Iran's war against the Kurds

Sunday Times:

A SECRET war is being waged in Iraqi Kurdistan’s isolated Kandil mountain range. Since April Iran has been bombing the area in an attempt to expel Kurdish separatists, who have turned the rugged terrain into their own mini-state.

An estimated 400 families have fled the mountains to escape the Iranian attacks. No let-up appears in sight as fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) refuse to abandon their enclave.

Murat Karayilan, the PKK’s bristly, grey-haired number two commander believes the campaign is an attempt by the Islamic republic to curry favour with Turkey, the PKK’s sworn enemy.

“The Turkish and Iranian forces have made an alliance to attack us,” Mr Karayilan told The Times inside his group’s enclave. “Iran is attacking us to make friends with Turkey and to send a message to the United States.”

In turn, Mr Karayilan claims the PKK’s sister group, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJK), a grouping of Iranian Kurdish separatists, has carried out reprisals in Iran. Since May the PJK has killed 94 Iranian soldiers, the PKK claims.

“You may ask why does Iran attack us. It is because of the larger issues of the Middle East,” said Mr Karayilan.

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Flanked by his Kalashnikov-toting women and men, Mr Karayilan is confident no one will be able to force his men out of the Kandil mountain range on the triangle border of Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

Mr Karayilan and his troops, clad in their olive soldier uniforms, cruise the serpentine mountain roads in Nissan Patrols. PKK soldiers man checkpoints and sentry posts from hilltop to hilltop. Their green flags adorn mountainsides. At the entrance to their enclave, concrete blocks mark the road and a giant poster of Ocalan stares down from a slope.

Iraq’s Kurdish regional government professes helplessness about the situation with the PKK and Iran.

“Kandil is a very difficult terrain. Because of the geographical terrain in Kandil, no one in the Kurdish Government, the Iraqi government . . . has been able to control this place,” said Othman Haji Mahmoud, interior minister for Sulaimaniyah.

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There is more. The US should support the Kurds against the Iranians and get the Kurds to back off against Turkey in return. The next time Iran fires weapons into Iraq, their guns should be on the receiving in of a cruise missile or a JDAM. The Iranians should not be giving us excuses to attack their forces.