The PKK’s Long Road Ahead


After the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has withdrawn its fighters and made peace with Turkey, it has other important steps to take to complete the transition from guerrilla group to political player.

One of those steps is for the PKK to get its name off the US and European Union’s list of terrorist organizations. Remaining on those lists means that financial assets are frozen and political activities are prohibited.

PKK has been listed since 2004 as a terrorist organization in both the EU and the United States. It got on that list after its (admitted) attack on American soldiers in Iraqi Kurdistan that year, killing at least one.

Now, in a March 21 message on the Kurdish New Year, the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan told supporters that, after a three-decade conflict with Turkey over Kurdish rights in which an estimated 40,000 people have died, the struggle was shifting from the battlefield to the political arena.

The PKK remains politically shackled as long as is is officially recognized as a terrorist group, especially by Washington. Getting off the list is not easy, as the Iraq-based Iranian opposition Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) has learned. Last year, MKO got itself off Washington’s list, after a nearly 15-year effort.

MKO was added to the American terror list in 1997, mainly over the killing of Americans in Iran under the pro-US Shah. After the US=led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the group was disarmed and its Iraqi camps came under American control. Consequent Iraqi governments wanted to get rid of the group, which had worked closely with Saddam Hussein. Eventually, its members were moved to a former American base, Camp Liberty, under control of the United Nations, which is trying to resettle MKO members outside Iraq.

The move to Camp Liberty was part of a bigger deal, which included taking MKO off the American terror list.

In addition, Washington has been using MKO against Iran since 2003. MKO members have been used to infiltrate and get information, and for attacks against Iranian targets, including nuclear scientists.

When it removed MKO from the terror list, the US State Department said it was essentially doing so because the organization had not been actively involved with terrorism for the past 10 years.

Getting off the EU terror list was a legal triumph for MKO. Its lawyers found that the juridical procedure that placed the group on the list in the first place, was disputable. The group won that case, without ever touching the question of whether or not it deserved to be on the list.

It took MKO many years of campaigning and bags of money for lawyers and politicians to get off the terror lists. The group also vowed not to use violence any more to change the regime in Iran.

The PKK is only at the beginning of this very long process. At this juncture, it is important to look at what PKK has to offer the Americans in the bigger geopolitical game. Unlike MKO, it does not fight a country that is considered the enemy.

The most interesting opportunity for PKK is in its Iranian affiliate, PJAK, which has a history of fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region in Iran. There has been talk in the past of American support for PJAK, for the same reason that Washington supports MKO: My enemy’s enemy is my friend.


https://rudaw.net/english/opinion/160520131