| Iran-PJAK conflict | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Area inhabited by Kurds in 1992 |
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|
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Iran |
Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Ali Khamenei Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mohammed Ali Jafari Yahya Rahim Safavi Ataollah Salehi Mohammad Hejazi Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moghaddam |
Haji Ahmadi Majid Kavian † |
||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 5,000 deployed[3] 15,000 (PJAK claim)[4] |
600[5]-1,000[6][7] fighters 2,000+ fighters (PJAK claim)[8] |
||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 290-460 | |||||||
|
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The Iran–Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan conflict was an armed conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the ethnic secessionist Kurdish guerrilla group Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK). The group had been carrying out attacks in the Kurdistan Province of Iran and other Kurdish-inhabited areas, and is closely affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party operating against Turkey.[9]
Like the present PKK goals in Turkey, PJAK leaders say their long-term goals are to establish an autonomous Kurdish region within the Iranian state.[10] It is mainly focused on replacing Iran's theocracy with a democratic and federal government, where self-rule is granted to all ethnic minorities of Iran, including Sunni, Arabs, Azeris, and Kurds.[11]
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Since the Iranian Revolution, there has been an ongoing conflict between Iran’s central government and Kurdish political movements rooted in the predominantly Kurdish region of western Iran.[12] The level of violence has ebbed and flowed with peaks of serious conflict in 1979, the early eighties and the early nineties.[12] Kurdish casualties are estimated (by the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI)) at more than 30,000 civilian dead in addition to 4,000 Kurdish fighters.[12] Along with the dead, there have been many other casualties; tens of thousands of people imprisoned; hundreds of villages destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people displaced.[12] The local economy of an already under-developed region has been severely damaged by the conflict, as of course has the Iranian economy as a whole.[12]
The Kurdish-Iranian conflict erupted once again in 2004, invlolving the Kurdish PJAK guerilla movement, founded by former PKK members.
Members of the PKK founded the PJAK in 2004 as an Iranian equivalent to their leftist-nationalist insurgency against the Turkish government.[13]
Istanbul's Cihan News Agency claimed that over 120 members of the Iranian security forces were killed by PJAK during 2005.[14]
PJAK killed 24 members of Iranian security forces on April 3, 2006 in a raid, performed in retaliation for the killing of 10 Kurds demonstrating in Maku by Iranian security forces.[15] On April 10, 2006, seven PJAK members were arrested in Iran, on suspicion that they killed three Iranian security force personnel. PJAK set off a bomb on 8 May 2006 in Kermanshah, wounding five people at a government building.[16] Since those events, the US news channel MSNBC claimed that the Iranian military begun bombardments of Kurdish villages in US-occupied Iraq along the Iranian border while claiming that their primary targets were PJAK militants. A number of civilians died.[17] On September 28, 2006, Iran said that two members of the PKK (which Iran regularly confuses with the closely affiliated PJAK) blew up a gas pipeline to Turkey near the town of Bazargan in West Azerbaijan province.[18]
On February 24, 2007 an Iranian helicopter crashed near the town of Khoy, killing 13 soldiers, including several members of the elite Revolutionary Guards and Said Qahari, the head of the Iranian army's 3rd Corps. PJAK quickly claimed to have shot down the helicopter using a shoulder-launched missile, killing 20 soldiers, including several senior officers, during an hour-long battle. Iran, however, blamed the crash on bad weather. After that, Iran launched a counter-offensive against the group in the northeast of Iran's West Azerbaijan province, near the Turkish border. According to Iran's state news agencies as many as 47 Kurdish rebels and 17 Iranian soldiers were killed in the violence between February 25 and March 1, 2007.[18] In August 2007, PJAK claimed it managed to down another Iranian military helicopter that was conducting a forward operation of bombardment by Iranian forces.[19]
According to Kurdish officials, Iranian troops raided northern Iraq on August 23, 2007, attacking several villages.[20]
The Iranian news agency IRNA reported on October 11, 2008 that members of the Iranian religious militia Basij killed four Kurdish guerrillas in a clash close to the Iraqi border.[21]
In August 2008, under Iranian pressure, one of Iraqi Kurdistan's ruling parties, the PUK, launched an offensive against PJAK forces. KDP-leader and President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani condmened PJAK operations against Iran multiple times.[22]
On April 24, 2009, PJAK rebels attacked a police station in Kermanshah province. According to updated reports 18 policemen and 8 rebels were killed in a fierce gun battle.[23] According to Iranian government sources, the attack resulted in 10 policemen and 10 rebels killed.[23] According to Hiedelberg Institute for International Conflict Research, the attack, which occurred on April 24 and 25, involved PJAK attacks on two police stations in the cities of Ravansar in northern Kermanshah province and in Sanandaj, the capital of Kordestan province, killing eleven police officers, with more than ten PJAK members reportedly killed.[24]
Iran responded a week later by attacking Kurdish villages in the boder area of Panjwin inside Iraq using helicopter gunships. According to Iraqi border guards officials, the area attacked by Iran was not considered a stronghold of PJAK, that appeared to have been the target of the raid. According to the ICRC, more than 800 Iraqi Kurds have been forced from their homes by the recent cross-border violence.[25]
In 2010, PJAK claimed responsibility for the deaths of 3 IRGC soldiers in Khoy. Earlier in the year Iranian police arrested a suspect in the killing of a prosecutor in the same region during clashes with "Kurdish militants."[26]
On March 24, two Iranian police officers were killed and three others injured in two attacks in the city of Sanandaj in Kurdistan Province and on April 1 four border guards were killed and three others were wounded in an attack against a police station near the city of Marivan.[27] On April 4, Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said the perpetrators of the previous attacks in Sanandaj were killed.[27]
