Iran seeks to quell Kurds as US sanctions bite

Islam Mohamed

Four Kurdish opposition parties dismissed any direct or indirect negotiations with the Iranian regime, citing that news about such talks are “inaccurate”. Media reports said Iran and the Kurdish parties had held three meetings in Oslo, Norway, and that Iran’s delegation was headed by a foreign ministry advisor.

Meanwhile, the situation has exasperated in Iran’s Kurdish regions.  The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) clashed with “anti-revolutionaries” near the western border with Iraq and one of its soldiers was killed, Iran’s official Fars agency said.

Kurds, who account for about a tenth of Iran’s population of 81 million people , live in the north-western regions of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Western Azerbaijan and Elam. Poverty and unemployment rates are high in these regions, where the Kurds live.

Roughly 80,000 of Kurds make a living as porters, transporting goods on their shoulders across the Iran-Iraq border, where many of them get killed by the IRGC.

The IRGC along with the Iranian army attack the border area in Iraq to kill Iranian Kurdish militants. However, the mullah regime has recently been courting the Iranian Kurds.

The Kurdish parties deny any talks with Iran. The second-in-command of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), Hassan Sharafi, told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that some international and European officials offered to mediate.

Sharafi said that Iran’s regime does not admit the rights of the Kurdish people, equality or the rights of women as it is based on the ideology of mullah. He said no negotiations could be held with such a regime.

Researcher Mohamed Alaa Eddin, an expert on Iranian affairs, said evidently the Kurdish movements were created in response to the Iran’s oppression. “This oppression is a result of ethnic, sectarian and political reasons. Iran’s Kurdish territories have suffered from discrimination and are deprived of any services,” Alaa Eddin told THE REFERENCE.

“The Kurds are Iran’s weak point in the wake of US sanctions with a possible military confrontation with the West. Therefore, Tehran is trying to sort out the Kurdish file at any cost,” he said.

“The Kurdistan Free Life Party has been leading confrontations with Iran since April 2004. Hundreds were killed and clashes have not stopped until now. The IRGC is seeking to eradicate these movements even outside the Iranian borders” he added.