Northeastern Iraq
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Keffiyeh, a young man wearing a black and white scarf, disassembles an AK-47 assault rifle piece by piece and places them side by side on a rocky field. His brow furrows. He tried to reassemble the rifle but was unable to push one of the parts back into place.
Surrounded by comrades, commanders and CNN crews, the young peshmerga (meaning “people facing death” in Kurdish) are uncomfortable being the center of attention.
Everyone laughs. His instructor handed him another rifle to try again.
“They’re new guys,” says Karim Farkapoor, describing the fighters.
Farkapoul is one of the leaders of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), Iran’s oldest and largest Kurdish rebel group. We met him at a camp in the mountains of northeastern Iraq, more than 13 miles west of the Iranian border.
(Since 1945, KDPI has been fighting for the rights of Iranian Kurds, who make up about 10% of the population. First they fought the Shah of Iran and then, after the 1979 revolution, launched a decades-long struggle against the theocratic rulers of Tehran.
KDPI is just one of many groups opposed to the Iranian regime. In addition to other groups that oppose the Islamic Republic for purely ideological reasons, Iran’s ethnic Baluchs in the east, Kurds in the west, and Arabs in the southwest have long campaigned for autonomy or independence. Many of these groups receive various forms of material or political support from foreign countries.
For some Kurds, the wave of protests that began late last month has raised hopes that after 47 years of rule, the end of the Islamic Republic is perhaps in sight.
“The regime is weakening day by day,” says KDPI leader Mustafa Hijri. “That weakness gives us and other freedom-loving parties more room to step up our fight against the regime.”
Hijri claims his party has more members than any other party in Iran and was a key figure in supporting recent protests, particularly in the western provinces.
Farina, 19, is one of KDPI’s newest employees. On her left shoulder she carries a Soviet-era Dragunov sniper rifle with a new scope.
She says she fled Iran in despair over a life without a future.
“Even if you study, you can’t become anything unless you become a supporter of the regime,” she says. “We don’t have any rights, especially as women. That’s why I became a peshmerga, to protect my rights as a Kurd and as a woman.”
Her forces are made up of men and women, a characteristic of many Kurdish factions in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, which make equal rights for women one of the pillars of their ideology.
There is a well-worn phrase, almost a cliché: “Kurds have no friends except the mountains.” As a journalist, I always hesitate to use it. But here, among the towering snow-covered mountains, dark clouds hanging overhead, and snow starting to fall, one finds a certain comfort in the seclusion and solitude that the mountains provide.
In this dystopian new world where military technology changes rapidly, it feels like a fantasy.
“Iran is flying drones over us,” Farkapur told me as we watched the Peshmerga march through mud and mud up the mountain above the camp. “They know we’re here.”
Iran has targeted Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq in recent years. A wounded and cornered Iranian government may do the same thing again.
Generations of young Iranian Kurds have fled across these mountains and joined groups like KDPI, hoping to change their homeland. The winters here are harsh and cold, and the environment is harsh.
For Farina, it’s all worth it.
“We put our lives on the line,” she says. “It is expected that we will have to make sacrifices.”
