LONG PAST TIME TO RECOGNIZE THE NATION OF KURDISTAN:

Wladimir van Wilgenburg is an Erbil-based Dutch journalist and author who specializes in Kurdish affairs. He is the author, with Harriet Allsopp, of The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity, and Conflicts (2019, I.B. Tauris) and has also coauthored, with Michael Knights, Accidental Allies: The U.S.-Syrian Democratic Forces Partnership Against the Islamic State. Diwan interviewed him in early December to discuss the Iranian government's attacks against Kurdish areas in the context of weeks-long protests in the country, as well as the Turkish threat to launch a new military operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

Michael Young: One of the less publicized dimensions of the protests in Iran has been the Kurdish factor. Mahsa Amini, whose death set off the protests, was a Kurd, and the Iranian regime intervened militarily in Kurdish areas after the protests began. Can you explain what the relationship is today between the Islamic Republic and the Kurds, recalling that in 1979, soon after the revolution, there was an uprising in Iranian Kurdish areas?

Wladimir van Wilgenburg: Actually, Mahsa Amini's real name is Jina Amini, but that has not been publicized because there have been restrictions on issuing Kurdish names in Iran. Although Iran's Kurds are not very well-known in the West and do not get the same attention as Kurds in Iraq and Syria, who became well-known through their battles against the Islamic State group, the Iranian Kurds have a long history of struggle for autonomy within Iran and are a strongly nationalist Kurdish movement. One of the main Iranian Kurdish parties, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDK-I), was established in 1945. One year later, the PDK-I founded a short-lived Kurdistan Republic in Mahabad led by its charismatic leader Qazi Mohammed, which only survived for one year. Another prominent Kurdish party is Komala, a socialist-Marxist party that was established in the fall of 1969 by Kurdish intellectuals. During the revolution against Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's regime, Iranian Kurds hoped to gain a form of autonomy, but after the Islamist takeover, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was unwilling to give Kurds any rights. Fighting continued between Kurdish rebel forces and the Iranian security forces until 1983. The new Islamic Republic didn't allow free Kurdish political participation, although there are also Kurds serving within the Iranian government and parliament.

Iran also assassinated several Kurdish leaders after 1979, including PDK-I leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou in Austria during peace negotiations with the Islamic Republic in 1989, and his successor Sadegh Sharafkandi in Germany in 1992. This caused a leadership vacuum among Iranian Kurdish parties, and further divisions. Eventually Komala and PDK-I both moved to Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war. Furthermore, both Komala and the PDK-I have suffered from splits and internal divisions, although both recently reunited--PDK-I before the September 16 protests that erupted after the death of Amini, and Komala after.

Moreover, there is the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), established in 2004, which is affiliated with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Another party is the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), established in 1991. PAK is a smaller party, based in Iraqi Kurdistan, which played a significant role in the fight against the Islamic State and against Iraqi forces in Pirde in October 2017, after the independence referendum in Iraqi Kurdistan in September 2017. There was also much solidarity among Iranian Kurds with the referendum. In 2018, a Cooperation Center was established by five Iranian Kurdish parties to better coordinate their activities.

On September 8, 2018, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched the first cross-border missile attack on the PDK-I in Koya, killing at least eighteen people. Moreover, Ramin Hossein Panahi, a Komala member, was executed on the same day. Also, a day before the strike, three fighters of a PJAK-affiliated group were killed in a clash. The strike was seen as a message to the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia that Iran could now strike its rivals outside the borders of Iran, and a message to Kurdish parties that wanted to establish relations with the United States. Widespread protests erupted in Iran after Amini's death, and there were large-scale protests inside Iranian Kurdistan. To divert attention from its domestic situation, Iran has hit the PAK, Komala, and PDK-I with drone and missile strikes since September 16 and bombed the borders of Iraq's Kurdistan Region, where there are also Peshmerga fighters of Iranian Kurdish parties.

MY: As you just noted, Iran has also attacked Iranian Kurdish positions inside Iraq. How powerful are these groups in Iraq, and what is their relationship with the Iraqi Kurds, whose two major parties have tended to have good relations with Iran?

WVW: During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, thousands of Iranian Kurds fled to Iraq and a large number of them still live in camps, such as in Koya. Moreover, most Iranian Kurdish parties have bases and camps (including fighters) in the Kurdistan Region. Komala, for instance, has a base near Sulaymaniyah that was hit, while the PDK-I was hit in Koya and the PAK in Pirde (which is closer to Kirkuk) in the recent strikes. Apart from the PKK-affiliated PJAK, which operates in PKK-territory along the borders, the rest of the Kurdish parties are inside areas controlled by Iraqi Kurdish parties--the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). In general, they have had a good relationship with the PUK and KDP in recent years, although they also had their differences and tensions during the Iran-Iraq war. Iran has demanded the disarmament of the Iranian Kurdish parties, or their removal, and has threatened to launch cross-border operations. The best option for Iran is to have the Iranian Kurdish parties moved abroad, as that is what happened with the Iranian opposition Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which was moved to Albania from Iraq, where it had been based after 1986. But so far, the Iraqi Kurds have not bowed to pressure to remove the parties, and have recently agreed with Baghdad to send more forces to the border with Iran.

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