“Ghassemlou was my master. He taught me the historical and cultural roots of Kurds ... In fact I was Kurdificated by Ghassemlou,” Frederic Tissot, the first French consul to the Kurdistan Region (2007-2012), said of Ghassemlou in his biography.
Tissot is among many Europeans who were introduced to the Kurdish question by Ghassemlou. He is perhaps the most influential leader of Iranian Kurds in the years after the 1979 Iranian revolution. His contribution in the internationalization of the Kurdish question and also his political struggle in the 1980s for the autonomy of Iranian Kurds are significant.
So significant was his contribution that the late-Kurdish leader was assassinated on July 13, 1989 while negotiating with Iranian diplomats in Vienna, Austria.
Ghassemlou was inspired by Qazi Mohammad, the president of the 1946 Kurdistan Republic. He described Qazi Mohammad as a flower in a desert, as Qazi was a well-educated, brave, and giving man. Sharing many of the same qualities, intellectually and politically ahead of his contemporaries, Ghassemlou can also be described as a flower in a desert. However, this was a flower with thorns.
Ghassemlou was neither conciliatory nor democratic in his dealings with his Kurdish critics and rivals. After the 1979 revolution, the hegemony of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) was challenged by the emergence of Komala, a newly founded Kurdish party with a stronger base among young educated Kurds.
The young and impatient Marxist leaders of Komala misjudge the KDPI as a bourgeoisie and outdated party, promoting the idea that standing against the KDPI was as important as (if not more important than) standing against the Islamic regime.
In 1984, tensions between the two parties exploded, resulting in a three-year civil war, killing hundreds on both sides. The civil war seriously undermined Kurdish nationalism among Iranian Kurds. Early peace talks were in vain, partly because the KDPI was not ready to make peace with Komala unless it recognized the KDPI’s revolutionary credentials. Throughout the civil war and the years that followed, there is not a single text or speech by Ghassemlou trying to restore peace with Komala.
In the party’s sixth congress in 1984, Ghassemlou made “democratic socialism” part of the KDPI’s program. He emphasized a combination of democracy with socialist principals, condemning proletarian or any other type of dictatorship. Although an anti-capitalist party, he aimed to theoretically and politically differentiate the KDPI from other Marxist groups – especially the Tudeh Party of Iran, which had some influence in Kurdistan.
In the first round of voting for this new programme, democratic socialism flopped, but on the second round it passed – mainly due to Ghassemlou threatening to quit if he did not get his way. After the congress, KDPI members were asked to sign a pledge in support of the programme. Those who refused left the party or were forced out.
“Democratic socialism” is still part of the KDPI program – although the party is no longer officially hostile to capitalism.
After the death of Khomeini, the Islamic republic – via a Kurdish party of the Kurdistan Region – contacted Ghassemlou to arrange negotiations. During the third round of these talks on August 13, 1989 in Vienna, Ghassemlou was assassinated.
In the first statement after his murder on the Voice of Kurdistan, the KDPI’s radio channel, there was no reference to the negotiations because the party was unaware they were taking place. As Ghassemlou controlled the KDPI’s internal and external politics from 1971 to 1989, a culture of one-man rule had grown within the party.
In the eighth congress of the KDPI, Ghassemlou was dissatisfied with the performance of some members of the party leadership, so he introduced a list of candidates. The list won – uncontested.
Right after the congress, the KDPI split. The breakaway group established the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Revolutionary Leadership (KDP-RL). Ghassemlou banned any relations between the KDPI and KDP-RL – even socially. KDPI members faced punishment for visiting their friends and relatives in the KDP-RL. Several KDP-RL members were shot in the feud.
This culture of intolerance was repeated when the KDPI split again in 2006, creating the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (KDP-I). Violence was avoided on this occasion thanks to the intervention of Peshmerga forces from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Ghassemlou is credited with being a realist. He controlled the KDPI’s diplomacy. The center of this diplomacy was Europe – particularly France. In the region, however, the KDPI received most of its financial and logistical support from Saddam Hussein, as he shared a common enemy in Iran’s Shia Islamic republic.
The KDPI insisted upon having no relations with the US during Ghassemlou’s rule and for many years after. The KDPI’s slogan on its newspaper was “Establishing a Democratic Front against Imperialism”.
Receiving help from Saddam’s regime was fine, it seems, while getting US support was taboo because of ideological blindness. The idea of standing against the US for a small ethnic minority of Iranian Kurds was irrational from the start.
Now KDPI members claim Ghassemlou planned to visit the US just two weeks before his assassination. The question still remains however why Ghassemlou made no attempt at rationalizing KDPI diplomacy during the 1980s.
As Ghassemlou failed to cultivate and institutionalize a culture of democratic collaboration and competition within the KDPI, internal disagreements over party positions and poor human resources remain major problems for the party to this day.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
