May 13, 2016
Two Kurdish rebel groups that have been largely quiescent militarily in recent years have announced the resumption of armed attacks against the Islamic Republic.
Both the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Party of Free Life for Kurdistan (PEJAK) have announced a return to military activity. It remains unclear on how large a scale they plan to act. Actual attacks by the KDPI have been reported this month in the Iranian province of Kurdistan.
Media outlets based in the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government reported fighting, with ARA News saying that Kurdish combatants staged an assault against the Pasdaran in the villages of Hamran, Myouni and Sartaja outside the city of Sardasht.
“This led the Iranian forces to [deploy] additional military reinforcements to the region in a bid to face the unexpected fierce offensive,” the news site reported.
Rudaw News, in turn, cited witnesses in the three villages as saying that clashes were ongoing with helicopters circling overhead.
“At least 15 ambulances were seen rushing into areas where security forces were deployed,” Rudaw said.
Iranian media have remained largely silent. However, state broadcasting reported earlier this month that a funeral was held for two Pasdaran killed in “clashes” in Sardasht. The report did not go into any detail.
Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya television said fighters from the KPDI launched the attacks. The KPDI, for its part, touted the fighting on its official Twitter account, claiming that more than 10 Pasdaran had died in Sardasht.
It also said two Iranian helicopters had deployed to the region in a bid to aid “a large group of Pasdaran suffering heavy losses,” adding that Iranian troops were shelling positions in the Myouni mountains.
The KDPI—a left-wing Kurdish nationalist group formed in 1945—announced February 26 that it was restarting its “armed resistance against the Islamic Republic of Iran” and claimed an attack against a Basij base in the village of Majid Khan.
The group waged a deadly insurgency against Iranian authorities from 1989 to 1996, after which it maintained a peaceful policy until it purportedly engaged Iranian troops again in the fall of 2015.
PEJAK announced April 29 that it, too, was resuming armed operations in Iran. PEJAK took a battering in 2011 from the Pasdaran, who invaded its sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan and pummeled the group. PEJAK has been largely quiescent ever since.
“Iran is at the doorstep of a wide-scale armed uprising … that will include all off its cities,” the commander of PEJAK’s armed wing, Hussein Yazdanpana, recently told the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat.