Kardo Bokani:
Iran’s anti-PJAK project is multi-faceted scheme and its thorough analysis goes beyond the scope of this article. I shall bind my argument into certain elements of it and deal only with a number of issues, which pursue similar goal of criminalising and blacklisting of the Kurdish resistance movement led by the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK).
Having sensed the danger of PJAK’s development in the East of Kurdistan, and the culmination of the Mullah’s raising frustration at the PJAK’s popularity among the Kurds; have led the Iranian theocratic regime to add a new lethal scheme into its colonial war in Kurdistan, hoping for the liquidation of the Kurdish liberation movement. Allaying with Turkey as one of the major occupying powers of Kurdistan, who has ample experience and sophisticated knowledge of colonialist war against the Kurds; Iran seeks to denigrate the Kurdish liberation movement both internally and externally. To this end, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Intelligent Service aided by Turkish Intelligence Service (JITEM) have assembled anti-PJAK groups appointed to organise manifold sorts of malicious acts including terror campaign in the name of PJAK. Their planned campaign include explosion in the public, assassinations, abduction, extra-judicial killings, and drug-distribution among the Kurdish population in the East of Kurdistan.
JITEM is a Turkish secret and terrorist organisation established in 1987 in Turkey to orchestrate a multi-faceted war against the Kurdish liberation movement led by the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party). Having decades of practice and experiences in this respect, JITEM trains and teaches these anti-PJAK groups providing them with capability of how to fight the Kurds in East Kurdistan. Based on this line of argument, one could claim that Iran plans to apply similar methods Turkey tried in her long colonial war against the Kurdish anti-colonial resistance. Turkey had used ultra rightist gangsters and religious fanatics such as Hezbollah to fight against the Kurds. Hezbollah is believed to have killed thousands of the Kurds and disappeared many more. Turkey involved in a no-holds-bar in the war against the Kurds and his security service was working hand-in–hand with Hezbollah’s terrorists and assassins.
One of the Iranian regime’s main weapons to fight against the democratic dynamics embedded within Kurdish society is the ideology of Political Islam. The Regime has spread political Islam in the region and established a number of Islamic Radical Groups in the last few years. These groups are instructed to target anti-regime initiatives as well as the opposition groups. Their main goal is the liquidation of Kurdish liberation movement led by PJAK, but they do also target the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It should be recalled that the Iranian regime had adopted its anti-Kurdish scheme form the onset of the Islamic revolution in 1979. The declaration of Jihad – the wholly war – against the Kurdish people by the founding father of the Islamic Republic too well exhibits the colonial dimension of this lethal war in Kurdistan. Notwithstanding the anti-PJAK project is the culminated point of this special war, which is deemed to fail, given the level of consciousness of the Kurds and the development of PJAK’s organisation among the people.
To defame PJAK inside the Kurdish society and to present it as an anti-religious movement, the Iranian Institutions of Special War (ISW) have planned to target the Friday prayers – in the name of PJAK. On the one hand they have forced the Friday prayers’ imams to make propaganda against PJAK accusing them of being the agents of foreign forces and anti-Islamic. On the other hand they have planned to explode the mosques, where anti-PJAK propagandas are designed to be made – making it look like PJAK blasted the mosque. Anti-PJAK groups have planned to explode bombs both in Shiite and Sunni mosques – in the name of PJAK – in order to drift them into anti-PJAK camp. Evidences suggest that they have premeditated targeting of Mullah Qader Qaderi, Pawe’s Friday prayer’s imam. By the conduction of such terror campaign, Iran seeks to first tarnish PJAK’s increasing reputation among the Kurds, and also to blacklist the organisation by the Western powers. The explosions in Mahabad and Qeladize in 22nd and 29th September 2010 were just two examples of these anti-PJAK campaigns. In both of these cases, they strove to put the blame on PJAK but their plan was rendered ineffective by the Kurds and the truth face of the Islamic Republic laid naked for the public. Aided by the Iranian Quts Cavalry, these groups have also carried out a range of cross-border attacks on the positions of PJAK’s guerrillas. One of the main anti-PJAK groups is known as Hiwa Tab, which is responsible for the killing of more than 386 innocent people.
