This paper examines Kurdish political movements in Iran during the 20th century. Through the study of political movements among Kurds in Iran, a country that, while peripheral to the Middle East geographically and culturally in some senses, we can nevertheless gain further insights about how political movements and democratic development have happened in the region. While the mainstream Iranian Kurdish political movement evolved into a secular democracy-seeking movement during the middle and later 20th century, the movement has faced consistent political repression from whatever leader held power in Tehran.
The events surrounding the Iranian Kurds merit note for several reasons. First of all, study of the Kurds’ situation allows us to learn about the behavior of a Sunni minority in a mainly Shia nation- a situation which is rarely repeated elsewhere in the Muslim world. Furthermore, by a happy circumstance of geography, Iran is physically removed from the Levant, nor does it have problems that the central fact of the existence of a numerous Jewish minority has brought to certain Arab nations in the Middle East, making it possible to examine politics in Iran in relative isolation from the events that have taken place between Israel and its periphery. Finally, the environment of Iran differs in that there has been relatively little physical military encroachment by either NATO countries or the USSR in the post-WWII years.
The story of the political development of Iranian Kurdistan involves elements most likely familiar to scholars of Islamist movements in the Middle East and North Africa during the 20th century: namely, the threads of dictatorship, religion, tribalism, anti-communism, as well as overall failure by moderate actors to achieve results through the political process. Generally in the greater Middle East region, recent political struggles have taken place as Islamist elements of society, discouraged by the failure of Westernization efforts to create society-wide benefits, have struggled against paternalistic dictatorships. Notably, such Islamist movements occurred in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, and in Iran itself, in the form of the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
On the other hand, the history of the Iranian Kurds in the 20th century differs from the norm: recent political movements began as an self-determination and autonomy movement during the WWII years, became a simple revolutionary party during the early reign of the Shah, and then developed into a more complicated entity possessing strong views on its ethnic identity, and secular nature. In the end, it is instructive to note the failure of moderate Kurds to secure even modest gains and also the level of violent tactics employed by the Tehran government in order to keep control of the Kurdish minority people in Iran.
In studying the politics of Iran, we should not yield to the temptation to dismiss Kurdish conflict as simply a type of Islamic internecine violence cloaked by ethnic overtones: in Iran, as originally little importance was given either to the Kurds’ varying ethnicity or to their adherence to Sunni Islam. Even after the founding of the Islamic Republic, which had an overwhelming presence of Shia clerics in its government, little mention was made of minority issues in Iran. Rather, the government of the Islamic Republic stressed unity. In the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, whose interpretation of matters was final:
There is no difference between Muslims who speak different languages… It is very probable that such problems have been created by those who do not wish the Muslim countries to be united… They create the issues of nationalism, of pan-Iranianism, pan-Turkism, and such isms, which are contrary to Islamic doctrines.
Claims such as the one above have prompted some Kurds to accuse the government of the Islamic Republic of co-opting the signs of Islam to support their dictatorship, as did Kurdish religious and political leader Shaikh Izzedin Husaini: “What we have [in Iran] is not religious government, but a dictatorship under the name of Islam.” Nevertheless, regardless of whether or not the government of Iran recognizes the existence of minorities, the Kurds have continued to agitate for autonomy, and repeatedly protested or boycotted participation in government activities to protest violence in Iranian Kurdistan. However, the situation of the Kurds in Iran is not mere sectarianism: otherwise, it would be expected that Sunni Kurds might have allied with members of Iran’s Sunni Arab community, who ostensibly share the same religion.
One final point is that, after considering the information available, one would think that Kurdish movements in Iran, who campaign for government by secular socialist democracy, would be natural allies for the United States, as has turned out to be the case in Iraq, where Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, currently holds the office of president. Historically speaking, it is interesting to consider why this has not happened in Iran as well.
Background: Geography of Iran and Ethnic Makeup of Iran’s Population
Before talking about specific issues of Kurdish politics in Iran, we should note the physical and cultural backdrop against which such issues have been illuminated.
