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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