It is often said, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
However, when it comes to the United States and a group fighting Iran, this axiom definitely does not apply.
In the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, near the Iran - Iraq border, Iran is lobbing artillery shells into Iraqi territory with increasing, and troubling, regularity. Their claimed target? A Kurdish militant group called PJAK (the Free Life Party of Kurdistan). PJAK controls a broad swath of northern Iraq, beyond the reach of Baghdad and the the semi-autonomous Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq.
PJAK was founded officially in 2004 to fight persecution of Kurds in Iran. They launch attacks on Iranian military targets just across the border, and have operatives inside Iran, fomenting opposition to the regime in Tehran. They claim that the Iranian government persecutes and discriminates against Kurds, and most human rights advocates agree.
The penalty in Iran for being a member of PJAK is death; four PJAK operatives were publicly executed in May.
HDNet World Report correspondent Willem Marx spent a few days with PJAK militants in northern Iraq earlier this Summer. Constantly on the move, they hide in some of the most rugged terrain in the world.
So targeting PJAK is very difficult for Iran. Their shells rarely hit PJAK camps, but rather rain down on local villages suspected of sheltering the group. Marx visited refugee camps where thousands of local Kurds have been driven from their homes, into makeshift tent cities which have no running water, medical care, or basic sanitation. The Kurdish regional government is unable, or unwilling, to do much to help them.
One wonders, then, why the United States isn't doing anything to help these Iraqi citizens, and even PJAK, which, after all, is fighting the hated Iranian regime.
Instead, early last year, just 12 days into the Obama administration, the U.S. designated PJAK a terrorist group.
PJAK militants said that they had previously met with U.S. officials, hoping to garner support for their efforts to de-stabilize American arch-enemy Iran. Those discussions did not yield fruit, but at least one PJAK leader Marx interviewed was taken aback when the terrorist designation came down. They suspect this was a sop to Iran by the new administration; more likely it was a sop to Turkey.
You see, PJAK is affiliated with the PKK (the Kurdish Worker's Party), which has waged a bloody 20-plus year insurgency against Turkey. Their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, has been in a Turkish prison since 1999, but their struggle against Turkey, and to a lesser extent Syria and Iran, continues. Many governments, including ours, have decided that there is no practical difference between PKK and PJAK. When World Report visited the militant camps, it was clear that PJAK is its own entity, but we did observe frequent communications between PJAK and PKK.
Now caught between the militant groups, Iran, and Turkey, (which also has apparently been bombing targets inside Iraq) Iraqi Kurds, mostly subsistence farmers, are not being protected by anyone, and they are suffering.
Also troubling: the United States helps Turkey with intelligence on Kurdish militant groups. Turkey also shares intelligence with Iran, raising the possibility that U.S. intelligence is actually aiding the Iranian military. There are now reports, too, that Iran is actually establishing military outposts inside Iraq.
As the United States continues its draw-down in Iraq, these are issues that need to be watched closely.
Here is a clip from Willem Marx's report from Northern Iraq / Iraqi Kurdistan, which airs Tuesday night on HDNet -- 9pm eastern and again at 12am eastern.
Your piece only explains one thing, why 3 Americna hikers were arrested in Iran. You can't have it both ways, you can't say three youths were innocently hiking in "peaceful" kurdestan near the Iranian boder on one day, then report there is a war between PJAK and Iran and the Iranians are "constantly" shelling also "innocent civilians." Now the public has proof positive that the three were probably not just hiking for tourist attraction in the middle of the war zone you have depicted.
"The three hickers are innocent, the kurds are innocent." But there is a war and the only guilty party you and your cohorts would have us believe is the Iranian Government for doing the same thing the Turks are doing. The same thing the Brits did to IRA. The same thing the French and Spaniards are doing to ETA. But let's all believe it is only Iran. Let's believe thousands of US troops in Iraq and in Iraqi Kurdistan are innocently watching all this and have little contact with PKK or PJAK.
please stop gumming up comments pages with pre-conceived agendas!!
It's my hope Obama can break this with his agenda. The American people seem to have the commitment and memory of a fruit fly.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=396530717065
People ask "why don't they stand up for their country?" the answer is: they did, it's called the insurgency.
It is worth noting that the mainstream of Iraq's Kurds are not that upset with those attacks, and neither is the Iraqi government. One of those little side effects of how the US destabalised Iraq to make it even easier to invade was to exacerbate the tension between the Kurdish north and the rest of Iraq, which would allow Iran and Turkey to exploit that tension, and their influences over the two parts (the mainstream Kurds in the north lean heavily towards Turkey, while the mainstream in the south leans towards Iran) to cause a civil war, and the breakup of Iraq, which would lead to an almost total dependancy of those two parts on them. But the thing is, both Iran and Turkey see more value (at least for the next while) in a stable Iraq than in having parts of it effectively under their exclusive control, and given that they both sit smack dab in the middle of the others routes to important markets, that cost/benefit ratio is unlikely to change for decades.
