The Iran Brief®

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Issue Number 59, dated 6/7/99

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Tehran uses PKK to split Iraqi opposition. (Serial 5901)

The Iranian government has stepped up its support for the Kurdish Workers Party of Turkey (PKK), and is now hosting an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 PKK fighters on Iranian soil, Kurdish sources in northern Iraq told The Iran Brief. That is a dramatic increase in the number of PKK fighters on Iranian soil, which the Turkish government had previously estimated at just a few hundred.

With the arrest of PKK leader Abdallah Ocalan on February 15 in Kenya, thousands of PKK fighters flocked to Iran from Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, to rally to the leadership of his younger brother, Osman. "If Abdallah Ocalan was seen as the creation of Syria, Osman Ocalan is an Iranian agent," a Kurdish source told The Iran Brief.

More PKK fighters fled into Iran in mid April, when the Turkish army launched a major ground and air campaign against PKK bases in northern Iraq. Since then, the Iranian government has opened as many as thirty new training camps for PKK fighters, according to leaked Turkish intelligence reports. "The PKK is alive and kicking and has regional benefactors who will not let it die," another Kurdish source said.

Direct sponsorship: Only two weeks after Abdallah Ocalan's capture, the Iranian government sponsored the PKK's 6th Party Congress in the northwestern Iranian city of Urumieh, following widespread demonstrations through Iranian Kurdish areas in Ocalan's favor ["Clashes reported in Sanandaj," TIB 3/8/99] . The Iranian-backed conference enshrined Osman (aka Ferhat) Ocalan as PKK leader, at the head of a five member Executive Committee. Other members were Cemil Bayik, a rival PKK military leader, Faysal Dunlayici (aka Kani Yilmaz), Rothgar Althur, and Mustapha Aglo.

The conference location was obviously sensitive. A spokesman for the PKK's political wing, Karadas Ender, told AFP on March 4 that it had been held in PKK-controlled territory in "northern Kurdistan" (AFP interpreted that to mean Turkey), while the official Iranian press agency claimed in a March 10 report that it had been held in Paris. In fact, both Cemil Bayik and Osman Ocalan were quoted by the PKK's own news agency, MED-TV, in reports from northern Iran as the conference began.

In recent months, the Iranian intelligence services have actively recruited local Kurds in northern Iran to carry out PKK terrorist attacks, Kurdish sources told The Iran Brief. In one such instance, a woman laden with explosives crossed the border from Iran on March 4 and blew herself up in front of a police station in Batman, Turkey. Although the PKK claimed responsibility for the attack, Iranian Kurdish sources said the woman was actually an Iranian Kurd, and had been recruited and trained by Iranian intelligence for the job.

Attacks inside Iraq: Since the 6th Congress, the Turkish press has reported extensively on an escalation of Iranian support for the PKK, both past and present.

In one leaked account of Abdallah Ocalan's deposition to Turkish prosecutors, the former PKK leader reportedly described purchasing Serbian-built Strella anti-aircraft missiles that were delivered to a PKK camp in northern Iraq through Armenia. Iranian intelligence "acted as an intermediary for weapons deliveries to the PKK through the Caucuses," he reportedly said.

On March 31, after capturing some 400 members of the Turkish Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Iran, the Turkish government told reporters that Hezbollah operations against the Turkish government were "being coordinated with the PKK."

Turkish television reported on the stepped up ties between the PKK and the Iranian regime on May 10, when NTV news revealed that Osman Ocalan had taken refuge in Iran along with some 2,000 PKK fighters, following the Turkish army crackdown on PKK bases in Iraq three weeks earlier. That figure now appears to be conservative. NTV said that Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps was providing the PKK rebels with arms and logistic aid.

In May, PKK fighters launched several attacks in northern Iraq in areas under the control of the Kurdish Democratic Party, one of the founding members of the opposition Iraqi National Congress. The KDP blamed the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan for allowing the PKK to establish staging areas in territory along the Iranian border under PUK control. The PUK fiercely denied the charges.

On May 13, PKK fighters crossed the demarcation line separating the PUK and KDP in northern Iraq, and attacked a group of twelve teenage boys said to be gathering herbs in the mountains near the village of Baze, in Irbil province. The PKK fighters eventually released eight of the teenagers, according to a KDP statement, but horribly mutilated the other four in an effort "to intimidate the local population." All four were beheaded, their limbs broken, and their eyes gouged out. (A separate statement from the Kurdish Revolutionary Hezbollah Party in Iraq said the eight youths who were released had convinced their PKK abductors that they were Hezbollah party members, giving further credence to the Hezbollah-PKK-Iran ties).

