are economically depressed.
Iran's previous president, Mohamed Khatami, attempted to reverse some of this discrimination by including Kurds in the government, authorizing the creation of Kurdish-language chairs at universities, and easing restrictions against Kurdish political activity. But these small steps have been reversed with the election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad last year.
Photo: David Enders
