The Barzanis ­ from Tehran to London

Ali Reza Nourizadeh
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
A photograph published by Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency of the Dec. 9 meeting in Tehran between Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani and Iranian Expediency Council Chairman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani brought back old memories.
It was the first meeting between the two men in over eight years, during which relations between Tehran and the KDP went through a period of tension.
I was reminded of a visit to the town of Karaj, 40 kilometers west of Tehran, which, with its rivers, green hills, and flower gardens, was (and still is) a place where Iranians go to relax.
 

It is at a Karaj suburb called “Little Kurdistan” where the Kurds’ historic leader, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, had been billeted by the shah. Barzani and his followers were forced to flee Iraqi Kurdistan after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi signed the 1975 Algiers Accord with Iraq’s then-vice-president, Saddam Hussein. The Algiers Accord put an end to a long-standing (since Ottoman times) border dispute between Iraq and Iran that centered on the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. In the agreement, Iraq recognized Iran’s right to half of the Shatt. The thalweg ­ or median course of the river ­ was designated as the border, while Iran agreed to suspend its support for Barzani’s peshmerga fighters.
My trip to Karaj, where I was received by Barzani’s eldest son Idriss, was to enquire after the health of the wounded “Lion of Kurdistan” and to interview him. With his business suit and Yves St. Laurent tie, the mullah looked very different from the image I had of him ­ that of a mountain warrior in Kurdish dress, with bandoliers and a rifle on his shoulder.
We spoke for more than two hours while Idriss sat silently at his father’s side. The mullah spoke of Kurdistan, of mountains that reach to the sun, of Dohuk, Koysanjaq, Irbil and Suleimaniyeh. He spoke of the bitterness of defeat, of betrayal, and of the dagger his “friends” had buried in his back.
Following the publication of the interview, I received a phone call from Idriss to express his father’s gratitude. That was the last I heard of the mullah for a while ­ this was 1979, when the shah was forced to leave Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini made his triumphant return to Tehran ­ although I was aware that the Kurdish leader was undergoing cancer treatment in the United States.
The Iranian Islamic revolution did not pay much attention to the mullah save when some revolutionary fanatics ­ who believed that anyone who so much as had a cup of tea with the shah was a stooge ­ desecrated his grave. For Barzani’s body had been temporarily interred in the northern Iranian Kurdish town of Oshnavieh until it could be taken to its final resting place across the border.
Despite the unfavorable circumstances that prevailed in Iran at the time, I penned an article about the mullah in “Omid Iran” (a magazine which I edited) severely criticizing “those who desecrated the grave of the man revered by all Kurds ­ from Anatolia to Iran, including Iraq.” I also wrote about the mullah’s 50-year struggle, his role in bringing the Kurdish question to world attention, and his cooperation with Iran.
The next day, five men in Kurdish dress visited me at the magazine. One of them was Idriss. I welcomed him and expressed my anguish at what had been done to his father’s grave. Idriss, however, reassured me that Mullah Mustafa was resting in peace once again, after Iranian Kurdish leader Abderrahman Qassemlu intervened and ordered the arrest of the assailants.
We talked about Iran and Iraq. Idriss said that Mohammed Mokri, one of the members of an Iranian committee set up to mediate between the revolutionary government and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), had arranged for him to meet with Khomeini.
Certain circumstances and events (among which was my refusal to toe the government line) forced me to eventually leave Iran. Idriss and his brother Masoud were not the only friends I didn’t manage to say goodbye to when the time came for me to leave Iran.
I later learned that Idriss, Masoud and their men had returned to their beloved mountains ­ with the help of the Iranians ­ to resume their fight for Kurdish rights against the Iraqi regime, and perhaps to strike a blow against the agreement that led to their dispersal many years earlier.
Yet Idriss and Masoud’s refusal to toe the Iranian government line always reminded me that they were as high-principled as their father was. They refused to attack Iraqi forces while these forces were defending Iraqi soil, for example, and they also refused Iranian requests to open a second front against Iraq when Iranian forces launched an offensive in Kurdistan with the aim of capturing Suleimaniyeh and Halabja. Because of their independence, Idriss and Masoud were always harassed in Iran. Idriss subsequently died (or was assassinated), and the eight-year Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988 with Khomeini taking the “poison” of UN Resolution 598.
Shortly afterward, I learned that Masoud Barzani had returned to Iraqi Kurdistan once again, taking with him the remains of his father and brother.
Many years passed before I met Masoud again. As it happened, Masoud Barzani managed to return to Iran after eight years, while I have not been able to see my homeland for 22. A hundred different reasons prevent me from going home. Masoud had one simple reason: his refusal to become a puppet in the hands of any regime ­ Baathist or Islamic.
When Iranian envoy Ali Agha Mohammedi ­ the national security adviser for Kurdish affairs and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s personal representative ­ asked Barzani to “open Kurdistan’s borders to our intelligence operatives, and expel Iranian KDP fighters and cadres from Koysanjaq,” Barzani told him that “any transgression against my brother Iranian Kurds living among us would be a transgression against Masoud Barzani personally, and against all Kurds.”
Relations between the two sides deteriorated after that, especially where Khamenei and his aides were concerned. But Barzani made a point of maintaining ties with President Mohammad Khatami and his government.
On his visit to Tehran earlier this month, Barzani met with Khatami, Intelligence and Security Minister Ali Yunesi, Majlis Speaker Mehdi Karrubi, Iranian Kurdish MPs, leaders of the Revolutionary Guards and Rafsanjani. He did not, however, ask to meet Khamenei. Thus relations between Barzani and the Iranian revolution cannot be said to have been restored despite the KDP leader’s visit to Tehran. Contacts with the Iranian government, however, were resumed.
Besides securing Iran’s acceptance for a federal solution for Iraq, and achieving an alliance with the Tehran-based Shiite Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Barzani also managed to extract a promise from Iranian leaders to find a solution for the problem of thousands of exiled Iranian Kurds living in Iraqi Kurdistan since the early days of the Islamic revolution.
I will be meeting Masoud in London, where he attended the Iraqi opposition conference. I already know that Mullah Mustafa’s son is going to tell me the glad news that I ­ as well as thousands of Iranians who were forced to flee Iran ­ will soon be able to return home.

Ali Nourizadeh, former political editor of the Tehran daily Ettelaat, is an Iranian researcher at the London-based Center for Arab-Iranian Studies and the editor of its Arabic-language newsletter, Al-Mujes an-Iran