Louise Nousratpour
Tuesday March 8, 2005
The Morning Star
In August 1910, European socialist leaders like Clara Zetkin, inspired by the struggles of US women factory workers, officially declared March 8 International Women’s Day to give voice to the most legally and socially oppressed member of society.
Some 70 years later, in the valleys of Zagros mountains in western Iran, Kurdish women walked in their European sisters' footsteps to claim their right to equality. Fawzieh Nousratpour is one such revolutionary, who did her bit to further the cause.
"Friends and family call me Oze - short for Fawzieh," she explains.
Born in Sanandaj, Oze was a secondary school teacher and a member of communist party Komala when the 1979 revolution broke out in Iran. She was 26.
“As a teenager, revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and Soviet novels like Maxim Gorky’s Mother had a profound impact on my view of life. I had a very romantic idea about the guerrilla movement. My hero was Leila Khaled and my dream was to join the ranks of socialists.
“With my first salary as a teacher, I bought a pistol to practice my shooting skills and to get ready to join the resistance movement. A couple of year’s later, revolution swept the country. We had high hopes for the revolution, but all those hopes were brutally crushed when the Ayatollahs ceased power.”
The million-dollar question left over from the 1979 revolution is why did a largely progressive and socialist movement resulted in a reactionary Islamic rule? I ask if Oze would like to give it a try.
“I think decisions made at the Guadeloupe conference in late 1978 - just before the revolution boiled over - played a key part. There ambassadors of the US, Britain and France threw their weight behind Khomaini, who was at the time in exile in Paris and virtually unknown to the majority of people in Iran. The imperialist powers knew that a theocracy would be a serious thorn in the side of the Soviet - more so than the Shah‘s regime ever was.
“Tens of thousands of communists were slaughtered and the revolution was lost,” she sighed, adding: “The US-led imperialists are still playing God in oil-rich Middle East. It seems that the Islamic republic has served its purpose and the US is anxious to remove it, just as it did Saddam. But any such invasion would spill disaster for people in Iran.”
She explains that the Kurdish parts of Iran were the final frontier of the revolution. There was a strong secular and socialist movement, with peshmargas - Kurdish for guerrilla - controlling cities and villages up until late 1983.
Oze volunteered as a teacher in schools set up by Komala in the liberated areas to tackle illiteracy. Later, she joined the undercover unit, shifting illegal documents between the Kurdish province and Tehran.
“I did this for a year. It was an extremely sensitive and dangerous operation. Sometimes I would have to take one of my children with me to appear less suspicious. But in summer 1982, the whole operation was exposed and we were forced to retreat to villages near the boarder.”
Now a primary teacher in Gothenburg, Sweden, Oze recalls that fateful summer when she had to leave her toddlers with her parents and flee her home town for the last time.
At the time, only the men in Komala engaged in military campaigns, she tells me, “But as the number of women peshmargas grew so did the debate about our right to military training. There were a handful of reactionary individuals, who threatened to lay down their guns if we were armed. To which we responded: ‘Good! One less reactionary man and one more gun to arm a revolutionary woman.'," she recalls the tongue-in-cheek comment and laughs heatedly.
She was one of the leading campaigners in calling for equal rights to military training and in autumn 1982, the first women unit was formed. Oze was one of the 13 women chosen from a list of volunteers. After a month of training, they set off on a campaign aimed at raising political awareness among women in the villages.
“It was winter when we first set off. I remember the snow and the piercing cold as we marched from one village to the next, singing military songs and chanting slogans,” she says, gently humming one of those melodies under he breath.
The women peshmargas held meetings in the local Mosques, highlighting women’s right to engage in all aspects of social and family life. They discussed arranged marriage, minimum age for girls to marry, birth control, and other equality issues.
“We were the perfect example of how women could and should join the struggle. That is why our campaign was so effective. We especially inspired the young women, many of whom joined the party.”
Does she remember encountering hostilities from chauvinist and reactionary elements in society as a woman?
“Reactionary tendencies had weakened in the post-revolutionary climate of Kurdistan and such incidents were very rare,” she explains. “A common struggle for freedom and equality had pulled people together and the communist movement had a strong presence in these areas. Peshmargas were revered as heroes and we, as women, were treated no different.”
Why did the left movement was so influential in the Kurdish province?
She argues that the new Islamic regime “failed to gain support in those areas mainly because people there were not religious and a theocracy did not respond to their bread and butter concerns. In the same breath, left prisoners freed from the Shah’s jails during the revolution resumed activities in the liberated areas and successfully rallied people to their cause.
“Peshmargas would hold discussions on atheism and gender inequalities in the local Mosques, yet never once were we thrown out or even branded kafir - Arabic for unbeliever.
“Komala was finally forced out in autumn 1983. I was nearly nine months pregnant with my third child when we were forced to retreat into Iraq - on tractors.”
Looking back at her life as a revolutionary woman, does she have any regrets?
“I have no regrets,” Oze says firmly. “I felt part of a greater movement fighting for the good of everyone and nothing can beat that. I’m disappointed at what is happening in the Kurdish areas today, with reactionary elements being fanned by nationalist groups in the pay of US imperialism.
“I am also angry that even in Sweden - famous for its gender equality achievements- we are still treated as second class citizens. I am not naïve, I know that there can be no equality without socialism, but that does not mean we cannot push the boundaries under capitalism.
“We still need to raise the consciousness of working women and rally them to our cause. This is why it is important to mark International Women's Day and campaign to make it a holiday.
“As the greatest Soviet champion of women’s rights, Alexander Kollonti, said: ‘The requirements of working women are part and parcel of the common workers’ cause’.”
* Oze now resides in Gothenburg with her husband and three children.