Physically, the nation of Iran is situated on a huge dish-shaped plateau surrounded by rugged mountain ranges. Within Iran, a great portion of the center of the country is dominated by two barren deserts: the Dasht-e Kavir and the Dasht-e Lut. Without, Iran borders Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in the northwest, Iraq in the west, Turkmenistan in the north, and Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east. Iran has almost 2,500 km. of coastline on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and also over 700 km. of coastline on the Caspian Sea in the north. Although Iran is geographically expansive, due to the mountainous nature of the country and low levels of rainfall in most areas, only 10% of the country’s land is arable. For natural hardships, the people of Iran face dust storms, sand storms, and earthquakes in seismically active regions. Moreover, Iran also lacks major rivers, and, apart from the Caspian Sea, has only one major lake, Lake Urmia, the second-largest saltwater lake on earth. At a glance, Iran could be considered “a barren land hardly fit for habitation,” although it has been inhabited for thousands of years.
Iran’s various large ethnic groups live in concentrations in certain geographic regions of the country, with Persians concentrated in north-central Iran, Azeri living in the northwest in an area roughly bounded by Turkey, the Caspian Sea, and the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Gilaki and Mazandarani at the southern edge of the Caspian Sea, Baluchis in the Southeast, Arabs in the Southwest, and Kurds in the west near Iraq and Turkey and also in the northeast near Turkmenistan. Among the smaller groups of people living in Iran include Turkmens, Armenians, Jews, and Assyrians.
Numerically speaking, Iran’s population has a 51% Persian majority; however, Azeri occupy a further quarter of the country’s population, the Gilaki and Mazandarani together amount to 8% of Iran’s population, and the Kurds also comprise 7% of Iran’s total population of 65 million. Although the country is ethnically diverse, most people in Iran are united by “Persian culture” and also by adherence to Islam. In particular, approximately 89% of the population of Iran are followers of Shia Islam, while another 9% of Iranians are followers of Sunni Islam. The remaining 2% of Iranian citizens are followers of diverse religions including the Baha’I faith, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. In contemporary Iranian history, we can find several major figures that came from non-Persian ethnic groups, chief among them Reza Shah, ruler of Iran from 1924 to 1941 and a Mazandarani, and current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and vice-president Parviz Davoodi, who are Azeri. For that matter, the current mayor of Tehran, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, is a Shia Kurd. Therefore, it cannot be said that simple status as a non-Persian automatically excludes a person from politics in Iran. The fact of the matter is, ethnicity in Iran means different things to different people, as one scholar discovered:
I asked a young man with whom I had been talking in a coffee house in a small town in north-west Iran, whether he was a Kurd or an Azeri. Kurds and Turkish-speaking Azeris are the major ethnic groups living in that district. His answer baffled me: “I am both a Kurd and an Azeri, and I am a Persian as well.” I thought he was being sophistic and went on questioning him to find out what he really was. What language did he speak at home? That depended; his mother spoke only Kurdish well, but with his father he conversed in both Kurdish and Turkish, and sometimes in Persian. So his father was an Azeri and his mother a Kurd, I ventured, glad to have understood his reaction. No, he objected, his father was also a Kurd and an Azeri and a Persian. These terms were for him purely linguistic, not ethnic labels as I defined them. It did not occur to me then to ask him whether he was a Sunni or a Shi’i…
Speaking about the Kurds in a general sense, we can say that they have several main important characteristics differentiating them from the majority of Iran’s population. First of all, they have their own language, which is related to Persian. Secondly, most Kurds are adherents of Sunni Islam, and finally, they were organized around a tribal social structure.
Iranian Kurdish Political Movements During and After the Second World War
During the turbulent environment of Iran during the Second World War, the Kurds of Iran succeeded in gaining a certain level of autonomy. The opportunity to advance Kurdish Iranian interests arose in the aftermath of the 1941 removal of Reza Shah by the invasion of Iran by Britain and the Soviet Union, who had invaded in order to control Iran’s resources and prevent them from falling under German control. The former emperor of Iran, Reza Shah, who espoused pro-German views, was exiled to South Africa, where he died in 1944.
