No. 239, September 14, 1979
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WfJRIlERS ",1NfiIJ,1R' 25¢ No. 239 14 September 1979 Khomeini's Persian army murders Kurdish rebels. UPI Massacre in SWPfUSee Criminal Kurdistan Tailism: History SEPTEMBER II-Over the past Iran is a prison house of oppressed month. the attacks mounted- by the nations. including the Kurdish nation. Takes Us Vengeance Khomeini regime on its left-wing oppo balkanized between five Near Eastern nents and the national minorities in Iran states in the imperialist dismemberment 7hel' hUlI'ed (0 their executioners. the consequences of the "victory" it have escalated sharply. Demonstrators of th~ Ottoman Empire at Versailles. As Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power cheered only six months ago as it. along arc no longer being beaten up only by Since Iranian Kurds are predominenrly in Iran following the overthrow of the with other left and secular groups, has unofficial civilian thugs of the "Imam', Sunnl Muslims. they arc also subjected bloody shah. the American Socialist had its offices sacked and closed. its committees." but now face the heavy to religious victimization in Iran. where Workers Party (SWP) emblazoned a press suppressed, its members beaten, weapons of the "Islamic Revolutionary 90 percent of the population belongs to headline hailing this event across the jailed and threatened with execution. Guards" (Pasdars) and the ex-shah's the Shi'ite branch of Islam. front page of its newspaper, a headline Despite the fact that brutal Islamic regular armed forces. Following rna" which will be immortalized in the annals repression against the left, women, demonstrations in Teheran during mid Khomeini Slaughters Kurds of class treachery: "VICTORY IN national minorities and homosexuals Augmt protesting the suppression ofthe HKS Denies Right to IRAN!" (Militant, 23 February). So began on Day I of the mullahs' regime. liberal daily Ayandegan, newspaper.., Independence lI'hose I'ictorr nol1', S WP? the egregiously misnamed "United and offices of the pro-Moscow Tudeh Every day since the fall of the Peacock Secretariat of the Fourth International" Party. the Guevarist Fedayeen and the The persecution of the Kurds has Throne events in Iran have confirmed (USee). to which both the American been even more savage under Khomei Socialist Workers Party (H KS) were that the spoils of this "victory" are the SWP and Iranian HKS are "fraternally" ni's dictatorship of the Shi'ite clergy closed down and sacked. savage repression of miqorities, the affiliated, characterized the ayatollah as than under the shah. Thus in only four execution of strikers, homosexuals, "progressive" and "anti-imperialist." The biggest mobilization of days of fighting last March in Sanandaj, ad ulterers and others accused of"crimes Even Khomeini's attack on their H KS Khomeini's reactionary repression. the provincial capital of Kurdistan, against god"; the stoning of unveiled comrades brought forth a desultory however. has been directed against the more than 400 Kurds were slaughtcred. women, the suppression of all opposi response. The one thing the S WP did Kurdish national minority, To crush And during the recent invasion. a tion parties and press. The current energetically was to exclude Spartacists their struggle for autonomy from the spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic from defense of the threatened Iranian Persian chauvinist regime in Teheran. slaughter of hundreds of Kurds in Party charged that '"the only difference" socialists. Only now that it has finally Khomeini ordered his Pasdars. army nurthwestern Iran is only the most between Khomeini and the shah "is that dawned on these inveterate tailists, troops and air force to launch a full reccnt repressive measure of this Shi'ite during the Pahlavi regime, they did not blinded by their opportunism, that they l1edged reign of terror in Iranian theocracy in consolidating its victory, kill innocent people so ruthlessly," may actually have to pay for their Kurdistan. While various pseudo The international Spartacist tendency treachery has the USec belatedly sprung socialists now seek to explain this The present fighting in Kurdistan (iSt) was unique on the left in telling the to life and begun screaming from the butchery with the cynical claim that the started in Paveh. a town of 15,000 ncar truth which every day receives confir pages oftheir newspapers, "Stop Execu ayatollah has carried out a "self-coup" the Iraqi border. Annoyed with gang mation in Khomeini's "Islamic Repub tion of Socialists in Iran!" against his own regime. the attacks on sterism by Khomeini's Islamic guards, lic": the mullahs' victory means a In time-honored reformist fashion the Kurds. Arabs. Turkmenis. women. the Kurds in Paveh wiped out the regime just as reactionary as the shah's. they are trying to cover their tracks by workers and the left in Khomeini's Iran Pasdars and laid siege to a police In contrast, the SWP and its co-thinkers playing up