Akademik

   1) (1942-1945)

   Komala (Committee) was the name of a political party Iranian Kurds formed in September 1942 in Mahabad, Iran. Its complete name in Kurdish was Komalay Jiyanaway Kurd (J.K.), or Committee for the Revival of the Kurds, so the party has also been referred to as simply J.K. Abdal Rahman Zabihi was appointed party secretary. Some Iraqi and Turkish Kurds were also represented in Komala. Indeed, Mir Haji, a close associate of Mulla Mustafa Barzani and the representative of the Iraqi Kurdish Hiwa party, was present at Komala's first meeting.

   Komala's pan-Kurdish aspirations were made clear by the motto of its journal Nishtiman (Motherland), which declared, "Long live greater Kurdistan." Indeed, the famous "three-borders meeting" of Kurdish delegates from Iraq, Turkey, and Iran was held on Mt. Dalanpur in August 1944 where the borders of their three states met. Komala's activities eventually led to the short-lived Mahabad Republic of Kurdistan in 1946.

   Komala looked to the Soviet Union for guidance and emphasized language and social rights. In April 1945, Qazi Muhammad, a highly respected cleric and the unquestioned Kurdish leader in the city of Mahabad, was invited to become Komala's new president. In September 1945, Qazi Muhammad dissolved Komala and absorbed its membership in the new Kurdish Democratic Party, later called the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI). This new party was apparently created on Soviet advice.

   A quarter of a century later, a completely new and different Iranian Kurdish party also, and therefore confusingly, called Komala was formed. See KOMALA (1969-).

   2) (1969- )

   The Revolutionary Organization of Toilers, known as Komala (Organization) for short, claims that it was originally established by extreme left-wing students in Tehran, Iran, in 1969. It announced itself publicly only at the end of 1978, however, when the shah, Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was being overthrown. The group was inspired by the Chinese communist revolution and sought the support of the rural and urban masses. Many of Komala's founders, however, were from notable families.

   Along with the more moderate Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), Komala became one of the two main Iranian Kurdish parties fighting for Kurdish autonomy against the Islamic Republic. Although both Kurdish parties were staunchly secular, Komala was more radical and Marxist. Komala, for example, viewed mere Kurdish nationalism as parochial.

   Komala was more strongly established around the city of Sanan-daj, while the KDPI controlled the area around Mahabad to the north. For a while the writ of the two prevailed over much of Iranian Kurdistan, but by 1983 they had been defeated and reduced to waging guerrilla warfare only from exile in northern Iraq. Komala reconstituted itself as part of the Communist Party of Iran, although it continued to be known as Komala in Kurdistan. In so doing, Komala, to its detriment, misjudged the depth of Kurdish nationalist feeling.

   In 1985, fighting began between Komala and the KDPI, resulting in hundreds of deaths. Shortly after the assassination of the KDPI leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou in Vienna by Iranian agents in July 1989, a senior leader of Komala was also assassinated in Larnaca, Cyprus. Thus, Komala largely has been reduced to a paper organization, relevant perhaps only within the Kurdish-Iranian community in Los Angeles, California. Nevertheless, Komala still exists and maintains a website at www.komala.org. It currently advocates Kurdish autonomy. Abdullah Mohtadi is its secretary-general.