Without a strong Iranian government to impose internal order, a power vacuum began to form in the area of Iranian Kurdistan, thereby allowing the development of various Kurdish political factions. In light of the fact that a war was on, conditions in Iranian Kurdistan in the early 1940’s were understandably violent. Local law enforcement weakened to the point where, at the end of 1942, “Kurdish tribesmen were swaggering even in Tabriz, clothed in their proscribed traditional costume and armed to the teeth.” In the same year, a rash of violence also occurred in the region near Urmia when a mixed group of Kurds, Armenians and Assyrians formed a group entitled ‘Liberation’, which then proceeded to engage in banditry towards nearby Azeri villages. Furthermore, tribes objected to the government’s arming of local Shia peasants in April. Thus, at the outset, Kurdish political movements were mainly established in response to weaknesses in the implementation of governance by the Persian state.
Several prominent Kurdish political groups sprang up in the early 1940s. The main early group of note was 237-238 Komala-I Jiyanawi Kurdistan (The Committee for the Revival of Kurdistan, popularly known as JK Society). A cellular organization, the JK Society was founded in September 1942. The JK Society espoused principles of ‘ethnic nationalism’, and also was connected with Kurdish groups in Iraq, and later also in Turkey.
Furthermore, the JK Society leaned communist, still, many Kurds in the area around Mahabad were attracted to the movement because it symbolized independence from central government, not necessarily because of any preference for independence in itself, but rather out of distaste for ineffectually poor governance --- for example, there had been a wheat shortage in 1942, and government procurement agencies sometimes failed to pay. Modernization programs instituted by Reza Shah led to “overtaxation, conscription, and prohibition … of trade in certain border regions”.
After the 1941 invasion, the Soviets hoped to advance their interests in Iran, which bordered the Soviet Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, so the Soviets initially jockeyed for the favor of the Kurds, and tried to bury old feuds with limited success. In trying to ally with the Kurds, the Soviets mainly hoped to annex the territory of Iranian Kurdistan to the Azeri regions of northwestern Iran which had come under Soviet control after the 1941 invasion.
The Tehran government, nominally under the control of Reza Shah’s son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, also courted the Kurds. Worried that the Kurds would secede, the Tehran government sent a delegation to Kurdistan in November 1941.
The delegation called a meeting of local chiefs. Once the meeting had begun, the delegation disclosed that the government in Tehran would grant Kurds the freedom to bear arms and wear traditional Kurdish garb if the Kurds would agree to recognize the authority of Tehran.
The Kurdish chieftains did not accept the government’s offer quickly---it is significant to note that, besides demanding assurances that confiscated lands would be restored, the Kurdish chiefs had hopes that they or their delegated representatives would gain employment in the government in Tehran. Rather than asking directly for independence, the tribal leaders had first hoped to gain a higher level of enfranchisement in the central government in Tehran.
Also, the Kurdish chieftains hoped to bargain with the Soviet leadership for both independence and self-determination, a proposition that proved to be asking too much from the Soviet leadership. When they were unable to control the Kurds, the Soviet leadership sought to prevent their ascendancy , and in May 1942- representatives of the USSR at a bilateral meeting in Baku told Kurdish delegates that the time had not come for Kurdish independence, although they supported minority self-determination
Naturally, besides the Soviet Union, certain western governments also valued stability in Iran very highly. In particular, British interests in Persia, particularly the government-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, were crucial to both the British economy and to the war effort. A first fear of the British was that any independence by the Kurds might lead to further destabilization in Iran. “If the Kurds in Persia succeed in getting local autonomy supported by us, the Arabs of Khuzistan will want it and Heaven knows who else,” said the British military attaché in Tehran in 1941. Furthermore, the British also worried that Kurdish self-determination moments in Iran might trigger similar movements by Kurdish people living in its ally Turkey, and in Iraq. In particular, Turkey was ‘extremely apprehensive about Allied encouragement of the Iranian Kurds and the destabilization this might provoke in its own Kurdish territory” Regarding Iraq, a success for the Kurds in what would become the Mahabad Republic “would give a disastrous example to the Iraqi tribes and the nationalist agitators in Kirkuk .”
