Cease-Fire Leaves Rebel Groups Fighting Iran, Iraq Uneasy

After eight years of war between Iran and Iraq, it would seem almost axiomatic that everyone in the Middle East is relieved at the imminent prospect for peace. But not everyone is rejoicing.

At least two groups stand to suffer significantly from a halt in the fighting. One is the People’s Moujahedeen of Iran, an Iraq-based force that opposes the rule of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. The other is the disparate coalition of Kurdish separatists who have been fighting Iraq for control of their ancestral homeland, Kurdistan, for decades.

“Of course, it will be more difficult for us now,” Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said in a telephone interview. “The Kurdish people suffered a great deal from this war. Now, the Iraqis are trying to make us suffer from the peace.”

Most Kurds fear that with Iran no longer a direct threat, Iraqi forces will turn their full destructive power on Kurdistan in an effort to stamp out the rebellion once and for all.

In fact, while fighting between Iran and Iraq virtually stopped even before U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar set Aug. 20 as the deadline for a cease-fire, reports from Kurdistan suggested that fighting there had reached its highest levels in years.

A statement issued by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the largest of the Kurdish groups, said Iraqi forces launched an offensive Aug. 5 against Kurdish bases near the Turkish frontier in the “liberated zones” of the Sherwan and Sidakan districts of Iraq’s Arbil province.

The statement said the Iraqis resorted to widespread use of chemical weapons when the offensive appeared to be stalling. It said many guerrillas and civilians were killed in the gas attacks.

For the past two years, the rival Kurdish groups have been operating in a loose alliance from Iranian territory, where they have been receiving arms and supplies from the Islamic government in Tehran. Kurdistan historically encompasses parts of Turkey, Iraq and Iran, but in recent years the battle has been with Iraq’s government. That government had reached an autonomy agreement with the Kurds in March, 1970, but the terms of the pact were never fulfilled.

Hoshyar Zebari, a member of the KDP’s central committee, said in an interview that his organization, which includes about 15,000 full-time guerrillas, had anticipated the cease-fire agreement between Iran and Iraq and had already implemented a new strategy toward the war.

Zebari said that since resupply from Iran would now prove difficult, if not impossible, the KDP is decentralizing its units into small bands without large, fixed installations.

“We intend to fight a classic guerrilla war,” Zebari said. “Our motto right now is self-preservation.”

According to both Kurdish groups, Iran has made clear to the Kurds that while it will not become hostile to their cause, it will not allow them to break the cease-fire with Iraq by moving men and equipment across the frontier.

While Iranian forces partially disarmed the Kurds in 1975, the rebellion continued, thanks largely to Syria, an adversary of Iraq, which allowed arms to be smuggled across their common border. This now seems the most likely route for supply.

While never a strategic threat to Iraq, the Kurds have achieved a measure of success against the Baghdad regime. In recent months, government traffic has been limited to traveling the roads of the four provinces that constitute oil-rich Kurdistan in daylight hours because of the danger of guerrilla attack.

In response, the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has tried to suppress the rebellion with ruthless force. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have been forcibly resettled far from Kurdistan, while dozens of Kurdish villages have been dynamited into rubble.

While the fighting has largely occurred far from the glare of international publicity, Iraq was deeply embarrassed in March by news accounts and films showing the bodies of Kurdish civilians, mostly women and children, who had been killed in the border town of Halabja by an Iraqi poison gas attack.

“As long as Kurdish people exist in Kurdistan and Iraqi oppression against them goes on, our struggle will continue and the Kurdish people will survive,” said Talabani of the Patriotic Union.

Perhaps an even greater loser in the current peace than the Kurds is the People’s Moujahedeen, a group initially formed inside Iran to oppose the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi but which soon fell out with the mullahs that took over in 1979.

After years of exile in France, Moujahedeen leader Massoud Rajavi last year moved to Iraq, where he set up the National Liberation Army of Iran, estimated by diplomats at about 10,000 armed men. Rajavi issued a statement after the cease-fire announcements, bravely suggesting that the acceptance of peace by Iran marks “the inevitable burial” of the Khomeini government. But observers say it may also suggest his own group’s imminent demise.

Even more than the Kurds are dependent on Iran, the Moujahedeen have been almost entirely dependent on the assistance of Iraq to launch cross-border attacks against Iran.

Their three most recent raids have been notable successes. In late July, Moujahedeen forces backed by the Iraqis penetrated 60 miles into Iranian territory and briefly captured two important towns, Kerand and Eslamabad, and threatened a third, Bakhtaran. Iran suffered heavy losses, but the Moujahedeen also conceded losing 1,000 fighters, nearly 10% of its manpower.

Aleddin Touran, a member of the Moujahedeen’s department of international relations, said in an interview that it is still too early to gauge how the cease-fire agreement will affect his group’s struggle against the Khomeini government.

“The Iran-Iraq War gave us an opportunity for a national liberation war against Khomeini,” he said. “If because of the cease-fire the fighting stops, we will have to find another means. But our conflict with Khomeini does not end with the Iran-Iraq War.”

Western analysts are not so sure, citing the Moujahedeen’s almost total dependence on Iraq and its failure to arouse much support among the populace in war-weary Iran.

“The Moujahedeen is at the mercy of Iraq. It can be used as a prod by Baghdad, but if Iraq doesn’t want it around, it will simply be stopped,” said Tom McNaugher of the Brookings Institution in Washington. “The Moujahedeen is not a long-term source of trouble. It will disappear except as a group inside Iran.”