Iranian Kurdish Parties Support Peshmerga With Fighters

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Three Kurdish parties from Iran briefly had troops fighting alongside the Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces in battles in Gwer and Makhmour against the Islamic State (IS/ISIS), party officials said.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (KDP-I), Kurdistan Freedom Party and Kurdistan Struggle Agency, all based in the Kurdistan Region, had sent fighters into the battlefield, party officials said.

Two other parties, also with bases in Kurdistan, expressed readiness to join the fight.

The tide in the battles for Gwer and Makhmour reportedly turned in favor of the Peshmerga after US jets began strikes against IS positions on Saturday, joined by the Iraqi air force.

The KDP-I said it had sent some 250 fighters to fight alongside the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) forces. Early last week the KDP-I sent a group of fighters to the Khazer area in the west of Erbil.

Sources said that the KDP-I fighters had only remained in Gwer and Makhmour for two days and later withdrew to their bases.

“We joined the battlefield at the request of the KRG ministry of Peshmerga and the return to our bases was at the request of the same ministry as well,” Rostam Jahangiri, a member of the KDP-I leadership, told the Kurdpa agency.

“During that time our forces were under the command of the commander of Peshmerga forces,” he added.

Jahangiri denied that KDP-I forces were withdrawn due to pressure from Iran.

The Kurdistan Freedom Party was the first to offer support, last week sending a group of fighters near Mount Shingal, where Peshmerga forces were fighting to stop an IS advance toward tens of thousands of Kurdish Yezidis stuck on the arid mountain for a week.

“We are ready for all kinds of support to further stabilize and improve the Kurdistan Region,” the KDP-I said in a statement.

Halgurd Hikmat, spokesman for the Peshmerga ministry in Erbil, said that “since the beginning of the IS attacks on the Kurdistan Region a large number of Kurdish activists and Peshmerga from East (Iranian) Kurdistan have contacted us and expressed their readiness to defend Kurdistan.”

He said activists also had launched a campaign to collect aid for Kurds in Kobane in Syrian Kurdistan and in Shingal.

The organizers of the campaign said that their effort was aimed at raising international awareness about the tragedies committed against the Kurdish people.  

On Reporters’ Day in Iran last Friday, Kurdish journalists highlighted the Peshmerga forces’ war against the Islamic militants in their reports.