the threat hanging over the did not begin yesterday. The mullah outpost where a deputy prime minister in the Iranian HKS (Socialist Workers arrested H KSers. The Stalinists used the loving left is trying to cover up its own was holding out with 20 soldiers. Party) disguised and obscured at every failurc to resolutely defend the victims Outraged that his Shi'ite warriors had stage the reactionary character of same ploy following the 1973 Pinochet of the "Islamic Revolution" it fervently been dealt such a humiliating blow by Khomeini's Islamic fundamentalist coup, trying to focus protests on freeing regime. Today the KS is experiencing continued on page 6 supported, continued un page 6 H Reactionary Islamic Revolt in Afghanistan In a military camp in Pakistan, a ment did propose a sweepmg land ago" (Los Angeles Times. 25 June). But Victory for the Islamic insurgents in young Afghani teacher of the Koran reform aimed at giving 240,000 peasant making no pretense at standing for the Afghanistan would be a victory for the explains to a New York Times reporter families full ownership rights to land rational principles of a Jefferson or a landlords over the peasants, for the that he is fighting against the govern and encouraging them to form Thomas Paine, today the U.S. ruling moneylenders over the poor. It would be ment of Nur Muhammad Taraki be cooperatives. class supports the most barbaric forces a victory for the veil. And while the cause it stands for"the Russian doctrine However, landlord economic sabo of feudal oppression and religious Taraki regime is a left-bourgeois one, that they call democracy." The teacher is tage and terror combined with the mass mysticism in the East. Thus, Carter's based mainly on a section of the old part of a feudalist revolt currently reactionary insurgency has made the grey eminence, Zbginiew Brzezinski, officer corps, the country's would-be raging against the Soviet-backed left agrarian reform a dead letter. Some denounces Soviet policy in Afghanistan revolutionaries have undoubtedly ralli nationalist Taraki regime which seized months ago Kabul announced that land for trying "to impose alien doctrines ed around ·it. Therefore, the overthrow power in Kabul in April oflast year. The of this nationalist regime by Muslim rebellion is aided by Pakistani dictator tribesmen would also lead to the Zia. who fancies himself a soldier of physical destruction of the potential Islam and vows to stamp out alcohol, ~'R/(ERS cadre of a revolutionary (Trotskyist) adultery and other examples of "moral ,!INfJIJIRIJ ", vanguard. corruption." And significantly, many of Down with Khomeini! For Workers ReVol~I'" Our position of military support to the rebelling tribesmen are Shi'ite the Taraki regime is not derived from Muslims who look to Iranian aya Viclory In Ira the fact that it is closely allied to the tollah Khomeini for inspiration-and Mullahs Win . Iranian masses show the way Soviet bureaucratically-ruled workers guns-in their jihad against "godless state. while its enemies are backed by the communism." for workers around the world U.S. imperialists. Such alliances are in Virtually the entire left fell to its knees any case changeable (Egypt). As revolu before the demagogic "imam" of Qom, tionary internationalists our position in but one only has to observe the civil war civil wars is governed by whether or not next door in Afghanistan for confirma historically progressive conquests are at tion of the reactionary character of the issue-whether there is a qualitative Islamic fundamentalist revival. Where difference between the sides from the as anti-communism usually justifies standpoint of the proletariat-not by itself in terms of"freedom" and "human the Russian Stalinists' often criminal rights," the Afghani insurgents declare maneuvering among diverse bourgeois they are fighting a holy war to preserve nationalist and even feudalist-reaction Islamic law, in particular the seclusion/ ary forces. In the Horn of Africa. for enslavement of women. And the tradi example. we defend the national tional Afghanistan which they vow to liberation struggles of the Eritrean and preserve is one of the most ,backward Somali pcoples against the Soviet-allied countries on earth: almost totally rural, Ethiopian regime of Colonel Mengistu. with an average life-expectancy of 40 in Mengistu the Russian (and Cuban) years and a 90 percent rate of male Stalinist rulers are supporting a left illiteracy (98 percent for women). talking Idi Amin. who has committed Almost all women, save a tiny Western mass butchery of the country's young ized urban middle class, are imprisoned leftists as well as of its national and in the head-to-foot chador (veil). tribal minorities. When the Taraki gover"nment took In Afghanistan. however, Soviet arms over, the Western press raised cries of a and advisers are defending a regime "Communist coup." This is false even in which is under attack for its limited terms of the common identification of efforts at democratic reform.