Kurds take to the hills

          
          5/27/2011
          Article - Untitled Article
          Publication: Guardian 1821-2000; Date: Sep 12, 1979; Section: None; Page: 9
          Kurds take tO the hills
          Prom Richard Wallis
          in Tehran • •:
          In the mountains of Kurdis
          tan, a group of officers who re-
          crrrtly deserted from. the
          Iranian armed forces are busy
          tratntrrg Kurdish rebels to
          fight a g a I n t Government
          troops.
          It is part of the new guer-
          rilla wnr which became incvjt.
          able after the regular army
          and Islamic Revolutionary
          Guards recaptured all the
          towns held by Kurdish insur-
          gents. forcing them to take to
          the hills.
          Three months ago, Colonel
          Esmail Altar, a Kurd , was a
          staff ufficer in Tellrdm. Now he
          has discarded his special forces
          uniform as an Iranian ranger,
          for the typical uutflt of the
          Kur4ish Pesh Merga (those
          Wh y Face Death) guerrillas —a
          Soviet-made Kalasbnikov, a
          black- and.While headscarf and
          baggy trousers.
          What makes Colonel Aliar
          even more exceptional is that
          he was one of the few officers
          in Ayatollah Khomeini's inilie
          tary committee at the time of
          the February revolutIon. The
          committee took over the
          monarchy 's shattered armed
          forces in the name of Iran 's
          new revolutionary leader.
          Rapidly disillusioned with
          the course of revolution, Cole
          onel.Juiai gut up .his .4ob. as
          an assistant •to former thiefof-
          staff General Nztssér Farbod
          three months ago.
          Now he is on the military
          suiT of the, banned Kurdish
          Democratic Party ( KDP) ,
          which is leading the under-
          ground Kurdish resistance
          movement up iran 's western
          border 1
          He was spending the niçht
          in one of the many Kurclish
          hillside villages kept under
          observation by Government
          helicopters. With him were two
          other officers, his brother—a
          major and a Colonel ]tabi'i,
          who said be had deserted tO
          days ago
          The Kurdish insurgents lost
          the conve nti onal war apiust
          the Government forces in IS
          days
          After the fall of the last
          Kurdish stronghold, the border
          tvwn uf Sardasht, the insur-
          gents disüppeared into The
          mottntainL They abandoned
          armaments including field
          guns.
          In the freshly recaptured
          barracks in the former rebel
          capitaL of Mahabad, army
          officers estimated there were
          still 50.000 armed Kurds biding
          in the mountains.
          One of Iran 's most wanted
          men, TOP brcretary-general
          Abdur Rahman Qassemloo said
          In an interview In another vii-
          lage near Sardasht i4 tiii
          was probably an exaggerationt
          We have not been defeated.
          The fall of the towns is not
          the end of the war, it S the
          beginning uf :a new stage 1 We
          have not even begun our var.”
          The KDP has established a
          secret base for guerrilla opc-
          ralbussumewhere in the 14w-
          dish m'ountans, aecordinrm
          Dr Qassernloo, who said it
          planned to launch guerrilla
          raids on towns.
          Much of the insurgents' con .
          fidence is derived from the
          success of their kinsmen across
          the Icaqi border, who, have
          fought a guerrilla war against
          the Soviet. armed Baghdad Coy-
          crmnent sbnce 1961.
          Seine of the lower rank KDP
          officials appear less s anguine
          about their chances of viebory
          against the Government forces .
          “If winter cinnes. we must
          find caves. We are not ready
          yet and it will be very 41111-
          cult 1 ” cute said.
          According to some KDP esti-
          mates there are only a few
          hundred real Pesh Merga. Most
          of the others are volunteers
          quarteDed in villages ‘where
          winter always brings supply
          problems.
          They also lack radio cent
          munications, making large-scale
          coerdinaird aCliChns neM anpos-
          s lb le.
          © Guardian News and Media Limited
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