A M ICHAEL K. BURNS
Sun Staff Conespondena
Marivan. Iran—The order for Kurdish
militiamen to witbdra this eerIe
ghost town in northwes came before
sunrise yesterday as the irregulars in their
traditional turbans and baggy trousers
loaded ammunition and grenades into ve-
hicles and pulled out after 12 days of hold-
ing the city against central government
forces.
Dogs barked and sheep bleated in the
moonlight as the Pesh Max-ga (Cominited
to Death) forces with their vintage assort-
ment of Soviet. Israeli and U.S. rifles
scrambled through this city 12 miles from
the Iraq border.
The sudden mo e came alter women,
children and other noncombatants evacu-
ated Marivan last week in expectation of a
pitched battle with government forces;
Max-ivan is the latest flashpoint in the
showdown between the Kurdish autonomy
movement and the Tehran government.
Though his several hundred men had
vowed to hold t to the death, the
young, bearded commander said
that the pullout ould avoid bloodshed
and destruction and provide a chance for a
peaceful settlement.
The government troops had just
released 16 hostages grabbed 10 days ngu
but refused to meet Kurdish demands that
the Tehran-commanded Revolutionary
Guards be relieved of security duties in
the city. Eleven persons were killed and
30 inj o weeks ago in clashes be-
tween K protesters demonstrating
against distorted radio-television report-
ing of the events here and against these
Revolutionary Guards.
The hostilities led to the Kurdish take-
over and evacuation of noncombatants as
the Army troops assembled in a post just
over the bill from Marivan.
Meanwhile, several thousand persons
marching from Sanandaj to Marivan in
support of Kurdish demands for autonomy
ended their fifth day with plans to con-
tinue to the hillside camp where women,
children and the Kurdish militia were
staying outside Max-ivan. March organIz-
ers said the demonstrators would march
into Iraq if the government did not yield
by tomorrow.
The marchers appeared in good spirits
as they set out yesterday morning from
their overnight camp site along a stream
surrounded by barren brown hila, just 16
miles east of Marivan.
Sunstroke in 130-degree heat. feet blis-
ters and stomach problems forced a num-
ber to retire from the billy, unshaded
route over 94 miles of stony washboard
road.
About 60 ,000 persons had started from
Sanandaj, capital of Kurdestan province.
but most soon turned back after a few
miles. Other Kurdish villagers along the
well-planned journey provided food and
water as well as new marchers, lining the
roadside to cheer the travellers and to toss
candies to them.
The Kurdish protest symbolized by
Max-ivan and by the march is aimed at se-
curing sell-rule for the four million Kurds
in northwestern denying central Is-
lamic rule in the and objecting to
what they call biased reports against
Kurds in government media.
On a dusty hillside along the route or-
ganizers explained their purposes. They
blamed the Tehran government, and the
Islamic leadership in Qom, for sending in
Revolutionary Guards to terrorize Marl-
van and to enforce rule by feudal land-
lords over Kurdish peasants.
The Tehran government has also em-
ployed remnants of the old Iraqi Kurdish
separatists of the late Musta.fa Barzani to
put down Iranian Kurdish autonomists,
they claim. Mr. Barzani's two sons have
been paid to lead these forces, with a
camp at Dezly, just inside the Iraq border,
and a liaison office in a palace near
Tebran built by the shah for the older TsIr.
Barzani, the march spokesman said.
The shah backed Mr. Barsani in his
feud against Iraq until 1975.
“These people may call themselves
Kurds but they are not Iranian Kurds, they
are not our people but are fighting against
our people,” the young org j Ira-
nianKurdswantselfrulein tinde-
pendence or union with the ci million
kurds in neighboring countries, the march-
ers emphasized.
“We are not separatists and we are not
Communists,” said Mubeb Balban. who
studied computer science at the Univer-
sity of Maryland five years ago.
Like a number of the march officials,
he was armed for potential troubles with a
small-caliber automatic strapped over his
black and white laced sash.
Communist is a commo ciation
exchanged by opponents in - But the
rhetoric of some marchers was spiced
with such telling phrases as “class strug-
gle:' forces that are “progressive and
anti-bourgeois,” and so on. A banner
erected over the route proclaimed the
soviet of the farmers as the route to mc-
cess.
Most of the marchers were young pee-
pie, many of them reportedly students and
civil servants, rather than the peasant
farmers who watched them as they har-
vested their wheat crops with hand
scythes or tended their sheep flocks.
The march was organized by the Soci-
ety for the Defense of Freedom and Revo-
lution.
The improvement of these peasant
farmers' lot necessarily involves a strug-
gle with the feudal landlords, who ironi-
cally profited most from the sbah's land
redistribution program, Mr. Balban ex-
plained. “There is a socialistic aim,” you
could say, he added.
But the struggle in Iran's Kurdestan—
an area 100 by 400 miles—is as much over
recognition of national identity and cul-
tural difference as over economic -
lion. Other national groups in
Arabs, Azarbaijanis, Baluchis and Turko-
mans—have taken advantage of a weak
revolutionary government in Tehran to
agitate for regional autonomy. The gov-
ernment and Ayatollah Ruhollab
Khomeini have promised recognition of
the ethnic groups but have failed to
deliver in the recently published draft
constitution for the Islamic republic.
Though they are among the poorest of
Iranians in th mountainous northwest-
ern corner of the Kurt supported
the shah, who deftly let them run their
own affairs while he financed Mr. Barza-
ni's separatist campaign in Iraq. Forgot-
ten was the Soviet-backed Federated Re-
public of Kurdestan that lasted less than a
yeas- until 1947, when the shah recovered
the territory with western assistance.
Since the Islamic republic of Ayatollah
Khomeini came into being this spring,
stressing Persian nationalism and Shia
Muslim orthodoxy, the Kurt have re-
belled. Their Sunni Muslim religion is less
strict—one source of current friction is
the open sale of forbidden liquor smuggled
in from Iraq on the streets of Kurdish
cities.
The resentment of the Islamic Revolu-
tionary Guards is also keen. Kurds want
sell-rule in their territory and use of their
language in schools and local government,
which is not a tall order because of Its
great similarity to Persian.
Sensitivity to distorted reporting of
their goals led to the violence and confron-
tation in Marivan. Kurt and government
troops battled each other in Sanandaj in
March after a dispute about grain deliv-
eries. Dozens were killed a month ago in
Naghadeh when Revolutionary Guards
broke up a Kurdish autonomy meeting.
The Kurds then left the town and have not
returned.
Similarly, the Kurt abandoned Marl-
van to prevent destruction of the city. Ma-
chine gun and rocket attacks by,g ern-
ment forces had killed one It*1S and
wounded several others oveCthe past
week, city defenders said.
Army tanks sent toward Marivan were
reported still stalled miles away yester-
day as Kurds continued to lie in the roads
to stop their advance. With the pullout by
Kurdish militia forces the armor is un-
likely to be needed but road scrapers were
busy levelling the gravel track toward the
city, a sign that tanks could be soon rolling
in that direction.
Kurds pull back from armed conflict in Iran, but tension remains
Bums, Michael K
The Sun (183 7-1985); Aug 1, 1979; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Baltimore Sun, The (1837-1986)
pg. A4
Kurds pull hack from armed conflict in Iranj hut tension remains
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