Although the time might not have been ripe in 1942 for independence, later in the war, in 1945, at the prompting of the President of Soviet Azerbaijan, the Kurds took a further step towards self-rule. After a trip to Baku, leader Qazi Muhammad dissolved the JK society and assimilated its members into the newly formed Kurdish Democratic Party (KDPI) , whose goals included autonomy for Iran’s Kurds within Iran, use of the Kurdish language as a medium for education and government, and the establishment of a single law for peasants and nobles. The arrival of Iraqi Kurdish leaders Mulla Mustafa and Shaykh Ahmad Barzani, along with around 1,000 armed and seasoned troops, further boosted the fortunes of the KDPI. At the same time, the Soviet-affiliated Azerbaijan Democrat party’s forces drove Iranian government forces from Tabriz and assumed control of the area. Finally, in January of 1946, Qazi Muhammad declared the establishment of a republic covering Mahabad, Bukan, Naqada and Ushnaviya, with its capital at Mahabad.
Archie Roosevelt Jr., grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and a US military operative in Iran during WWII, gave the following description of Qazi Muhammad:
A short man of fifty, dressed in an old army overcoat, he had a lightly bearded, slightly ascetic face, slightly yellowish in complexion from a a stomach ailment. He neither smoked nor drank and ate very little. His voice was gentle and well modulated, his gestures quiet but effective. Something of an internationalist, he was interested in all the peoples of the world and knew many languages, including Russian, a little English, and Esperanto. His desk was littered with grammars and readers and literary works in foreign tongues…
Concerned over their interests in Iran, Britain began to apply pressure to their Soviet ally to withdraw from Iran. A key problem for the leadership of the Mahabad Republic was that as its leadership spurned membership in the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan and refused to support communism, the Soviet leadership in turn felt saw nothing to be gained by antagonizing its allies through supporting the Mahabad Republic. Additionally, any possible Soviet concern for Kurdish autonomy or independence could not overwhelm Soviet need for oil, and for that reason, the Soviets decided to bargain with the government in Tehran. In the end, Iranian Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam scored a coup by securing Soviet withdrawal in exchange for promise of an oil concession in northern Iran. While the Soviets withdrew from Iranian Azerbaijan, Iranian troops quickly reoccupied the area; however, the planned oil concession needed to be ratified by Iran’s parliament before it could be implemented. In the end, parliament did not ratify the Soviet concession, due to nationalist attitudes of various deputies, but Iran successfully retained its territory nevertheless.
The accomplishments of Mahabad Republic included printing a daily newspaper, literary magazines and monthly journal, the establishment of Kurdish-language schools, and the enstatement of a national anthem which stated “the Kurdish-speaking people still exist and that their flag will never fall” . ‘Cut me in pieces until they kill me, I will still say I am a Kurd,” said poet and Iranian Kurdish nationalist Hemin in a poem dating from the Mahabad Republic era.
However, the Mahabad Republic also faced many challenges, such as tribal rivalries and the issue of control of Urmia and Miandoab districts, where populations were mixed. Additionally, allied chiefs disapproved of the KDPI’s stated goal of reforming the laws to make peasants and nobles equal, as well as the presence of the Barzanis. Such internal issues rapidly destroyed the support base for Mahabad’s President Muhammad after the Soviet withdrawal from Iran. Furthermore, after the Soviet withdrawal, the government of Iranian Azerbaijan signed a treaty in mid-June 1946 to return to Iran without reprisal. This treaty also covered the area of Mahabad, thereby indirectly causing the Mahabad Republic to be in revolt against the Iranian government. In August of 1946, Muhammad traveled to Tehran to negotiate with Prime minister Qavam for the establishment of an autonomous region spanning all of Sunni Kurdistan within Iran , but he gained no results.
With the Soviets now out of the picture, the government in Tehran moved rapidly to reassert control over the Mahabad Region. Government forces were ordered to Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan on December 10, 1946. Finally, Tehran’s forces hung Qazi Muhammad for treason in the square in Mahabad in March of 1947, although there had been no major violent resistance to the Iranian government’s army - rather, Qazi Muhammad’s ambitions of state building was more of a threat to the government in Tehran than mere tribal unrest would have been.