A second round of attacks took place two weeks later, during the night of May 24-25. This time, the PKK fighters flocked across the border from Iran and through PUK areas in cars, not on foot, showing a new level of Iranian government support, the KDP said. They attacked six separate villages in the region south of Chomran near the Iranian border.

KDP officials said they feared the recent attacks were only the beginning, and that the Iranian government, in conjunction with Iraq, would once again use the PKK to set off a new round of fighting between the rival Iraqi Kurdish groups in northern Iraq that would undermine if not destroy the Iraqi opposition. Iraq is also sponsoring the PKK, and has openly established training camps for them on its side of the ceasefire line bordering the Kurdish areas, at Shehan and in Makhmoor. The Iraqi government presents them as a pro-government Iraqi Kurdish militia.

In late 1997, the PKK launched more than a dozen attacks against the KDP from PUK territory - again, with Iranian assistance. Those attacks led to intensive fighting between the KDP and the PUK that broke out on Oct. 13, 1997.

Spokesmen in Washington for both the KDP and the PUK said their leadership was determined to avoid a repeat of the 1997 debacle, and sought to apply the terms of the September 1998 Washington accord establishing zones of influence for each group.

The PUK flatly denied the KDP charges that it had helped the PKK or the Iranians to stage the attacks last month in a statement released on June 2, noting that "a joint PUK-KDP commission established under the auspices of the Washington Accord is currently investigating the incident."

The road to Tehran: Iran's long-term goals remain unclear. Newspaper editorials, which tend to reflect conflicting viewpoints within the government, alternate between advocating the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, to condemning such action as an American plot. Some even see the continuation of a weak Saddam as the key to stable relations between Iran and Iraq.

But Tehran's short-term tactics are unequivocal: it is seeking to gain as much leverage as possible over the Iraqi opposition, for the day when the regime determines which strategy to pursue.

Over the past four weeks, representatives from all the major Iraqi opposition groups have taken the road to Tehran, alternately seeking Iranian assistance, Iranian acquiescence, or Iranian neutrality.

PUK leader Jalal Talabani was the first, arriving in Tehran at the end of April and leaving on May 10, just three days before the PKK attacks were launched from his territory against the KDP. Talabani said he had been seeking Iranian assistance in the PUK's struggle against Saddam Hussein, and that he had brought Tehran a message from Washington. "Washington told some governments in the region that 1999 would be the year of change in Iraq," he told the London-based Saudi weekly, Al Hayat.

Sources close to Talabani said they had detected a new tone in Tehran, and that senior Iranian government officials "are becoming convinced that the U.S. is finally getting serious about getting rid of Saddam." Iran's goal is to prevent the emergence of a hostile Iraq, the sources said. "There is a growing realization that Saddam Hussein could be forced out, one way or another."

A KDP delegation, headed by Nichivan Barzani, nephew of Massoud Barzani and head of the KDP's military branch, arrived in Tehran on May 27. Barzani was accompanied by two other KDP politburo members, Fadel Mirani and Azad Berwadi. A KDP representative said they planned to bring up Iran's support for the PKK, and that they were responding to an Iranian invitation. KDP leader Massoud Barzani and his family have extensive real estate holdings in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran.

Also traveling to Tehran in May was former INC chairman Ahmad Chalabi, now a member of the group's seven-man Executive Committee. Chalabi said in Washington after his return that he held extensive talks with Iranian government officials and with Ayatollah Bakr Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Republic of Iraq (SCIRI), a founding member of the INC coalition.

Some Iraqi opposition sources say the Iranians prohibited SCIRI from taking part in the INC delegation that came to Washington last month and met with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the State Department on May 24. But Chalabi said that was not so. "The Iranians say they have real differences with the U.S., but at the same time they see a real change in the U.S. position toward getting rid of Saddam Hussein, which they support."

Chalabi said the reason SCIRI did not join the INC delegation to Washington was for fear of Iraqi retaliation. "Their refusal was not negative, or frivolous," he said. "SCIRI wants to participate. But they are worried that Saddam Hussein will retaliate against the people of the south. They want a U.S. statement of protection, and they think that by holding back from participating they have a better chance of getting it."

Specifically, Chalabi said SCIRI wanted a U.S. pledge to enforce a "no-drive zone" in southern Iraq, to prevent the Iraqi army from deploying tanks and armored vehicles against the Shia resistance.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders said they also feared Iraqi retaliation against their civilian population, and wanted similar guarantees.