The target of the Iranian shelling, which began in mid-August, is a little-known Iranian-Kurdish rebel group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK). About 2,000 PJAK guerillas, which Iran accuses of infiltrating across the border into the Islamic Republic, are camped out in the lime-green hills dotted with walnut trees along the Iraq-Iran border. In Rezga “there are a lot of peshmergas” armed with RPGs and Kalashnikovs, the farmer told me, using the colloquial term for Kurdish guerillas. “There are so many that I can’t count.”
At first glance, the battle in the hills of an obscure corner of Iraq seems like little more than a longstanding local dispute. Iran has been shelling the Kurdish region of northern Iraq “since forever,” says Joost Hiltermann, a Middle East expert at the International Crisis Group. As the Kurdish population of Iraq has secured a significant measure of independence from Baghdad’s central government, Tehran has worried that Iran’s own Kurdish population might take inspiration from its Iraqi counterpart. The conflict has traditionally been “totally local, with little chance of spreading,” Hiltermann says, before adding one caveat: “unless the U.S. starts to support PJAK, and you get a proxy war inside Iran.” In that case, he insists, “Iran will retaliate. [And] not necessarily in the Qandil Mountains.”
With tensions rising between the U.S. and Iran, could this battle in Kurdistan’s hills set off a larger conflagration? Iran insists that the PJAK militants are armed and supported by the U.S. and Israel, an accusation that both countries deny. Yet at least some recent reports have suggested that the U.S. and Israel might be doing just that in an effort to weaken the regime in Tehran as it pursues its goal of becoming a nuclear power. A report in The New Yorker late last year by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh quoted a consultant with ties to the Pentagon as saying that Israel was providing PJAK guerillas with “equipment and training,” and that the Kurdish militants had been given a list of Iranian targets of interest to the U.S.
PJAK’s commanders have made it clear that they would welcome a closer relationship with the U.S. The group’s Germany-based leader, Rahman Haji Ahmadi, made a trip to Washington, D.C., in July to ask for support, but later told The Washington Times that he was snubbed and had only “limited contact” with American officials. A top PJAK commander in Iraq named Beryar Gabare, with whom I spoke by phone last week, also denied that PJAK was getting any money or weapons from the U.S. or Israel, but he said that Haji Ahmadi’s U.S. meetings were “at a high level” and involved discussions about “the future of Iran.” He told me that he expected that the U.S. would eventually make a decision to attack Iran, adding, “If some day our common interests [the United States’ and PJAK’s] are on the same line, we’re ready, we can negotiate.” Still, he added, “I don’t see any serious preparation on the part of the U.S. for a regime change.”
If the U.S. is cautious about any potential ties to PJAK, it is partly because of the close relationship between PJAK and a more prominent Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the state department classifies as a terrorist organization. Late last week I made the three-hour drive from Sulaimaniya up into the Kurdish mountains to meet with the leader of the PKK, Murat Karayilan. In a mountaintop cove surrounded by bodyguards carrying Kalashnikovs, the guerilla leader—whose last name translates as “black snake”—told me that he believed Iran was sending the U.S. a warning by intensifying its shelling of Kurdish areas in Iraq. “Iran’s saying, ‘We’re here—we’re stronger than ever’,” Karayilan explained. “‘We can hit you any time we want.’”
The Kurdish refugees I spoke with in northern Iraq were divided when asked if they favored military action against Iran. One refugee, a 57-year-old farmer named Khader Bayz, insisted that he would welcome an increased American role in the conflict. “I’d like the U.S. to help PJAK,” he told me, before leaning in conspiratorially and adding, “I’d like the U.S. to eliminate Iran.” Yet other Kurdish villagers I talked with seemed to recognize that if a larger conflict erupted between Iran and the U.S., it would be their own homes that would likely sit on the front lines. Ahmad Khadar, for one, is wary of the PJAK guerillas. “PJAK intensified its attacks on Iran, and [Tehran] reacted,” the farmer told me. “I don’t like PJAK, because Iran reacts and attacks us.” If America moves against the Islamic Republic, he knows, his family is likely to be spending a lot more time camping along the banks of the Qandil River.