(Oh, and though it may be 'the hated regime' to Americans, (who also write off the election results because they didn't like how they contrasted with American PR) it is not so much with the people of the Kurdish dominated parts of Iran)
- it is a proxy for PKK in Iran
- PKK is a marxist/leninist terror group that waged a bloody terror campaign against Turkey for the last 30 years, and is recognized as a terrorist organization by US and EU.
- PKK kills more Kurds than any other group. They kill anybody in the region against them, including teachers, doctors, villagers, imams, kids etc. 40,000 people in total.
- PKK controls more than 80% of drug and people trafficking in Europe. Dope from Afghanistan is carried by PJAK through Iran and reaches to dealers in Europe by through Turkey
- PKK is the sole reason for the economic backwardness of the Southeast Turkey. No businessman will invest there with terror going on
- Kurds in North Iraq hate PKK too, they fought against it in the past.
- Read about Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka to see the tactics and strategy of PKK/PJAK
This is not a value judgement, it would be great if the Islamic Republic was replaced with a Democratic Republic but any government is going to defend itself.
He's also saying " There are now reports, too, that Iran is actually establishing military outposts inside Iraq." Where are these reports coming from? Can we see these reports too? Who is your source?
Yes, the PJAK soldier in the excerpt is a Kurd who was born and raised in Sweden, and then traveled to 'Kurdistan' to fight Iran. This is becoming more and more common -- seeing young men joining an ethnic / tribal struggle far from their homes and experience (i.e. 'American Taliban') It shows the reach of PJAK's recruitment.
As far as the 'recipients of this gift,' I assume you mean Iraqi Kurds. And no, they do not have the wherewithal to defend themselves. They are subsistence farmers and nomads. They have no ability to stop Iranian artillery bombardments. Their representative government, the Iraqi Kurdish regional government, can't, or won't, do anything about it, either. PJAK, seeking to incite anti-Iranian opposition, might very well see these strikes as useful to their cause. Regarding Iran defending itself, yes, that's a fair point (one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist after all). But the local Kurds we interviewed say that the Iranian bombing seems to be purposely targeting civilians.
The reports of the Iranian military outposts inside Iraq come from people we spoke to on the ground in Northern Iraq. A local journalist actually got close enough to take a picture of one. To see the context, you should watch our entire piece -- it's available on iTunes (search HDNet World Report). This blog post was intended to raise awareness of the issue, not address every intricacy.
BBC also did a report from the area and talked to the villagers. They seem to want to PKK and the PJAK to go away. With Iraq starting to stabilize, they were doing much better. Now they’ve had to leave their homes and live in tents.
Yes, the Kurds are discriminated against by varying degrees in Turkey, Syria and Iran but I’m guessing it’s not really the Kurds you’re worried about. Are you trying to tell us how bad Iran is? This theme – Iran is really bad-- has popped up again in the last few weeks in blogs, magazines, etc. It has been repeated so often in the last decade that it is in danger of becoming a genre! I guess the idea is to say it so often that it is not questioned any more with the ultimate goal of military attack? If that’s the idea, let’s discuss that.
Otherwise, in my opinion Iran’s mistreatment of the Kurds, as bad as it is, doesn’t rise to the level that would call for the US to do something about it. What exactly should the US do about it?
Regarding PJK and PKK, they are terrorist organizations supported, funded, trained, and equipped by the US and Israel. These people forget that during Saddam, many Kurds and their leaders fled to Iran in order to avoid being killed by Saddam's forces. Unlike Turkey, Iran gladly accepted them. The Turkish forces drove them back into Iraq. As the result of Turkish-Iraqi action, and bitter winter many died.
By the way, many of those who fled to Iran, have remained in Iran.
We arent, Iran is.
"Who are these people called "Kurds" when there is no such thing as Kurdistan"
There isnt a nation called Palestine either, but there are Palestinians.
There is a such thing as Kurdistan. Not as a nation, but as a geographical territory with an ethnic Kurdish population...who speak Kurdish, and consider themselves Kurds.
"How about we have a Middle East sit down where we all agree to share oil and NOT kill one another."
Will it be hosted in Imagination land?
"While we're at it, we can redraw the borders there."
That would lead to a massive war in the middle east. When countries break up, it is messy, see Yugoslavia.
"All of the borders in the Middle East are seemingly arbitrary results from the global catastrophe that was WWII."
I think you mean WW1, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Sorry, just wanted to correct that.
Killing civilians while fighting terror groups.