As a consequence of such deeds, the Islamic Republic of Iran as one of the most retrograde and aggressive dictatorships of all times, which has not hesitated to employ any sort of terrorist method – including the assassination of Kurdish nationalist leaders, chemical bombardment of Kurdish cities such as Serdesht – hopes to put the Kurdish liberation movement led by PJAK in to European terror list. By caring out Mafia-style and terrorist acts these anti-PJAK groups spread horror among the people and by instilling fears among the local Kurds, Iran seeks to compel them to take up arms against PJAK. By doing so Iran is hoping to drift both Europe and the local Kurds against PJAK.
Iran has invested a gigantic amount of budget on this project and a tremendous expense has already been incurred for it, because the criminalisation of PJAK by the international community would serve as cover for the state-terrors of the Islamic Republic and its bloody war in Kurdistan. If Iran doesn’t manage to criminalise PJAK, how on earth they would be able to justify these draconian levels of state-terrorism against the Kurds? How on earth they can account for their colonial occupation, repression and the prodigious despotism in Kurdistan? How would they account for all the crimes they have committed against humanity, against the long-oppressed Kurds?
There is also another project named as “Green Capital” directed jointly by the Iranian Institutions of Special War and Turkish Justice and Development Party. This project is designed to organise the so-called moderate Islam and is erected upon the umma (Islamic community), to provoke hostility toward Kurdish identity, and to forge conformation with any political mobility in the Kurdish society. Exploiting the economic hardship of the region, these groups offer a significant amount of salary to the unemployed youths and in this way they draw them to their religious places where they inculcate fundamental ideology and prepare them for doing evils and terror campaign in Kurdistan; such project in carried out under the name of Yesil Sermaye. The similarity between the Iranian regime and the ruling AK Party in Turkey, led Iran to provide a significant amounts of aid to this party to win the 2011 election.
Another front that Iran is using it as a launching pad targeting PJAK’s prestige is certain media. Iran has taken a good advantage of this camp and initiated an all-inclusive campaign to put the movement in to the European terror list. Iranian proxies and henchmen had appeared on certain media making pro-government and anti-PJAK statements. Certain people had appeared on pro-state TV pretending to have been involved with PJAK and made anti-PJAK propaganda. Jamal Qezaqi is one of the pretending-PJAK members who appeared on the Iranian state-run TV show, and made ludicrous assertions and anti-PJAK propagandas. Not long after his release, Mr. Qezaqi confessed to what happened and how he made anti-PJAK statements including his confession of bombing the public. He said that people are “forced” to speak against PJAK in front of the camera and all the words are written for them at the top of it. If you want to be released you have to read the “written anti-PJAK propaganda” installed on the top of the camera. If you refuse to read, you are subjected to the most unbearable form of tortures. But people who appear in front of the camera and make anti-PJAK statements will be freed. A question will rise here urging for attention; why PJAK’s pretending-member like Jamal Qezaqi who had ostensibly exploded a bomb in public should be freed but a PJAK member such as Ferzad Kemangir should be executed…?!
Jamal Rehmani is one of the students and a weblog writer who was arrested and forced under torture to write against PJAK and to work to blacklist the organisation. The only condition for his release was to engage and make serious efforts in the anti-PJAK campaign. In his weblog (jamalkurd.blogfa.com) he writes: I am Jamal Rehmani a student and human right activist. I was arrested in my bedroom in Esfahan University by the agents of Iranian Intelligent Service. While I was detained they tortured me severely and asked for my cooperation in anti-PJAK campaign as the only condition for my release. They knew that I was a weblog writer, they asked me to write against PJAK and urge the Kurdish students not to join the guerrillas’ ranks. They threatened to kill my brother if I don’t cooperate and refuse to write against PJAK. They forced to me to cooperate, I had not option…!
