Kurdistan’s Weekly Brief July 30, 2019

Iran 

• In Sanandaj, an appeals court reduced the sentence of prominent labor activist Khalil Karimi from one year to two months in prison. Karimi was charged with “propaganda against the Islamic Republic” for holding strikes and protests defending labor rights. In Marivan, Iranian security forces arrested a Kurdish man named Abdullah Waissi and held him without charge. According to the Kurdish human rights organization Hengaw, three Kurds were detained in Nagadeh in connection with Kurdish insurgent operations, which have targeted the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) early July. In Urmia, a sentence of one hundred lashes was imposed upon on a local Kurdish singer named Payman Mirzazda. On June 20, 2019, an Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced Mirzazda to two years in prison and one hundred lashes for “propaganda against the Islamic republic” after he sang Kurdish nationalist songs during a concert.
• On Saturday, Iranian border guards ambushed a group of Kurdish border porters known as Kolbars near Urmia, wounding two. Iranian authorities also seized the Kolbars’ cargo and killed 20 of their horses. A recently released report from the Kurdistan Human Rights Association (KMMK) claims the Iranian regime holds 13.3 million dollars’ worth of goods confiscated from Kolbars in Sanandaj.
• Arson attacks continued to plague the Kurdish region of Iran last week. Fires struck the Qorveh countryside and forested land near Sanandaj. Additional fires targeted  Chardavol County in Ilam province, resulting in the destruction of around 150 acres. Since March 2019, a wave of arson attacks has struck the Kurdish regions of Iran, Iraq, and Syria. While Islamic State (Da’esh) terrorists have claimed responsibility for the attacks in Syria, it remains unclear who is behind attacks in Iran and Iraq.
• On Friday, clashes broke out between the IRGC and an unknown Kurdish group near Sarvabad. One IRGC member was killed and two were wounded in the fighting while Kurdish casualties remain unknown. The IRGC has recently begun launching operations against Kurdish opposition groups in the Iran-Iraq border region.

Iraq 

• Peshmerga forces repelled an attack from a group of Da’esh terrorists and snipers in the Khana Shahwani area near the Yezidi town of Shingal (Sinjar), killing four and capturing one. The Peshmerga suffered no casualties during the engagement.
• On July 24, nine members of a single family were killed in the Daquq District of Kirkuk province when Iraqi federal police opened fire on the car they were traveling in. Iraq’s Ministry of Interior is slated to open an investigation into the incident, which some witnesses claimed was precipitated by Iraqi police’s wrongful identification of the car’s occupants as Da’esh terrorists. In Daquq, Da’esh attacked Kurdish villages with mortars and killed one woman. Many Kurdish villagers in the region are leaving their homes due to the increasing number of terrorist attacks and deteriorating security situation. Iraqi federal police and Iranian-backed militias seized control of Kirkuk province from the Kurdish forces on October 16, 2017 following the Kurdish independence referendum.
• The Government of Iraq and the newly formed Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) began talks to reach agreements regarding various outstanding disputes. On July 25, a high-level delegation from Baghdad traveled to Erbil and met with a KRG committee headed by Kurdish Prime Minister Massrour Barzani and Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani. A statement released by the KRG following the meeting claimed, “The two sides agreed to form technical committees of the relevant ministries, working under the supervision of the Joint Committee, to develop practical solutions to these issues in line with the Constitution. The technical committees will meet in Baghdad next week.”
• In response to a newly passed new election law requiring Kurdish political parties to hold regular congresses, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Change Movement (Gorran) decided to hold their congresses before the end of 2019. Meanwhile, despite the Council of Representatives of Iraq’s passing of the provincial council laws, officials in Kirkuk province have not agreed on the laws’ stipulations requiring review of voters’ registration. Iraq’s provincial council election will take place on April 1, 2020.
• 400 villages across the Kurdistan region have been evacuated due to the continuing Turkish military incursion. Last week, additional Turkish air and artillery strikes targeted Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters in the Qandil Mountains near the borders of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. A senior PKK leader denied involvement in the recent assassination of a Turkish diplomat in Erbil but praised the action.

Syria 

• On July 26, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again threatened to invade northeastern Syria. Erdogan issued these threats despite ongoing talks between U.S. and Turkish officials regarding a buffer zone between Turkish and Kurdish forces in the region. Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mawloud Çavuşoğlu, issued similar threats before United States Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey’s arrival in Ankara. The Turkish government vowed to invade the Kurdish region in order to reach a compromise with the U.S. regarding Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system and potential sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017. The U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) refuted the Turkish threats and vowed to resist any Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria. Meanwhile, residents of towns along the Turkish-Syrian border, including Christian minorities and non-Kurds, continued protesting the potential Turkish incursion.
• An IED explosion wounded 13 members of the SDF in a village between al Shadadi and Markada towns in Al Hasakah province. Northeastern Syria has seen an increasing number of IED and car bomb attacks since the fall of the Da’esh “Caliphate” in March 2019.

Turkey 

• On Wednesday, the Turkish military designated 16 more villages in Bitlis province as military zones and imposed curfews. This follows the imposition of curfews in parts of Dersim province last week. Though the curfews’ official purpose is to facilitate operations against PKK fighters, they have adversely affected thousands of people’s daily lives. Meanwhile, Turkish police detained five Kurdish politicians in Mardin and Diyarbakir (Amed). The detainees included the co-mayors of Nusaybin and Bismil Districts in Mardin and Diyarbakir. In Izmir, 12 members of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) were detained for “propaganda of a banned organization.”
• Imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan’s lawyers applied twice for visitation permits from the Turkish government last week. Neither request was approved, however. Since the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) defeat in the rerun of Istanbul’s mayoral election, the Turkish government has reimposed isolation on Ocalan and denied all requests for visitation.