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Kurdistan Region-Iran border areas – A Kurdish armed opposition forces has resumed its armed struggle against Iran, becoming the third Kurdish party to do so since 2015.
Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, or shortly known as Komala, has started to station its Peshmerga force on the Iranian border with Kurdistan Region after a halt that lasted for nearly 25 years.
They are now less than three kilometers away from the Iranian military outpost.
Komala says that this will allow them easy access into the Iranian territories.
“The fact is that Komala has returned to the mountains [in an armed struggle] to have a closer relationship with its people, its members, and the people inside Iran,” Khalil Fatah, a Peshmerga commander told Rudaw.
The party first declared its armed struggle against Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979.
“Peshmerga and the mountains go together hand in hand,” HaniIbrahimi, a female Peshmerga said, “When you are up there, you feel that you are closer to you objectives, your people, and the people inside the country. It’s also easier to communicate.”
The party signed an alliance agreement with the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, or HDKA in 2012, a more active armed party that has engaged on a number of occasions since 2015 when they ended their decades-long silence against Iran.
This alliance is well reflected in their armed deployment to the mountains. They are seen together. The border area they share is one more factor that made this possible.
Despite their political differences, they commander on the ground say that armed cooperation between the two is more solid than political cooperation.
“We are happy to receive all [Iranian Kurdish] parties here, even more so with our allied party,”Rahim Manguri, a HDKA commander said as his Peshmerga fighters are now preparing for an active confrontation against the Iranian security forces on the border. “Now that this allied party has arrived, we have increased better relations and more communication in the mountains than in the city.”
These parties are now manning a 60-km border with Iran.
Komala, which traces its roots to the Communist Party of Iran, has undergone several schisms. After Iran’s 1979 revolution Komala began armed struggle against the new clerical regime.
In the beginning, it was known as the Tailors Revolutionary Group of Iranian Kurdistan. In 1983, the leaders of Komala, together with some Iranian communist activists, established the Communist Party of Iran and Komala became the branch of the party in Kurdistan. But in 1991, a group broke off and established the Workers Communist Party. In 2000, the party experienced another split. A group broke off and established Komala. In recent years, yet another group walked away and formed the socialist party.
One year on since it resumed armed confrontation against Iran, the HDKA also conducted a military exercise in the border areas of the Kurdistan Region with Iran this year, promising a full guerrilla war inside Iran.
The PDKI, which is considered Iran’s main armed Kurdish party, said last year that it was giving up a two-decade ceasefire with the Iranian government and returning its guerrilla fighters to Iran, but that it will not initiate hostilities unless attacked. They also rejected a request from the Kurdistan Region “to stop armed attacks in Iran,” following rising tensions between Tehran and Erbil over the presence of Kurdish armed groups in the border areas.
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