Posted on 02/02/2007 11:31:07 PM PST by FARS
Reports from Inside Iran
Armed revolt by Bakhtiari, Lor and Ghashghai tribes against the Islamic Regime has reportedly flared up.
Yesterday, freedom seeking tribal fighters in the Isfahan and surrounding provinces and region began fighting local Islamic Regime forces and freeing their villages and townships from the Islamic Regime's control.
The Semirom area, which is on the Ghashghai tribal migrations route, apparently saw heavy fighting and more clashes occurred in between Isfahan Province and Yassooj further south, which is the center of the Boyer-Ahmadi tribal territory.
Local fighters from the various tribes, confronted Islamic Regime paramilitary forces – the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the Bassij (suppression forces consisting today mostly of Arab mercenaries though originally using naïve, susceptible provincials to swell their ranks).
Heavy ground battles between the tribal fighters and Islamic Regime forces reportedly resulted in heavy casualties left behind by the government troops. Specially at a point around Yassooj and in the Province of Fars which was labeled the Red Line which was not to crossed by the Regime forces.
In hand to hand combat, the local combatants managed to put to flight the government forces who were armed to the teeth, but had to retreat. Thousands of tribesmen took part and managed to free several villages and townships of the Isfahan Province and surrounding areas from the Islamic Regime's control.
Much of the conflict stems from the Islamic Regime's on-going efforts to disarm the tribes and put religious leaders in charge of them instead of their traditional Khans.
To restore morale among the Regime paramilitary forces, who had had to retreat in the face of tough resistance, leaving large numbers of Islamic Regime dead and wounded in the confrontations, the Martyrs Foundation of the Regime announced that all those killed would be added to the rolls of the Martyrs and their families would receive financial aid and support.
As so often in the past, the Regime sent in troops to take revenge on the families of the tribesmen but were repulsed by the internally tough charactered tribal warriors.
The mountainous terrain and the stiff resistance put up by the tribes prevented government militias from penetrating into Bakhtiari and Ghashghai tribal areas. After one their Khans had been treacherously killed by the Regime in the past, that tribe caught the spy who had been responsible, cut him in half with a chain saw and dumped his severed body on the doorstep of a local enforcement office of the Regime.
The tribes have blocked off the road from Shahreza to Semirom with check points and searched all vehicles, specially those carrying persons from Isfahan or Yassooj. Only residents were allowed into the towns and villages.
The tribes hope that their uprising will spread south to Shiraz and Masjid Soleiman (Khuzestan oil province) and even become a national one across the country.
Towns from Semirom to Isfahan , which is only 140 kilometers away in the Ghashghai held area and all townships for about 60 kilometers toward Isfahan are in the hands of the Bakhtiari tribes. The Islamic Regime has never had much control of this area.
When the Islamic Revolution of Khomeini took place back in 1979, the "hanging judge" ayatollah Khalkhali, who loved to torture cats to death for entertainment, went city to city to execute people but when he arrived in this tribal region, the residents attacked his convoy and sent him fleeing for his life but he managed to escape to go on killing.
In trying to cover up what is going on, the Islamic Regime has accused the conflict of being a discord started by a band of drug smugglers and described the participants as thugs and unsavory elements from Sistan and Baluchistan moving through the tribal region as part of their smuggling operation. And confronting the Islamic Regime's anti-drug smuggling authorities.
Meanwhile, in Sistan and Baluchistan the Jondollah movement continues to clash regularly with the Islamic Regime.
For Frequent Travellers
The next time you find yourself on a plane, sitting next to someone who cannot resist chattering to you endlessly, I urge you to quietly pull your laptop out of your bag, carefully open the screen (ensuring the irritating person next to you can see it), say: "I'm busy" and hit this link .
;^D
Re #20 This may be the story you mentioned:
In Iraq, Kurds train to battle Iran
KATHY GANNON
Associated Press
QANDIL MOUNTAIN RANGE, Iraq - Deep in the mountains of eastern Iraq, a cluster of mud huts and the chatter of machine gun fire reveal another piece of the jigsaw puzzle called Kurdistan.
Here, recruits are training to fight Iran, one of the four countries that rule the fractured Kurdish people. And although they belong to an organization officially outlawed as terrorist by Washington, they appear to be operating unhindered from Iraqi territory controlled by U.S. forces.
A boulder-studded road spirals up through sun-soaked mountains to a pale yellow building that flies the flag of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), condemned as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and its NATO ally, Turkey.
A giant face of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK founder who is serving a life sentence in Turkey, is painted on the mountainside. Ten miles farther on lies the Qandil range, which runs like a snow-dusted spine along Iraq's northern border with both Turkey and Iran.
In the camp, lugging heavy machine guns and AK-47 assault rifles, are men and women of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PEJAK, an offshoot set up by the PKK in 2004 to fight for Kurdish autonomy in Iran.
The PKK and its affiliates are spread through a region of some 35 million Kurds that straddles Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. PEJAK, the newest group, claims to number thousands of recruits, and targets only Iran - a mission which has made PEJAK the subject of intense speculation that it is being used to undermine the radical Islamic regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In the Nov. 27 issue of The New Yorker, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that PEJAK was receiving support from the U.S. as well as from Israel, which fears Iran's nuclear ambitions and Ahmadinejad's call to wipe the Jewish state off the map.
PEJAK says it regularly launches raids into Iran, and Iran has fired back with artillery. In October the English-language Iran Daily, published by Iran's official news agency, said Iran accused PEJAK of killing dozens of its armed forces in insurgent attacks.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a presidential candidate who claims the White House is overplaying the Iranian threat, last year wrote to President Bush expressing concern that the U.S. was using PEJAK to weaken Ahmadinejad.
