PEJAK is an Iranian Kurdish group that has been launching attacks on Iranian officials along the border in recent years and taking refuge across the border in the Autonomous Kurdish Region of Northern Iraq.
On Monday a military officer who was named in news dispatches, accused Masud Barzani, the president of the autonomous region, of “giving 300,000 hectares of land to the PEJAK terrorists without the knowledge of the central government in Baghdad.”
The officer said threateningly, “Iran reserves its right to target and destroy terrorist bases in the border areas. This terrorist group carries out operations against the Iranian people with the support of Iraq’s Kurdish regional government.”
His comments were billed as an official statement from the information center of the Joint Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, which combines both the regular military and the Pasdaran.
Iran has been shelling border areas of Kurdish Iraq on-and-off for the last few years in its fight against PEJAK. But Iran has long denied ever firing into Iraq and has never before charged the Kurdish government with supporting PEJAK.
Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the new charge was that it came just after the United States accused the senior leadership of Iran of arming Iraqi militias specifically to attack and kill American troops. If the Islamic Republic is now claiming the right to attack across the Iraqi border at forces killing its people, then simple logic says it has just recognized the right of the United States to attack across the Iranian border at forces killing its people.
Barzani, the Kurdish president and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), has long been allied with Iran. Going back to the days of the Shah, Iranian governments have supported the KDP in its fight with Baghdad and the KDP has in turn avoided helping Iranian Kurds fight Tehran.
The charge leveled Monday said the KDP was now reversing a half-century of policy to actively oppose the Iranian state.
The charge that Barzani had given 300,000 hectares to PEJAK was hard to digest. First, the border areas are packed with many Kurdish villages with farms and pasture land under private ownership. It isn’t Barzani’s to give to anyone. Second, 300,000 hectares is a huge area. It equates to 3,000 square kilometers or almost 1,200 square miles. That is more than twice the size of New York City or the city of Los Angeles. It almost the size of the state of Rhode Island (1,214 square miles).
The official announcement said the area “given” to PEJAK runs along the border for 150 kilometers (95 miles) and is at least 20 kilometers (12 miles) deep, a huge swath of territory.
The Iranian announcement did not say where precisely this 150-kilometer strip was located. But the KDP does not operate along 150 kilometers of border with Iran. Most of the border area is occupied by the other Kurdish political party and militia, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), headed by Jalal Talabani, who is the president of the national government of Iraq. And the border area that Iran has shelled on-and-off for years is chiefly in the PUK area.
It was, therefore, odd that Iran was charging PEJAK with operating freely in the PUK area without the knowledge of the central government in Baghdad that is headed by the leader of PUK.
