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Tremor in Iranian Kurdistan
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Originally published under the title, "A Tremor is Felt
in Iranian Kurdistan."
Iran
has witnessed the largest Kurdish anti-regime demonstrations in years.
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The events this week in the Mahabad area of Iran's Western Azerbaijan
province cast light on the difficult situation faced by one of the
region's least-noticed minorities – the Kurds of Iran.
The apparent attempt by an intelligence officer in Mahabad to rape an
Iranian-Kurdish hotel worker, 25-year-old Farinaz Khosrawani, and the
latter's subsequent suicide by jumping from a fourth-floor window, led to
furious protests by Kurds in both Mahabad and beyond. The hotel was
burned by protesters; authorities responded heavy-handedly, using rubber
bullets and tear gas.
There is currently a media and social media blackout from the area,
but word-of-mouth reports suggest the situation remains tense.
Soran Khedri, a former official of the Iranian-Kurdish Party of Free
Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) organization, told the Jerusalem Post that
at least one demonstrator has died, and that in the last 48 hours, PJAK
guerrillas had attacked an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps checkpoint
in the area, killing two IRGC personnel.
The Kurds of Iraq and Syria have become highly significant and visible
players on the regional stage over the last decade. Turkey's Kurds, of
course, have long been noted internationally – because of the insurgency
of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) against a succession of governments
in Ankara.
But the Kurds of Iran have been the most silent of Kurdish
populations. Numbering around 8 million in total, they are mainly
resident in the Kordestan province of western Iran (adjoining Iraqi
Kurdistan), one of the country's most impoverished regions; Kurdish
populations are also to be found in Western Azerbaijan, Ilam and
Kermanshah. Unemployment in Kordestan Province stands at 28 percent;
there is little local industry.
Any sign of Kurdish political
organization is ruthlessly suppressed by the IRGC.
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The Iranian Kurds were not always politically silent. Mahabad was the
location of the short-lived Mahabad Republic – the only example of full
Kurdish sovereignty in the 20th century. The republic was declared in
January 1946, and destroyed by the Iranians in December of that year.
But under the Islamic Republic, the Kurds have faced repression of the
most severe kind. A large-scale revolt against the new regime, led by the
Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iran (PDKI), was crushed with great
severity in the period immediately following the Islamic Revolution of
1979. The IRGC killed over 10,000 Kurds as it fought to destroy the
nascent Kurdish independence movement; the insurgency was largely
defeated by 1983.
The suppression of any hint of Kurdish separatism has remained in
place ever since. Education in Kurdish remains forbidden; any sign of
attempts at political organization is ruthlessly suppressed by the
Revolutionary Guards.
The hostility of the Iranian regime to the slightest hint of
separatism derives not solely or mainly from ethnic tensions between
Persians and Kurds. Even the most modest Kurdish demands for greater
local autonomy raise the specter for the regime of ethnic separatism.
Iran is a divided society ethnically, with only 49 percent of the
population consisting of ethnic Persians; the rest are a mixture of
Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds and Arabs.
Brutal repression of Kurdish
demands is an indication not of the regime's strength, but of its
potential weakness.
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Thus, the brutal and total repression of Kurdish demands is an
indication not of the regime's strength, but of its potential weakness.
Tehran fears that were the demands of one minority ethnicity to be
accommodated – even partially – this would risk opening the floodgates
for other demands.
In 2004, a new Iranian Kurdish insurgency began. This was led by PJAK,
PKK's franchise among the Iranian Kurds. From the Qandil Mountains in
Iraqi Kurdistan, PJAK sought to strike at the Iranian authorities while
its cadres worked among the population, seeking to build clandestine
support.
A shaky, on/off cease-fire has persisted between PJAK and the Iranian
authorities since 2011, after a large-scale incursion by the IRGC into
Iraqi Kurdistan led to fierce battles. But PJAK remains armed and
deployed along the border, able to exploit any breakdown of regime
control in the Kurdish areas.
Alongside PJAK, the PDKI remains active, as do a number of parties
claiming the mantle of the Komala Movement, a once-influential leftist
force among the Iranian Kurds.
PDKI
fighters have participated in the fight against the Islamic State
(ISIS) in Iraq.
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Severe repression, divided politics and a long period of apparent
quiescence were followed by sudden, unexpected anger precipitated by an
unforeseen event. This is what is currently taking place in Iranian
Kurdistan; it sounds, in all particulars, a familiar story in the Middle
East of the last half-decade.
So, are the events in Mahabad a prelude to some larger movement or
unrest among the Iranian Kurds? An Iranian-Kurdish lawyer with good
connections in the Mahabad area told the Post that the current
wave of acrimony looked set to "ebb away." He noted that the
protests "in support of Mahabad spread only to a few other cities,
like Sardasht and Mariwan." Nevertheless, he also asserted that the
protests were an indicator of "vast anti-regime sentiments"
among Iran's Kurdish population.
As of now, the Mahabad situation appears to have been contained by the
Iranian authorities, yet the events are an indication of the inner fragility
of the Iranian regime. Even as Tehran invests in spreading its influence
across the region, Mahabad is a reminder that its position at home is by
no means secure, or consolidated.
Tehran is more vulnerable to
internal subversion the more it spreads assets thinly by involvement in
regional arenas.
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Rather, it rules over large swathes of the Iranian population by force
and coercion alone. It is therefore vulnerable to internal subversion –
and the more it spreads its assets thinly, by involvement in ever-more
regional arenas, the fewer resources it will have available for dealing
with internal unrest.
Rodi Hevian, a Kurdish journalist at the online Kurdish Daily News,
likened the Mahabad events to the short-lived uprising by Syrian Kurds in
the city of al-Qamishli in 2004. Though quickly (and bloodily) repressed
by the Assad regime, the Qamishli events were in retrospect a first
tremor for what was to come in Syria. "It could also be a wake-up
call for the Iranian regime interfering in Syria, Iraq and Yemen,"
Hevian told the Post, "namely, gaining ground in other
countries can lead to losing ground at home."
Of course, for the Iranians to begin paying a price of this kind, it
is necessary that the Iranian Kurds and other minorities begin to receive
the attention and support of regional enemies of Iran, and of the West.
For this to happen, in turn, there needs to be a recognition of the
urgent necessity of containing and turning back Iranian regional
ambitions; no such awareness currently exists in Western capitals.
Following June 30 – at the conclusion of Tehran's nuclear agreement
with the P5+1 world powers – the pressure on the Iranians may be vastly
reduced. Abandonment of sanctions would enable the regime to begin to
channel greater resources to areas of instability, and to seek to buy off
discontent.
Still, in Middle Eastern capitals, both the Iranian threat and the
Iranian vulnerability do not go unnoticed. The mullahs and the IRGC are
not all-powerful; the tremor in Mahabad indeed reveals just how notably
shallow their rule is.
Jonathan Spyer is Director of the
Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum. He is the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the
Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).
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