Sunday, September 25, 2022

Iran shells Komala party bases in Iraqi Kurdistan

HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan region,— Iran’s Revolutionary Guards IRGC launched an artillery attack on Iranian Kurdish militant opposition bases in Iraq’s Kurdistan region on Saturday, Iranian state television reported.

“Headquarters of anti-Iranian terrorists” based in northern Iraq were targeted by the Guards, state TV said, in reference to Kurdish rebel groups based there.

Iran has blamed armed Iranian Kurdish dissidents of involvement in ongoing unrest in the country, particularly in the northwest where most of Iran’s up to 10 million Kurds live.

“These operations … will continue in order to ensure viable border security, punish criminal terrorists and hold officials (of the Kurdish Regional Government) accountable towards international regulations and their legal duties,” the Guards said in a televised statement.

The IRGC targeted Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan facilities in Barbazin, near Sidakan in Erbil province, according to Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency.

Iran shelled the same area in May as well.

Iranian officials have often called on the KRG to curb the activities of Iranian Kurdish groups in the area. They also say Israeli agents are based in the region, which is denied by KRG.

Iran has repeatedly targeted Kurdish rebel groups in Iraq’s Kurdish region. There have been frequent clashes in the remote and mountainous border region between Iranian security forces and militant groups opposed to the Tehran government.

In July 2022, Iran’s intelligence ministry said agents linked to Mossad who were arrested were also members of Komala, which seeks autonomy for Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhelat).

Komala is a Marxist group, who took up arms to establish a semi-autonomous Kurdish regional entities or Kurdish federal states in Iran, is outlawed in Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979, has often clashed with Iranian security forces in northwestern province of Kurdistan, and other Kurdish-inhabited areas.

Komala was founded in 1969 and struggled against the government and policies of Shah for 12 years until 1979. After Iran’s 1979 revolution Komala began armed struggle against the new clerical regime. In 1983 Komala formed a political organization with other Iranian Marxist and socialist groups called the Communist Party of Iran and Komala became the branch of the party in Kurdistan.

But in 1991, a group broke off and established the Workers Communist Party. In 2000, the party experienced another split. A group broke off and established Komala. In recent years, yet another group walked away and formed the socialist party.

Ever since its emergence in 1979 the Islamic regime imposed discriminatory rules and laws against the Kurds in all social, political and economic fields.

Iran’s Kurdish minority live mainly in the west and north-west of the country. They experience discrimination in the enjoyment of their religious, economic and cultural rights.

Parents are banned from registering their babies with certain Kurdish names, and religious minorities that are mainly or partially Kurdish are targeted by measures designed to stigmatize and isolate them.

Kurds are also discriminated against in their access to employment, adequate housing and political rights, and so suffer entrenched poverty, which has further marginalized them.

Kurdish human rights defenders, community activists, and journalists often face arbitrary arrest and prosecution. Others – including some political activists – suffer torture, grossly unfair trials before Revolutionary Courts and, in some cases, the death penalty.

Estimate to over 12 million Kurds live in Iranian Kurdistan.

(With files from Reuters)

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