Right-wingers keep telling us that Iran is days, at most, from establishing complete control of the known world and requiring mandatory burqa-wearing, foot-washing, and suicide terrorism (I may be exaggerating slightly), but apparently that same world-historically mighty superpower can't beat a few scruffs in the mountains:
...Salih Shevger, an Iranian Kurdish guerrilla, was interviewed recently as he lay flat on a slab of rock atop a 10,000-foot mountain on the Iran-Iraq border, with binoculars pressed to his face as he kept watch on Iranian military outposts perched on peaks about four miles away.
He and his comrades recounted how they ambushed an Iranian patrol between the bases a few days before, killing three soldiers and capturing another....
The guerrillas from the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or P.J.A.K., have been waging a deadly insurgency in Iran and they are an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the P.K.K., the Kurdish guerrillas who fight Turkey.
... interviews with guerrillas suggest that they have inflicted considerable damage on Iran. While it is impossible to verify the claims, the leader of the P.K.K., Murat Karayilan, said the P.J.A.K. fighters had killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials in Iran since August. And Biryar Gabar says 108 Iranians were killed in August alone....
I'm oversimplifying somewhat, because these aren't just a few scruffs in the mountains -- they appear to be a few scruffs in the mountains with U.S. backing:
... while the Americans call the P.K.K. terrorists, guerrilla commanders say P.J.A.K. has had "direct or indirect discussions" with American officials. They would not divulge any details of the discussions or the level of the officials involved, but they noted that the group's leader, Rahman Haj-Ahmadi, visited Washington last summer.
Biryar Gabar, one of 11 members of the group's leadership, said there had been "normal dialogue" with American officials, declining specifics. One of his bodyguards said officials of the group met with Americans in Kirkuk last year.
Iranian officials have accused the United States of supplying the fighters and using them in a proxy war, though those assertions were denied by the American military.
The U.S. denial is unconvincing and weirdly worded:
"The consensus is that U.S. forces are not working with or advising the P.J.A.K.," said an American military spokesman in Baghdad, Cmdr. Scott Rye of the Navy.
Now, here's where I get confused. We don't like the PKK (because it's attacking our ally Turkey), but we do seem to like the PJAK (which is attacking Iran), even though it's a PKK offshoot and you can go to the head of the PKK to get the PJAK's body counts.
What's more, the two groups seem to have very similar PR campaigns going on. Today's article (from The New York Times) is accompanied by this carefully staged photo, which puts female PJAK fighters in the foreground.
(Caption in the print Times, where this photo appears above the fold on page one: Kurdish guerrillas, some of whom are women, have been waging an insurgency in the mountains straddling the Iran-Iraq border.)
This came just after the appearance of a story about the PKK in Rupert Murdoch's Times of London: "The Women Rebels Who Are Ready to Fight and Die for the Kurdish Cause."
Same script, two ostensibly different groups?
I only know what I read in the papers, but I find myself wondering if it's even possible to work with the PJAK without getting tangled up with the PKK -- which makes me wonder whether the U.S. government even cares about the consequences (i.e., infuriating a NATO ally whose help is critical in keeping our precious Iraq war going), as long as aid is provided to an enemy of Iran.
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