The Discerning Texan

Hundreds of Iraqi Kurds have fled remote mountain villages near the country's eastern frontier as Iranian gunners target separatist guerrilla bases, local officials said Monday.

IMRA reported:

MOUNT QANDIL, Iraq, 21 August 2007: Hundreds of Iraqi Kurds have
fled remotemountain villages near the country's eastern frontier as Iranian
gunnerstarget separatist guerrilla bases, local officials said yesterday.
"About150 families have left eight villages. We are very concerned about
thesituation in the area. If the shelling continues, we may have to declare
anemergency situation," said Hussein Ahmed, governor of Qalaa Diza
district...

Kurdish Media has this account on the clashes:

Iraqi Kurdish officials expressed deepening concern yesterday at an upsurge in fierce clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces in the remote border area of north-east Iraq, where Tehran has recently deployed thousands of Revolutionary Guards.

Jabar Yawar, a deputy minister in the Kurdistan regional government, said four days of intermittent shelling by Iranian forces had hit mountain villages high up on the Iraqi side of the border, wounding two women, destroying livestock and property, and displacing about 1,000 people from their homes. Mr Yawer said there had also been intense fighting on the Iraqi border between Iranian forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an armed Iranian Kurdish group that is stepping up its campaign for Kurdish rights against the theocratic regime in Tehran.

The killing of Iraqis by Iran's Revolutionary Guard should not be a surprise to any who have followed the course of the Iraq war (and postwar). While Tehran is raising the outcry that the Kurdish freedom fighters (known as the PJAK) are "a terrorist outfit being sponsored and armed by the US to increase pressure on Iran" -- the IRGC is itself conducting a terrorist campaign within Iraq itself.

From establishing training and base camps for both Shi'a and Sunni fighters, to funding and equipping insurgents within Iraq, Iran's involvement in the fight against Iraq and against the coalition has been very real and very pronounced for quite some time now. That involvement includes the supplying of terrorists in Iraq with the materials necessary to assemble EFPs, (explosively-formed penetrators -- an improvised explosive device which, in the past two years , has become the number one killer of American troops in Iraq).

Major General Rick Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division (whose 3rd Brigade is one of the 'Surge' Brigades), which is responsible for the area from Baghdad down to the area south of the Tigris and of Salman Pak, publicly stated that his soldiers are currently "tracking about 50 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps in [their] area," saying that, while none have been captured at this point, they "are being targeted" like any other insurgent fighters.

Only weeks ago, a Public Affairs officer within Multinational Force-Iraq privately expressed his concern to me that the media were spiking or deliberately misrepresenting reports made by the military about Iranian involvement and the capture of Persian fighters within Iraq. "We would arrest three members of the al Quds force (part of the Revolutionary Guard), and the story that would come out in the papers the next day would be, 'Three Iranian diplomats arrested from embassy.' I'd call the folks at the papers and say, 'Look, these folks weren't diplomats, and they weren't at an embassy. They're Iranian soldiers and they were taken while fighting against the coalition in Iraq.' I'd say to them, 'We have evidence -- from weapons to ID cards to uniforms - that proves beyond a doubt who and what they are,' and I'd offer to bring them in and walk through each piece of evidence with them.

"They'd never take me up on it, and would never correct their stories."

Tehran has chosen this course for itself, independent of American action. No foreign policy of America's has forced them to work round the clock -- illegally -- to develop offensive nuclear weapons. No foreign policy of ours has caused Tehran to kidnap soldiers, diplomats, and tourists for use as a bargaining chip in a most dangerous game. No policy of the civilized world has caused the Iranian government -- a United Nations member state -- to make the total destruction of Israel -- another UN member -- not only a policy position, but a priority. No coalition action in Iraq has forced Iran to send its money and materiel across its western border in hopes of killing as many American soldiers as possible.

Iran has made every one of these choices on its own. How long will it be before America decides to wake up, and chooses to realize what Tehran has done -- and chooses to accept the indisputable fact that, whether we like it or not, Iran really is at war not only with the sovereign state of Iraq, but with America as well?

Labels: Iran, Iraq, Islamic Fascism, Kurdistan, War Successes