Interim Years: Post WWII to 1979
After the destruction of the Mahabad Republic, a period of 25 years passed with minimal political activity from Iran’s Kurds. While not entirely destroyed, the political movement that had controlled Mahabad was forced into hiding and would not re-emerge until the 1970s.
KDPI was virtually obliterated following the collapse of the Mahabad Republic. The remnants of KDPI had ideological similarities to Iran’s communist Tudeh Party, which was also formed in the early 1940s. In the latter half of the 1940s, the Shah began to intervene more frequently in public affairs, although his powers were somewhat limited while Dr. Muhamad Musaddiq held the post of prime minister, beginning in May 1951. However, the Shah’s increased power delayed only two years, as the United States led an overthrow of Musaddiq in August 1953, thereby reinstating the Shah, who promptly clamped down on both Tudeh and the KDPI.
In the following year, KDPI held a party conference near Mahabad in which it refined its aims. Compared with the goals of the Mahabad Republic, the main concern of KDPI in 1954 was the overthrow of the Shah. Other priorities included the creation of a Kurdish entity with its own elected government, liberation of the entire Kurdistan, and the enfranchisement of women.
However, splittist theories were a stumbling block in the relationship between KDPI and Tudeh and other Iranian leftist groups, who feared that the Kurds were in league with the Soviets and would support a posited Soviet invasion of Azerbaijan. The KDPI in Iran was largely ineffectual at forwarding its policies. Rather, during the1950’s the main Kurdish political actions and rebellions took place in Iraq, and the KDPI helped by sending supplies and providing other support.
After a long stretch of relative inaction in Iran, in 1969 KDPI moved towards a more leftist policy, and selected a new party secretary-general in June 1971. Abd al Rahman Qasimlu had studied in Paris in the 1940s and was acquainted with Tudeh. In 1973, the KDPI congress adopted the slogan ‘Democracy for Iran, autonomy for Kurdistan’. The group building up its power until 1978, when people over a large stretch of Kurdistan demonstrated for autonomy. The decay of tribal power structures as Kurds became more sedentary under the shah, as well as land reform and other modernizations, all had contributed to a consolidation of Kurd ethnic identity. Furthermore, issues of social justice under the Shah’s government also contributed to unrest in Kurdistan: the region gained little from the oil-based economic development that swept through Iran under the Shah’s reign. For example, less than 20% of households in Iranian Kurdistan were electrified in 1977, with 12% of houses Kurdistan having piped water and only a 36% literacy rate in the region.
Post-1979
After the inauguration of the Islamic republic , the Kurds hoped for greater autonomy under the Islamic republic, as well a local administration conceived ‘along secular and democratic lines’ , but such hopes went largely unfulfilled.
Immediately after the Islamic Revolution, Kurdish forces began to act independently in the countryside of Iranian Kurdistan, as the new government of the Islamic Republic proved unwilling to consider KDPI’s demand was for autonomy of Kurdistan in a federated Iran. The Kurdish forces came into conflict with the newly formed ‘Revolutionary Guards’, the Pasdaran. Overall, Kurdish forces controlled most of the countryside in Kurdistan until 1982-1983 . As for cities, they ‘remained under tenuous control by the regime’ – Ayatollah Khalkhali, the ‘hanging judge’ and the Pasdaran were hated for their use of brutal pacification tactics in Kurdistan.
Several factors influenced the conflict between the two sides and rendered them unable to settle on a modus vivendi. Leadership structures for both the government in Tehran and the Kurds remained unclear. For the Tehran government, it was required to answer to the religious authority centered upon Ayatollah Khomeni in the city of Qum.
As for the Kurds, they underwent an internal power struggle between the KDPI, centered in Mahabad and Urmia, the Iraqi branch Kurdish Democratic Party (‘KDP’) in the north of Iranian Kurdistan, who had been co-opted by the Iranian government , the Organization of Revolutionary Toilers of Iranian Kurdistan (‘Komala’, a radical Kurdish independence force) in the south , and various opportunistic clerics and landowners .