Two Kurdish guerillas affiliated to PJAK were reported to had been killed and another wounded by the IRIB TV website on June 19th, 2011, in Iran's northwestern town of Chaldran in West Azerbajan province.[28]
On 16 July 2011 the Iranian army launched a major offensive against PJAK compounds in the mountainous regions of northern Iraq. On July 17, the IRGC killed at last five PJAK members in a raid that destroyed one of the group's headquarters in northwestern Iran. PJAK claimed 21 Iranian soldiers were killed in the clashes. [29][30] Iranian authorities on the other hand confirmed their casualties at 1 killed and 3 injured while claiming to have inflicted "heavy losses" on the rebels.[31] They announced that they had captured three rebel bases, one of which was identified as Marvan and was said to be the leading PJAK camp in the region.[32]
On July 20, PJAK killed 5 IRGC members and one IRGC commander[33] while IRGC forces killed 35 PJAK fighters and captured several others during clashes on July 25.[34] By July 26, more than 50 PJAK fighters and 8 Revolutionary Guards had been killed,[35] and at least 100 PJAK fighters had been wounded according to Iranian sources,[36] while over 800 people had been displaced by the fighting.[37] At least 3 civilians were killed.[38] During clashes in the Jasosan and Alotan heights the next day, Iranian forces claimed to have killed over 21 PJAK fighters, confirming that two IRGC forces had been killed and two had been injured during the clashes.[39]
On July 29, suspected PJAK militants blew up the Iran-Turkey gas pipeline, which was repaired the next day. On August 1, Iranian forces killed 3 and arrested 4 of the militants said to be responsible for the attack, at least one of which was a Turkish citizen.[40]
On August 5, the leader of Party of free Life for Kurdistan, Rahman Haj Ahmedi, said to Newsmax that more than 300 Iranian Revolutionary Guards had been killed in a series of ambushes, while acknowledging 16 loses. [41] Iranian officials however, claimed to have killed over 150 PJAK forces during the operations,[42] confirming the deaths of only 17 Revolutionary Guards.[43]
On August 8 2011, Abdul Rahman Haji Ahmadi, the leader of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, said the armed rebel group is prepared to negotiate with Iran and maintained that Kurdish issues need to be solved through “peaceful means”. In an exclusive interview with Rudaw, Haji Ahmadi acknowledged that in some cases compromise is inevitable and indicated that PJAK is willing to lay down its arms. He said fighting may not help Kurds secure political and cultural rights in Iran. [44]
On August 8 2011, Murat Karayılan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said they withdrew all PJAK fighters out of Iran and sent them to PKK camps in the Qandil mountains. He said they replaced PJAK forces on the Iranian border with PKK forces to prevent further clashes and called on Iran to end attacks because unlike the PJAK, the PKK was not at war with Iran.[45] Karayılan released the following statement: “As the PKK, we have not declared any war against Iran. We do not wish to fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran either. Why? Because one of the aims of the international forces who seek to re-design the region is to besiege Iran. Currently, they are more preoccupied with Syria. If they just manage to work things out there as they wish, it will be Iran’s turn next. As Kurds, we do not think it quite right to be involved in a war with Iran at such a stage. You have no interest in targeting the PKK ... You must end this conflict. It is America that wants this conflict to go on. Because these attacks of yours serve America’s interests. They want both the PKK and Iran to grow weaker.”[46]
On September 5, 2011, the IRGC rejected the cease-fire declared by the Kurdish rebel group PJAK, as meaningless, as long as PJAK forces remained on the borders of the Islamic Republic. Iran also said its troops had killed 30 PJAK fighters and wounded 40 in several days of fighting. [47][48]
On September 29 2011, Iranian sources reported PJAK had officially surrendered after 180 deaths and 300 injured.[49] According to another Iranian source, Iranian ambassador to Iraq Hassan Danaei-Far declared that they had cleared all areas of PJAK activities and that they had reached an agreement with the Iraqi central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government, in which they vowed to keep the border peaceful.[50] According to Farsnews, IRGC ground commander General Abdollah Araqi declared that the conflict had ended after PJAK had accepted Iran's terms and withdrawn all it's forces from Iranian soil.[51]
In late October, President of Iraqi Kurdistan Massoud Barzani said in a visit to Tehran that an agreement had been reached between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the PJAK in which the PJAK had agreed to end it's armed activities in the region and that the borders between Iran and the Kurdistan Region would now be safe.[52]
On April 18, 2006, US Congressman Dennis Kucinich sent a letter to US president George W. Bush in which he expressed his judgment that the US is likely to be supporting and coordinating PJAK, since PJAK operates and is based in Iraqi territory, which is under the control of the U.S. supported Kurdistan Regional Government.[53]
In November 2006, journalist Seymour Hersh writing in The New Yorker, supported this claim, stating that the US military and the Israelis are giving the group equipment, training, and targeting information in order to cause destruction in Iran.[54]
This is denied officially by both the US and PJAK. In an interview with Slate magazine in June 2006, when PJAK spokesman Ihsan Warya was paraphrased as stating that he "nevertheless points out that PJAK really does wish it were an agent of the United States, and that [PJAK is] disappointed that Washington hasn't made contact." The Slate article continues stating that the PJAK wishes to be supported by and work with the United States in overthrowing the government of Iran in a similar way to the US eventually cooperated with Kurdish organisations in Iraq in overthrowing the government of Iraq during the most recent Iraq war.[55]
In August 2007, the leader of PJAK visited Washington, DC in order to seek more open support from the US both politically and militarily,[56] but it was later said that he only made limited contacts with officials in Washington.[17] One of the top officials in the PKK made a statement in late 2006, that "If the US is interested in PJAK, then it has to be interested in the PKK as well" referring to the alliance between the two groups and their memberships in the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (KCK).[57]