Having noticed the importance of ethical, moral and social significance for the Kurdish society and to dismantle the cohesion of Kurdish communities, these groups are prearranged to carry out anti-social and immoral deeds including prostitution and drug-distributions in the name of PJAK. By doing this, they hope to defame the organisation across Kurdistan and to stem the public support for the movement. These groups are directly linked to the state’s Institutions of Special War (ISW) including the Revolutionary Guard of Islamic Republic and the Besiji (The Mobilised – the state militias). They get their needs and instructions from these institutions and are coordinated under their commands. These groups put intolerable pressures on the families of the Kurdish martyrs and the families who have their youths in the PJAK’s ranks forcing them to collaborate with the regime. By doing so, they hope to stem the increasing flow of PJAK’s recruitment which has taken a significant expansion over the last few years.
Having realised the importance of drug issue and drug-trafficking for the European Powers, Iran has also opened another anti-PJAK front and have made a series of groundless and fraudulous accusations in relation to PJAK’s role in this business. PJAK is an ethical and political organisation struggling for the legitimate right of the Kurdish people who have been denied with their very basic rights. This is futile allegation and no evidences have ever been found to prove this baseless accusation. Nevertheless, by doing so, Iran seeks bifurcating Europe and the Kurdish liberation movement into two opposing camps. It also seeks to legitimate her illegitimate and inhuman state-terrorism in Kurdistan. They have special agents in this respect presenting them to the public with false identity. For example, Erfan Qaneyfer is one of their agents who pretend to be a “journalist”, but in fact he is one of the wicked agents of the Iranian special war against the Kurds. As opposed to what Qaneyfer is “dictated” to stay, the evidences suggest that both the Iranian and Turkish Institutions of Special War have been the main dynamic behind the transit of drugs in the route of Afghanistan-Iran-Turkey-Europe.
One may wonder and implore as to why Iran has undertaken such a laborious task against PJAK? What is this PJAK and why it’s become a nightmare for a power such as Islamic Republic who sought to import its revolutionary ideology overseas?
This is for the reason that, PJAK has emerged as an alternative to the Islamic state and owing to this; it has already attracted a large section of Kurdish society particularly the youths, students, scholars, intellectuals and women. PJAK has generated a prodigious collective energy among the Kurdish youths enabling them to counterbalance the regional colonialism as well as the political Islam orchestrated by the occupying power of Kurdistan to liquidate the Kurdish resistance movement and to destabilise the region. PJAK has infiltrated in all sections of Kurdish society and organised among social classes, something which no other Kurdish organisation has managed to do. This very well explains as to why the Iranian Islamic Regime has been shaken and traumatized by the level of PJAK’s civil and cultural activism.
Coordinated by PJAK, the Kurdish youths have already begun to answer the questions of; why there are parts of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria? Why Kurdistan had been divided by the regional colonialism? Why the Kurdish people have been subjected to physical, political and psychological genocides? What are the crimes the Kurds have ever committed? What the occupying powers of Kurdistan want from the Kurdish people? How to overcome this tragic situation that the Kurds are entrenched in…?!
These are the questions that the Kurdish youths have found answers to when they place themselves aligned with PJAK’s ideology and join the organisation to end this draconian scale of repression eternally. PJAK has organised the Kurdish youths and bestow them with the power to his end. This is why PJAK is deemed as an existential threat to the mullah’s regime and its ideology of political Islam. And this is why Islamic Republic has embarked on such a painstaking mission incurring a significant amount of expenditure to thwart PJAK’s progress. But for the Kurdish people, divided between four occupiers, deprived of all their national and human rights, lacking even colonial status, and sunk into a hell entirely surrounded by the enemies, they are destined and determined to continue waging their legitimate struggle for existence. No such anti-PJAK process would ever work..!