Komala held its strength in the Sanandaj-Mariwan region in southern Kurdistan, where Tudeh had also been active. The people of the region were also attracted to Komala because it was more perceived as being more democratic than KDPI. Komala favored decentralization of government, was more than willing to fight with the Tehran government, but was unwilling to compromise- this posture undermined KDPI’s conciliatory stance and made it difficult for KDPI to work together with the government in Tehran. Eventually, KDPI and Komala cooperated for a period of 2 years from 1982 to 1984. This reconciliation occurred around the time that Komala participated in the foundation of the Communist party of Iran, which happened in 1982. Komala paid the price for this change, as lost supporters due to the fact that Komala was no longer a strictly Kurdish party. Much later, in 1991, Komala resumed a Kurdish identity.
For its part, the perspective of the leadership of the Islamic Republic towards the Kurds resembled the views that the British had held in the 1940s--- apprehension, particularly that any concession made to Kurds would then need to be extended to other groups of Iranian minorities. Therefore, although the June 1979 draft constitution had promised that Kurds, among others, would enjoy equal rights, the final draft of the constitution heavily favored Shia Islam. For this reason, the Kurds abstained almost unanimously from voting on the Constitution. The situation deteriorated quickly: Khomeini outlawed KDPI in the second half of 1979, while in 1980 the government made a major assault on Kurdistan. In the assault, the presence of Pasdaran caused problems, due to the fact that they were militantly Shia and only answerable to imam komitehs. The inability to cooperate ultimately led to repercussions for the government during the Iran-Iraq war: KDPI leadership refused to fight the Iraqi army until the Tehran government admitted the principle of Kurdish autonomy and withdrew forces from Kurdistan.
The period of alliance between the Iranian Kurds and the government in the later 1980s that resulted after the withdrawal of government troops from Iranian Kurdistan shattered in 1989, when the death of Ayatollah Khomeini precipitated a move by the government to kill off the leaders of Kurdish political movements- including Abd al Rahman Qasimlu. Six weeks later a major Komala official was assassinated, and additionally, Qasimlu’s successor Dr. Sadiq Sharafkindi was assassinated in 1992. At the same time, the government once again sent troops into Kurdistan, where the KDPI, with support from the local populace, fought a guerilla war against government troops.
Hoping for a change, the voters of Iranian Kurdistan came out strongly to vote for Mohammed Khatami in the 1997 Presidential election, yet were disappointed by the slow pace of improvements in life under his administration. Khatami had run on a platform of reform and pluralism, but when major demonstrations broke out in Kurdistan in 1999 after the capture of Kurdish guerilla leader Abdullah Ocalan, Khatami’s crackdown killed 30 people, wounded hundreds, and led to thousands of arrests. These crackdowns and continuing repression have caused the Kurds to become more coalesced in their behavior as an opposition movement, although it has not led to a new nationalist movement.
Conclusion
When thinking about the contemporary history of Kurdish political movements in Iran, in light of various other political movements across the greater Middle East region, several interesting points of contemplation come to the fore. First of all, it is notable that the Kurds in Iran have been relatively content to remain a part of the Iranian state, compared to their counterparts in Iraq and Turkey. This quietism exists in sharp contrast to the Iranian Kurds’ inability to secure meaningful political change, either under the Shah’s monarchical rule or under the Islamic Republic: it is striking that the Kurds have remained relatively nonviolent and committed to secular reform within the political process, despite the lack of recognition for their religion or for their wishes for higher levels of autonomy. Unfortunately, the historical association of their political groups with the USSR may have meant that aiding such organizations was extremely unpalatable to countries such as the United States and Britain, which is a problem that has beset other reformist movements in the Middle East. However, with an Islamist government in power, and no military dictatorship in sight, the United States has the conundrum of having nowhere to turn to choose a worthy ally in Iran.
76% of electors in Kurdistan province chose Mohammed Khatami in 1997, and it is likely that this year they will once again support a reformist candidate. However, what, if any, meaningful change will be made to the political status of Kurdish people in Iran remains to be seen.
