The following extracts are from an interview made by Amy Goodman in late March on the daily independent US news program “Democracy Now!” with Mr. Reese Erlich, an independent radio producer and journalist. He reports on Iran in the latest issue of Mother Jones and is author of the forthcoming book “The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of US Policy and the Middle East Crisis.” The full transcript of this interview is available on www.democracynow.orgReese Erlich: In northern Iraq there are three Iranian Kurdish groups that operate and that have compounds and do political organizing. … In the case of one group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) they (the US) are along with Israel sponsoring them to carry out guerrilla raids inside Iran, and its part of a much wider plan by the US to foment discontent and actual terrorist activities by ethnic Iranians in various parts of Iran. And when I was in northern Iraq, I was able to determine that that kind of activity is going on from Iraqi soil under the Kurdish controlled areas of Iraq, into Iran.
Amy Goodman: How did you get to the guerrilla camp?
RE: Well, it’s quite interesting, two cell phone calls and a drive up into the mountains. One of the arguments by the Kurdish regional government of Iraq and of the US is that they can’t find these guerrillas because it’s such an inhospitable territory that no one can find them. They’re operating from secret bases, etc.. But all I did was drive up into the closest Iraqi village and asked the local driver and they say “Oh, yeah, which of the guerrilla camps do you want to see and we’ll take you right up to them.” So they are very easy to find.
AG: So now, explain the difference. Explain the PKK and Pejak.
RE: The PKK is the mother organization if you will. It was founded by [Abdullah] Öcalan, the Turkish Kurd who is now in jail, charged with terrorism. The PKK, by the way, is listed on the US State Department List of Terrorist Organizations. The Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK/Pejak) is the Iranian affiliate [of the PKK]. The PKK about two years ago split into four parties, [one] in each of the countries where the Kurds live; in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. So Pejak is the Iranian affiliate. Basically they’re still part of the same organization. In order to get to [do the] Pejak interviews that I did, you have to go through two PKK base camps with walkie-talkies and soldiers and guerillas and so on. For all intents and purposes they’re the same thing.
AG: And can you explain the US relationship with these organizations?
RE: Well, it’s very complicated. Because on the one hand, the US is very much opposed to the PKK’s actions in Turkey. On the other hand they’re supporting the PKK’s attack on Iran. This is kind of typical of the clandestine efforts by the US when we saw the US support for the Mujahideen against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They sided with some pretty nefarious characters that ended up forming al-Qaeda and attacking New York. So once again the US is allying with one faction of this party, but not with the other, playing a very dangerous game and they’re playing a very similar game with the Mojahedin Khalq, another Iranian group, and with groups in Baluchestan, which is near the Pakistan-Iranian border where some Islamic Revolution Guards Corps’ buses were blown up. It’s a very, very dangerous, duplicitous game that the US is playing.
AG: You talked about how Öcalan’s political organization, the PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by the US State Department. And Pejak’s relationship with the party is supposed to be at an arm’s length. Yet you had to pass through two PKK checkpoints on your way to the guerrilla camps, each of them relaying information up the line via walkie-talkie?
RE: That’s exactly right. No one among other Kurdish groups that I spoke to, no one thinks that the PKK and Pejak are really separate organizations. At a minimum they very clearly coordinate their activities, get funding, weapons, etc.. But I think in practice their function is as one organization.
AG: And the Kurdish organizing in the University of Sulaimaniya?
RE: Well that’s very interesting. The political parties in northern Iraq, the Iranian Kurdish political parties include the Democratic Kurdish Party of Iran (KDPI), which is the Iranian Kurdish -- it’s a Kurdish party of Iran -- let’s try that again, KDPI and Komala are two long-standing organizations, they carry out political organizing among Iranian Kurds. They cross over the border into Iraq sometimes. It’s very easy to get across the smugglers trails. So those two parties have peshmerga guerrilla groups, but they are not engaged in armed activity against the US. So when you go to the University in Sulaimaniya the different Kurdish parties have their supporters and they organize house meetings and various kinds of political activities to support their demands within Iranian Kurdistan...
