Cross-border clashes between Iranian and Kurdish fighters are stoking fears of a new Middle East flashpoint, writes Salah Nasrawi Confrontations between Iran and Kurdish opposition fighters taking refuge in northern Iraq have been increasing in recent weeks, with incursions by both sides driving up tensions and risking a major flare up only a few months before US forces are scheduled to withdraw from Iraq. At least two Iraqi Kurdish civilians were killed on Monday and many others wounded when Iranian shells came over the border in clashes between the Iranian security forces and Iranian Kurdish rebels close to the border with Iraq's northern region. On Friday, Iran said that at least six soldiers of its elite revolutionary guards, including a senior officer, had been killed in clashes with fighters from the Kurdish opposition group the PJAK near the border with northern Iraq. The attack came a few days after Iranian troops had launched a major offensive against PJAK fighters operating out of bases in neighbouring Iraq. Iran's official news agency said that revolutionary guard forces had taken control of three opposition bases in the area during fierce clashes, killing several fighters. Iran has repeatedly bombed PJAK bases deep inside Iraqi territories, and now it has threatened to attack the group's bases in Iraqi Kurdistan after accusing the government of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of providing bases for the group. Before last week's escalation, Iran had reportedly deployed 5,000 soldiers to the northwest of the country along the border with Iraqi Kurdistan. Some Iraqi media outlets claimed that as many as 10,000 Iranian soldiers may have penetrated the border region. The PJAK, or the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, is believed to be affiliated to Turkey's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which took up arms in 1984 for Kurdish autonomy in southeast Turkey. The PKK has since inspired Kurds in neighbouring Iran to launch campaigns for autonomy and Kurdish rights after the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), Iran's oldest Kurdish nationalist group, withdrew from any military struggle and sought to achieve Kurdish goals through non-violent means. Since 2004, the PJAK has taken up arms to try to achieve self-rule in the Kurdistan province of northwestern Iran after the Islamic government in Tehran showed no desire to reach out to the Kurds and tried to crush the rebels. The PJAK is believed to have some 3,000 armed members, half of them women. Its stated goal is "to establish semi-autonomous regional entities, or Kurdish federal states, in Iran, Turkey and Syria, similar to the Kurdistan regional government" in Iraq. Like Iraq and Turkey, Iran has a large Kurdish minority, mainly living in northwestern and western areas of the country. The Kurdish struggle for self-rule goes back to before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and after the revolution the new Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared stepped up the fight against Kurdish fighters in Iran, dubbing them enemies of Islam. As Iran continued its shelling of the border areas with Iraq this week, tension has been mounting between Tehran and the autonomous regional government in Iraqi Kurdistan, which said that the Iranian bombardment had forced thousands of villagers to leave their houses in the mountainous border strip. Meanwhile, Iraqi Shia leaders have seemed unwilling to face up to the new Iranian muscle-flexing, remaining silent apparently to avoid angering their Iranian allies. The Baghdad government's inaction has stirred up feelings of bitterness among its Kurdish citizens, with Kurdish politicians accusing the Shia-led government of turning a blind eye to the military campaign in Iraq's northern territories. On Sunday, the Iraqi parliament shelved a debate about the Iranian attacks, apparently after Shia members of a committee of inquiry sent to the area refused to blame Iran for the incursions. Instead, the committee members proposed expelling PJAK fighters from Iraq, even though the Kurdish regional government has denied that there were Iranian Kurdish fighters in its territories. Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980s, but since the overthrow of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's Sunni-controlled regime in 2003 in the wake of the US-led invasion, relations between majority Shia Iraq and predominantly Shia Iran have warmed. Iran's troop build-up and cross-border interventions have come at a time when the US is withdrawing its combat troops from Iraq in accordance with a 2008 security pact with Baghdad. The withdrawal is expected to leave a power vacuum in Iraq that many Iraqis believe will be filled by Iraq's traditional rival, Iran. Over recent weeks, senior US officials have accused Iran of stepping up its involvement in Iraq. In June, 14 US soldiers were killed in rocket attacks that Washington said had been launched by Iranian-backed Shia insurgents. A further four soldiers have been killed in attacks this month. Observers believe that both Tehran and Washington are trying to exploit the planned withdrawal to serve their own interests, planning to turn Iraq into a battlefield in their ongoing confrontation. While the Iranians have been trying to present the US withdrawal as a humiliating retreat forced on Washington by its Iraqi Shia allies, the US has been struggling to convince Iraq's fractious political factions to allow it to keep a military presence in the country beyond the December 2011 deadline. Iran is continuing to support proxy Shia forces in Iraq while it tries to eliminate its own Kurdish rebels for fear that the United States will try to use them to generate instability in the country in any future confrontation over its nuclear programme. Iran has also expressed concern at efforts by the US state department to remove the opposition Iranian People's Mujahedin Khalq Organisation from its list of foreign terrorist organisations. The exiled group has a camp in Iraq, and Iran fears it will resume its attacks inside Iran. The recent escalation in Kurdistan also comes at a time of rising tensions in the region, with geopolitical changes expected as a result of the revolutions in several Arab countries. Tehran is specifically concerned over the future of Syria, a close ally, and it views Western support of the opposition there as being a major threat to the rule of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad's regime. Al-Assad, his Lebanese ally the Shia group Hizbullah, and the Damascus-based group Hamas have all been instrumental in Iran's efforts to cement its regional clout, and losing any one of them will benefit Israel and the United States. The issue is all the more important for Tehran because Iran believes that both the United States and Israel are supporting the Kurdish insurgency as part of a broader campaign to destabilise the Islamic Republic. Tehran believes that Washington and Tel Aviv are engaged in a secret war against Iran that echoes their support for the Iraqi Kurds in fighting Saddam's regime. From this perspective, the history of the Kurds makes them ideal recruits for a covert war against Iran. For years, reports have surfaced about Israeli special forces training guerrillas in the Kurdistan autonomous region of Iraq. Some reports have suggested that Israel has been recruiting Kurds for clandestine operations and surveillance in Iran. Recently, Tehran has demanded the closure of an Arbil-based institute that the Kurds say is providing educational services, but Tehran believes is a façade for Israeli intelligence in Kurdistan. On Monday, Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani blamed the United States and Israel for the killing of Iranian scientist Darioush Rezaie, believed to be involved in the country's nuclear programme, two days earlier in Tehran. Clouds are gathering over Iran's border with Iraqi Kurdistan, but the question remains whether the shelling and skirmishes will translate into a larger-scale conflict. History seems to indicate that they might, since this is how the eight- year Iraq-Iran War started some 30 years ago.
