After decades of fighting the Iranian regime, Kurds see victory edging closer

By Ben Wedeman, CNN

Northeastern Iraq (CNN) — Piece by piece, the young man in a black and white scarf – a keffiyeh – takes apart his AK-47 assault rifle, placing them side-by-side on the rocky ground. His brow furrows. He can’t push one of the pieces back into place as he tries to reassemble the rifle.

Watched by his comrades, commanders and a CNN crew, the young peshmerga – a Kurdish term meaning “those who face death” – is uncomfortable being the center of attention.

Everyone chuckles. His instructor hands him another rifle to do it all over again.

“They’re new,” Karim Farkhapur says by way of an explanation, referring to the fighters.

Farkhapur is one of the leaders of the Kurdish Democratic Party-Iran (KDPI), the oldest and biggest Iranian Kurdish rebel group. We caught up with him at their camp high in the mountains of northeastern Iraq, more than 13 miles (about 21 kilometers) east of the Iranian border.

Since 1945, the KDPI has fought 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 revolution in 1979, began their decades-long struggle against the theocratic rulers in Tehran.

The KDPI is just one of many groups opposed to the Iranian regime. Ethnic Baluch in eastern Iran, Kurds in the west and Arabs in the southwest, have long agitated for either autonomy or independence, in addition to other groups that are opposed to the Islamic Republic on purely ideological grounds. Many of these groups are variously supported either materially or politically by foreign countries.

For some Kurds, the wave of protests that began late last month has raised hopes that perhaps, after 47 years of rule, the end of the Islamic Republic is in sight.

“The regime is weakening daily,” says Mustafa Hijri, the KDPI’s leader. “Its weakness provides more space for us and other freedom-loving parties to strengthen their fight against the regime.”

Hijri claims his party has more people inside Iran than any other, and was a key player supporting recent protests, particularly in the western provinces.

Nineteen-year-old Farina is one of the KDPI’s recruits. On her left shoulder, she carries a Soviet-era Dragunov sniper rifle with a new scope.

She fled Iran, she says, despairing of a life with no future.

“Even if you study you can never become anything unless you are a regime supporter,” she says. “We have no rights, especially as women. That’s why I became a peshmerga: to defend my rights as a Kurd, and as a woman.”

Her unit is made up of men and women – 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: “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.” As a journalist, I’m always hesitant to use it. Yet up here between the towering snow-covered peaks, with dark clouds hovering overhead and snowflakes beginning to fall, one does feel a certain comfort in the remoteness and solitude the mountains provide.

It’s a feeling that, in this dystopian new world of rapidly changing military technology, is illusory.

“Iran flies drones over us,” Farkhapur tells me as we watch the peshmerga march though slush and mud up the mountain above their camp. “They know we are here.”

In recent years Iran has targeted Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq. The Iranian government, wounded and cornered, could do it again.

Generations of young Iranian Kurds have fled over these mountains and joined groups like the KDPI, hoping to change their homeland. Up here, It’s bitterly cold in winter, the conditions harsh.

For Farina, it’s worth it.

“We put our lives on this path,” she says. “We expect to have to sacrifice.”

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