Iran 's Kurds Appear to Have Won Autonomy
MCMANUS DOYLE
Lo Ange1es Tirncs (1923 (urrent Tile); Dcc 6 1979
ProQuest Historical Ne// spapers: Los Angeles Times (1881 1987)
pg. B18
Iran 's Kurds Appear to Have Won Autonomy
By DOYLE MCMANUS
I ft Wr r
TEHRAN —While the eye of the world have been fixed
on he ris s caused by the seizure of the U S. Embassy by
Muslim militants here, Kurd sh rebels appear to have if
nally w n the r long light for autoi omy i the mountains
of northwest fran
The Kurds nomadic central Asian Muslims denounced
by the i( 11ah Ruhollah Khomaini last summer as
agen th United States and corrupters of the earthy”
have forced the Irarnan I ader to t ego tate for peace on
their terms
The reason for the startling turnabout thp omats say is
simp1e -the Kurds fierce mountain warriors who have
been strugghng for an rnd pendent homeland since before
World War II, have defeated the dispirlt d Iranian army
along with Khomaini s disorganized revouitwnary gu id
Kurthsh guerrillas now control an area about the size of
New Jersey, and the peace settlement being negotiated s
virtually certarn to recognize their dominance
The collapse f the T hran government s campaign
against the Kurds has iarmed Iran's western ne ghbars
Iraq Turk y and, to a lesser extent the Soviet Un!on and
Syria which also have restive Kurdish minorities
The s tuatrnn is horrible” a diplomat from one of tho
countries said “Kurdtstan i becoming a truly autonomous
area, and that is very, very dangerous:
The apparent victory of the 4 million Kurds may also
raise the hopes of other min nties in Jran people who
have long chafed under the d m nat on o the Pers ans.
The Persians form a plurality not a majority of about 15
milhon ma total population of about 35 milhon.
I eaders of the e hrnc Arabs of Khuzistan the oil pro
ducing province of the southwest, the Azerbaijan S o
the west, of the T rkamans of the northeast ard he Ba
luchis of the southeast have also denanded nore autono
my from the weake ied c ntra1 government.
Once th b It gets roI1ing y u carft stop it the thp1o
mat said. “We may be rn an international cnsi in this area
soon, because there's no r aso able force in the area to
calm things down
One of the few factors that have aided Khoma irn s re-
gime in keepirg a I d on the ethnic problem is the current
way of anti American fervor for it has a lowed the Ay
tollah to make concessions to the Ku ds in the name of na
tional unity and at the same time appeal to other groups to
think f the common good
But there have been n reasing reports of sabotage
against oil pipelines rn Khuz tan—six exp1os ons in a sin
gte night last month aD arenUy the work of Arab separa
tists and the leftists who make up a igniflcart part of the
Kurdish guemlia army have made it clear that they be
lieve their provinc is only the first to break free.
A guerrifla officer of the I ftist K maIa Party said re
cently, HOur aim is the hberation of all Iran Cur re
sponsibthty is not to the Kurdish nation alone but to all the
nationalities of the country”
A year ago, when Khomairu wa s still an e aled religious
figure urg-ng revolution from his headquart&s outside Pa
r s, and Shah Mohammed Re a Pahta i was t l1 apparent
ly rn control, the Kurds began cautiously hrowing their
support to the insurgent forces. They saw t ' e Ayatollah's
uprising as a vehicle for their own cause.
