After 20-year break, these Iranian Kurds are taking up arms again
In a surprise development, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, which has not used guns against the Iranian regime for 20 years, has resumed fighting, reportedly instigated by regional powers.
DIYARBAKIR — On June 15, news came out of the Iranian town of Shino, a Kurdish city in western Iran, that an armed group had clashed with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and that both sides lost six fighters. The armed group was soon identified as peshmerga fighters who belong to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI). Reports claimed further clashes in many towns in the area, including Piranshahr.
Iran responded by shelling the KDPI camps along the border.
Why has the KDPI, which has not taken up arms against Iran for roughly 20 years, suddenly become active? The KDPI was engaged in an armed struggle with Tehran from the time it was established in 1945, but ceased the fighting in 1996 so as not to inflict any hardships on the Kurds of Iraq when Northern Iraq came under Kurdish rule. The KDPI that was invited to the region by Iraqi Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani moved its armed forces to Iraqi Kurdistan.
KDPI members who gave up militancy and who for years lived in the refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan with their families could not have imagined that one day they would re-enter into a military confrontation with Iran.
