“Are you linked, either directly or indirectly, to the PJAK movement?” “Yes”, confirms our interviewee, a student and young activist from Mahabad who wishes to remain anonymous. The speed and spontaneity of the answer stands in sharp contrast to the mistrust usually encountered during this sort of interview. It seems that the young guerrilla will use any available opportunity to publicise his organisation.

As far as Iranian Kurdistan news goes, PJAK is currently one of the most mentioned names in press dispatches and articles that have appeared over the last few days. But it is also mentioned in the accusations from Teheran against an organisation that it views as terrorism. PJAK needs to restore its reputation and who better than a partisan to do so?

Guerrilla under Iranian surveillance

“A few years ago, the Kurds from Iran took up arms alongside the PKK”, continues the young man. “Today, the struggle takes place here, in Iran. The men of PJAK, who are fighting for the ‘Resurrection of a free Kurdistan’, are Kurds from this region. They hide in the surrounding mountains.” The fighters get their weapons in Iraq. Arms dealing takes an uncontested route via Sardasth, or less frequently through Baneh or Marivan. Arms are then taken to Mahabad and sometimes to other towns in Iran.

Our interviewee declined to reveal the names of the local people in charge of PJAK. It would be pointless to openly fuel the hunt led by Teheran, or to encourage the resurgence of tension between the forces of law and order and the resistance fighters that has occurred over the past few days. The region has, after all, only just recovered from the round of skirmishes in July.

The Kurdish zones in west Iran, making up the provinces of Kurdistan and western Azerbaijan, were the scene of the troubles following the death of Shivan Qaderi, brought down at the time of his arrest at the start of July.
Demonstrations, clashes and heavy-handed arrests shook the region at the time. The Iranian military conducted various operations against the PJAK guerrillas in the Merivan region. On 26 July, four Iranian soldiers were killed near Oshnaviyeh, on the Iraqi border. The Iranian authorities blamed PJAK for the attack.

More recently, on 15 August, general Ishmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, the head of the Iranian police, announced that four police officers had been taken hostage by PJAK rebels in western Azerbaijan.

Iran-Iraq-Turkey, the divisions in the golden triangle of the Kurdish resistance

Divided, spilt and disunited, not to mention manipulated, the Kurdish resistance has been damaged by in-fighting and this has often been used by national governments as a lever in their fight against Kurdish ‘terrorism’. It was reported that Teheran recently tried to persuade the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), lead by Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, to intervene by its side and stamp out the PJAK guerrillas. To put it clearly, encouraging already existing divisions within the cross-border Kurdish resistance would weaken it.

PJAK is described by some as being linked to the moderate and liberal current of the Kurdish resistance. Above all else, however, it is said to be connected to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Kurdish resistance in Turkey which is on the list of terrorist organisations drawn up by Brussels and Washington. Proof of this link is that one of the former PJAK leaders is none other than Shapour Badoshiveh, an Iranian Kurd and former Canadian citizen who went missing in 2004 and who is in charge of the western Kurdistan division within the PKK.

Having truly stepped into the limelight in 2005, PJAK held its first meeting on 25 March 2004 after having moved through several different forms. This branch of PKK remains an unknown entity and its set-up is still unclear. One of the theories bandied about and that has been backed up by different reports in Mahabad is that PJAK is based in Turkey, although its leader is an Iranian Kurd.

One party, five networks

Heading PJAK, Abdul-Rahman Haci Ahmedi used an official visit to Norway in June to hold an interview at the Institute of Human Rights in Oslo. It was his opportunity to publicly discuss his fears for Iran of mullahs and to set out the political views of his party. “PJAK distances itself from all the current forms of traditional Kurdish nationalism as it is convinced that it is better to favour peaceful coexistance and cooperation in order to achieve a true multi-ethnic democracy rather than dividing up the country into lots of small states.”

This federal form of Kurdish resistance is divided up into five political and armed offshoots: The Union of Women in Western Kurdistan (YJKR), the Union for Youth in Western Kurdistan (YCR), the Union for the Democratic Press (YRD) and finally, political circles and military forces for self-defence.
Since the founding meeting was held, the armed division of PJAK has claimed responsibility for more than 80 military operations in Iranian Kurdistan, and thirty or so direct clashes with the forces of law and order of the Islamic regime.

Hypothetical PJAK

Back to Mahabad now. Our interviewee, although explaining that he is not very well informed, tells how the movement goes back to the days of the Mahabad republic and the charisma of president Qazi Mohammed, who has been set up as a hero by the Kurdish people. Is this a myth or a collective reality? For the time being, we do not know.

The organisation is then thought to have evolved along with the local political trends, before disappearing into the background. This is a plausible theory although vague. The one viable theory is that the armed division of PJAK is carrying out its fight in the name of a free Kurdistan. It itself says that it is “fighting a war against the Iranian government.”

A young Kurd, who has sat by the side of our interviewee since the start of our conversation, admits that he does not believe in PJAK. “I’m not going to swell the ranks of PJAK. What good would it do? Even now, I don’t wear traditional dress, so why should I take up arms too? The Iranian government has changed us irrevocably. My generation has been shaped by unemployment and has had neither the time nor the desire to talk politics when our overriding priority is to find a job. Teheran knows perfectly well that any attitudes are not inflexible.”
An admission of failure, but an understandable one. And the PJAK fighters know this all too well.