Below is an article published by PDKI.org

Against the backdrop of heavy clashes between PDKI’s Peshmerga Forces and Iran’s terrorist paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in recent days, PDKI’s leader Mustafa Hijri issued a statement explaining why the Peshmerga have returned in large numbers to eastern Kurdistan. Addressing the people of Kurdistan, Hijri said that the Peshmerga have returned to “join forces with you in pursuit of interlocking the struggle in the mountains [alluding to the role of Peshmerga] and the struggle [of the Kurdish people] in the cities.”

This is a struggle in pursuit of “a dignified life” in Kurdistan, Hijri said, and called on the Kurdish people to support the Peshmerga Forces of PDKI. Mr. Hijri said that the return of the Peshmerga Forces is the realization of a pledge that he made in his historical speech on the occasion of Newroz, the Kurdish New Year.

Describing the Islamist regime in Tehran as the equivalent of the IS/Daesh in Iran, Mr. Hijri also issued a warning to those who have taken up arms on behalf of the regime in Kurdistan. “Rest assured that you will be held responsible if you take part in attacks on the Peshmerga Forces,” he averred, and urged them to lay down their arms and realize that the enemy of the Kurdish people is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Since May of 2015 PDKI’s Peshmerga Forces returned to their bases in the border area between southern and Eastern Kurdistan. In 1993, PDKI left the Qandil Mountains and moved its bases into the heartland of southern Kurdistan in order to prevent Iranian aggression against this part of Kurdistan, which was in its early stages of self-rule. Following the establishment of the theocracy in Iran, which the PDKI and other secular and democratic Kurdish organizations opposed, a war broke out between the Islamist regime and the Kurdish movement that lasted from 1979 to the mid-1990s.

Photo Courtesy of PDKI.org