Autonomy in Iran a possibility of war
By Mehdi Kia
The four million Kurds of Persia have dreamed of autonomy for centuries. If Iraq’s Kurds win greater self-determination through regime change in Baghdad, one consequence could be a realisation of that goal. Another could be a blow to Tehran’s hopes of maintaining its Islamic republic within the current borders.
Iranian Kurds have more in common with their Iraqi brethren than with the Kurds of Turkey. They share a similar language, comparable relationships with their central governments and a mutual understanding. Iranian Kurdish groups have often taken refuge in Iraq.
By contrast, Turkish Kurds speak a different dialect. And the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which led a 15-year insurrection against Ankara, believed that it alone represented all Kurds.
Iranian Kurds disagreed and looked, instead, to Iraqi Kurdistan as a model. They compared the neglect of their provinces with the roads, hospitals and buildings financed by the UN’s ‘oil for humanitarian aid’ programme in Iraq. The reality of Kurds living alongside Turkmen and Christian Assyrian minorities there was seen as a template for ethnic co-existence.
Iran’s Kurds have always set their sights locally. Since the Autonomous Republic of Kurdistan was briefly established within Iran’s borders in 1956, ‘Autonomy for Kurdistan, Democracy for Iran’ has been their slogan. Then Qazi Mohammad’s uprising was bloodily suppressed, and Iranian Kurdistan remained a neglected backwater until the 1979 revolution ended the Shah’s despotic misrule.
Kurdish hopes were briefly raised. But Tehran sent troops to occupy the province, exiled its leadership, bombed villages and towns, and assassinated two consecutive leaders of the Kurds’ most important political organisation – the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (KDP-I). The group’s leader, Mostafa Hejri, recently said that more than 5,000 peshmergas (guerrillas) were killed in the fighting.
Today, there is little industry in Iranian Kurdistan. Road building is skeletal, and housing – one of the key demands of the Islamic revolution – has been neglected.
As elsewhere in the region, Kurdish language and culture have been repressed and the Kurds’ Sunni version of Islam has been systematically discriminated against.
Almost the entire state bureaucracy in Kurdish areas is now imported from outside. Last year, the 14 Kurdish deputies to the Majles (the Iranian parliament) resigned in protest at their lack of power.
However, the reform movement that has swept Iran in recent years has also affected Kurdistan. Non-confrontational Kurdish-language publications have flowered, particularly those promoting literature and poetry. But the situation is volatile. Just four years ago, demonstrations that followed the abduction of the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan resulted in over 50 Kurds being killed and thousands being arrested.
Today, a more pressing threat for Iranian Kurds is the rise of Fars and Turkish (Azeri) chauvinism encouraged by Ankara and Tehran. Many of Iran’s Fars ultra-nationalist intellectuals, who champion Farsi language as the sole unifying agent of pan-Iranian ambitions, have been given free rein to denigrate other cultures.
Similarly, in Naqadeh, in the province of West Azerbaijan, tensions between Kurds and Shiah Azeris that spilled over into inter-ethnic battles after the revolution are being stoked again. Turkey and Iran are cooperating closely to frustrate hopes of pan-Kurdish unity in the post-Saddam Middle East.
People expecting a period of peace and prosperity to follow US intervention in Iraq should take heed. The seeds of major conflict are being sown
The source: Red Pepper (http://www.redpepper.org.uk).