Once in power Khomaini paid lip service to the nghts of
the ethnic minorities to some kind of limited autonomy
But soon he appeared to be centrahzmg power in Tehran
(cnn hisca e, theshrnc c yo Qor) a3 ulchashispre
decessor did When local Kurdish forces skirnushed with
Per an and Azerbaijani revolutionary guards, Khomairn
sent in the Iranian army against the Kurds, And when
the Islamie repubhc ' draft constitution was rewritten by
Khomainfs counal of experts, its promised r ntee of
ethnic autonomy melted away
The Kurd led by their rellg1au chief, Sheik Kzzedin
Hosselnl, and Abdul E man Gas8emlau of the Kurd1 h
Democratic Party, protested Ithamalni responded by d
nouncing them Th AyatdU h ' chief r vo1uUcnary proa-
duwr, the Ayatollah Sade Khalkhaif, anr unced that both
Hosseinl and Ga em1ou had been c ndernn d to death
Khomaini sent elements of both the army and the r vo-
lutonary guard to crush the Kurdish rebeihon Neither
succeeded. The Kurds chased them Jl over the map,” a
Western thplomat said
Iranian offic a1s charged that the Kurds had the help of
CIA the British and l5raeh intelligence services and the
forces of the deposed shah There s no available evidence
of U.S. or Bntish rnvo1vement but diplomats in Tehr n
Khomaini paid lip rvk to the
rights of the ethnic m,nor,ties
beli v that Israel h s sent the Kurds mthtary aid nd Ar
deshir Zahedi, once the shah s ambassador in Washington
i reported to have been in Iraq last month for talks with
Kurdish leaders
By 1a t month, the four Kurdish factions held every ma-
ior town in the provin e Gas em1 u returned in triumph to
Mahabad the seat of a shorL-Iived independer t Kurdish
republic et up by the Soviet Union in 1946, Posters of
Ith m uni came down and portraits of &sseini, who s re-
cogni d by all the fact'ons as their most effective spak s-
man wenL up
Khomaini sent a peace delegation headed by Dar ush
Forouhar a moderate it did not meet with immediate suc
cess. At one prnnt the rebels neady shot down Forouh r
he ic pter The Kurd , aware that they held the upper
hand in the conflict, ont nued to attack revolutionary
guard urut and seize Kurdish villages
Frnally, the government made evera1 concess rs . I
agreed to the basic principle of Kurdish autonomy. It
agreed to negotiate with all the Kurdi h parties, nd not
only the moderate wthg of G ssemIou s party, which it had
initially approached in a apparent attempt to secure a
separate peace.
I return, Gassemlou dedared a cease fire c nditiona
on the withdrawal of all revolutionary guards from the
provlnc by th end of this week and th u d a tawment
of support for Kbomalni. Has einf postponed lw 1ong
tandthg demand that Kurd1 h autonomy be e pllc t1y
guaranteed in the constitution, a sign that the Kurd re
n w more interested in e tab118hing their auWnomy an the
ground than on paper.
The autonomy they envisage i almost t ta1 If the
Kurd get their way, the central government's only con
cerns will be foreign policy, defense of the borders, cur-
rency and long range economic policy. Gass m1ou ha
proposed that Kurdish uthrn ittes even ontroI army
movements in Kurdistan.
Both sides are trying o appear conaiIiatory Khomarn
issued an uncharacten tica11Y friendly measage to the
Kurds, in effect an ap 1ogy for ht excommunication of
them rn the summer, and Hasserni responded by pledgrng
that the Kur }' p npt ins d r themse v s oart of the
Iranian nation”
But still there is lltt1 love lost, The Ayatollah Hussein
Au Montazeri, a Khomairn ally who is th religious leader
of Tehran, threw a wrench into the talks Nav 23 by pub
licly denauncrng the Kurds as °agent of America and the
Zwnist&'
Khoniainfs Islamic R pubhcan Party accu d the Kurd
of kidnaping Muslim women nd nailrng horseshoes to the
feet of revolutionary guards they took a prisorers.
Hosseini for his part ha nit b en intim da ed.
“There are tw things I will not accept in a y negot a
tion ,” he told a Tehran newspaper recently, HOne is pessi
mism, and the other is compromise.
“I want to end the flghtrng the fratricide in Kurdistan
as soon a possible But that doesn't mean we intend to
gtve up our rights , Either the government gives us
what we want or it doesn't”
By Monday, the negotiations appeared to be coming to a
head Ga semlou's Kurdi h Democratic Party announced
that it would end the cease fire on Dec, 19 unI ss the
government meets its deniands,
At the same time, the IChomaini ordered a spec a! civil
ian commission headed by former h terior Minster Hash
em Sabbag an to take charge of the negotiatwns. Accord
ing t the offictal Pars news agency, the commtss on was
gwen full “miht ry and civilian authority' after its mem-
b rs met with Khomarni in Qom
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