James Brandon, an analyst for the U.S.-based Jamestown Foundation, told The Associated Press that PEJAK has refused to discuss its funding sources. But he said its greatest threat to Iran is not military. It has veins running deep into the Iranian Kurdish population and is offering to join forces with other restless minorities in Iran, he said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said "Israel is not involved in any way in what's going on there."
Meir Javedanfar, an Israel-based Iran expert, noted however that Israel has a long-standing relationship with Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani and "It would not surprise me to discover that Israel is using the Kurdish areas of Iraq to undermine Iran's influence in Iraq and monitor what's going on along the Iranian border, as well as to undermine the Iranian government itself."
The AP recently spent two winter days at a PEJAK training camp tucked in the shadow of the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq, listening to its followers describe their goals and operations in Iran.
According to a camp commander, Hussein Afsheen, "PKK gives ideological and logistical support" while funding comes from Iranian Kurds. He said he didn't know of U.S. funding, but would gladly accept it.
The camp is designed to toughen up the new recruits, who numbered 38 during the AP's visit. Beds are single wool blankets spread over a rough concrete floor, or over a narrow steel bench that hugs an icy mud wall. The only heat comes from a wood-fired potbelly stove.
It's still pitch dark and freezing at 5 a.m., when the fighters line up and pledge allegiance to the Kurdish cause.
Soztar Afreen, a 22-year-old Syrian with a quick smile, says she joined five years ago and the first months were tough.
"I had trouble keeping up. You have to toughen yourself. The physical work is difficult but once you get used to it life here gets easier," she said.
She recalled that her parents, PKK sympathizers, sent her off with this plea: "Don't let down the struggle; make us proud."
Gunfire and explosions echo off mountainsides as recruits learn to fire artillery and rocket launchers and automatic rifles. They are taught to lay ambushes and to endure long hours isolated and in hiding.
Food is spartan - potatoes, tomato broth, onions and a lot of bread baked flat in a deep stone oven.
Much time is spent in ideological training and studying Ocalan's vision of a united Kurdistan, which the guerrillas say has gradually shifted from demanding full-blown independence to settling for autonomy as a distinct culture within the various countries where they live.
PEJAK ideology is rigorously leftist and includes equality of the sexes - unusual in this region. The camp has two leaders, a man and a woman.
The male one, Afsheen, is a Turkish Kurd who joined the PKK in 1990, at age 19. He said he enlisted after Turkish soldiers herded him, his family and his neighbors into the town square and burned down their homes.
Four shepherds were coming home and "The soldiers just opened fire on them. I had inside of me a lot of anger. I promised I would get my revenge," said Afsheen.
In training, "Recruits were put in a cave and left there for a month, allowed out only for half an hour each day. We walked for hours in frigid water," he said.
Afsheen said he has made several forays into Iran, including one monthlong trek to the Iranian town of Shahha three months ago, not to attack Iranians but to organize Kurds. "We were discovered. There was a firefight and it went on until dark. We were pinned down, trapped," he said.
"At nightfall we found an opening and we tried to slip out but we were discovered. The firing went on again and they called in their helicopters. One of our friends was wounded and three Iranian security men were killed."
Afsheen's co-leader is Beridon Dersim, who grew up in Austria and found her identity with the PKK.
"What I wanted I couldn't find from Turkey. I couldn't find from Europe. The PKK offered me answers about myself, about my ethnicity."
Dersim, 32, said she wanted to pick up a gun the day she joined the PKK at 17 but it was just before her 20th birthday that she was allowed into the guerrilla ranks.
Unlike Afreen of Syria, she did not have her family's blessing, she says, and her father, a Turkish civil servant, was tortured and left in a wheelchair. She said she has since fought in gunbattles.
The guerrillas vow not to marry or visit their families lest they put them in danger or be distracted from their struggle. Afsheen said he hasn't seen his parents since their village was destroyed 16 years ago. "I was the youngest of nine children, but maybe there are more now. I don't know."
Dersim says her presence encourages Kurdish women but also frightens the men.
"We go to a village and when we speak they are surprised and they ask us: 'Where do you get such power to do this? How can you speak like this and in front of men?'"
It is a crunch time.
I liked the traveller one, too.
Please feel free to share the site with friends and colleagues and post anything you find on http://www.antimullah.com
While this looks "good", the tribes do NOT have any heavy weapons nor real anti-military capability. Their terrain and fierceness stands them in good stead<<<
Good news, I wish them extra strength.
Thanks for the map.
check out http://www.antimullah.com - it's there in full splendor.
(GO KURDS!)
"CIA toad"?
Interesting, in terms of tribal anger... the loss of life must be large in number.
May there be even more "martyrs" this year.
Your map went up on AntiMullah. What a perfect fit to the story.
Don't believe that for a second. This country has more combat power than Tom Brokaw could ever imagine in his wildest dreams.
We can make it so not stone stands upon another in Iran and our military wouldn't even have to crack a serious sweat to do it.
L
thanks, I hoped it might be useful...looks like there's a chance the Bakhtiari (with help from the Kurds,) might be standing between the mullah's and Khuzestan OIL!
Thanks so much for posting. Fascinating information.
You want us to arm the tribles against the ruling government, but you want President Bush to threaten Iran for supplying arms and IEDs to Iraq.
Seems to me we could use a mother ship or 3 to dump all the arms they could use on them.
Course we won't. The puppet masters seem to be cultivating the Iran idiots to do us great harm.
LOL!
I wonder who is today's Wassmuss.
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