A Deal with The "Orphans"

Key compromise in Kurdistan

"A step backward, a mess, enough to make one nauseous." So said Shahpour Bakhtiar, the Shah's last Prime Minister, at a 90-minute press conference in Paris, where he emerged from a half-year of hiding to denounce the revolutionary government that toppled him in February after barely more than a month in office. Bakhtiar, who is on the regime's wanted list of former officials charged with high crimes, accused Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini of lacking "a master idea" for Iran and predicted that the waste and corruption under the Islamic government "will surpass" anything seen in 25 years under the Shah. His aides were beginning to transmit cassette tapes back home to spread his message, as Khomeini had done so successfully. But the chances of Bakhtiar's returning to Iran, much less returning to power, seemed very slim. His following is almost entirely among the narrow Iranian middle class, which may be tired of revolution but is hardly prepared to start another in Bakhtiar's name.

Bakhtiar reappeared just three days before Iranians began electing the 73 members of a constituent assembly who are to approve a new constitution that Khomeini and others have drawn up as the blueprint for an Islamic republic. He said he welcomed the boycott of the election by such groups as the breakaway Democratic National Front and supporters of Kazem Sharietmadari, a nationally popular ayatullah, but had had no advance knowledge of their intentions.

Meanwhile, the regime at least temporarily defused a dangerous dispute with rebellious tribes in the western province of Kurdistan. The country's 4 million Kurds (out of a total population of 36 million) have long been agitating for more autonomy; since the revolution their demands have accelerated, causing friction with the Tehran government and occasional bloody clashes with its forces, most recently in the town of Marivan. TIME's Tehran bureau chief, Bruce van Voorst, visited Kurdistan and filed this report:

The late afternoon sun still seared the dusty streets of Marivan, a scramble of mud and stucco houses on a mountain slope near the Iraq border, as "solidarity" marchers arrived from Sanandaj, the Kurds' provincial capital (pop. 150,000). The more than 2,000 men, women and children had walked the 90 miles of gravel roadway from Sanandaj in four torturous days just so they could, as one of them bluntly put it, "tell the Tehran government to go to hell."

The troubles in Marivan had begun two weeks before, when a force of Islamic revolutionary militiamen called Pasdaran moved in to reimpose the government's authority on the town, which had insisted on running its own affairs. After clashes that took the lives of 13 militiamen and twelve Kurds, Marivan's 10,000 residents left for fear of government reprisals, and many set up camp in the nearby forest. When the army then dispatched a convoy including a dozen American-made M-47 tanks to reinforce the militiamen, men and women from the neighboring town of Kamyaran lay down on the main thoroughfare with their children to stop the vehicles. "If there's going to be bloodshed," one villager said, "it might as well be here as in Marivan."

The Kurds feel betrayed by the revolution and the government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan. They are especially enraged by the Pasdaran, who they say treat them "like a conquered province." Kurdish expectations are articulated in the platform of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which calls for locally elected city and provincial councils with responsibility for police courts and tax collecting.

"Fundamentally, we accept the role of the central government in foreign and defense policy," says Sheik Ezzedin Hosseini, a Kurdish spiritual leader. "But beyond that, we want to run our own show." Hosseini, like almost every other Kurdish leader, rejects separatism, if only because a cutoff from the oil-funded Iranian national budget would be disastrous.

The late Kurdish leader General Mulla Mustafa Barzani once called the Kurds "the orphans of the universe," because they have never had a national homeland of their own. A handsome, high-spirited people, with dark, flashing eyes and chiseled features, they belong to the Sunni sect of Islam whereas most Iranians are Shi'ite Muslims. The trials of farming craggy mountainsides, where the summer temperatures soar above 100DEG and winter blizzards last for weeks at a time, have made the Kurds tough and independent.

It is not unusual to see a Kurdish woman dressed in an elaborately embroidered homespun costume going about her chores with a child on one hip and a Kalashnikov rifle on the other. "We've got the will to fight," says one woman, patting her weapon affectionately, "and the means." The men are walking arsenals, with guns and cartridge belts at their hips and hand grenades dangling in leather pouches at their sides. Tucked away in the hills and valleys is heavier equipment, including machine guns, antitank weapons and artillery.

At week's end the government and Kurdish representatives had worked out an agreement in principle. In a formula that is likely to be followed in other Kurdish towns, the local provisional council in Marivan would be permitted to decide local matters. The hated Pasdaran were to be withdrawn, and the regular army would assume control until a local police force could be established.

"We could have blasted our way through at any stage," said Defense Minister Raqi Riahi, "but we didn't. We support the Kurds' demands for running their own affairs and for being consulted when troops are assigned to the area." A Marivan resident concurred: "We respect the army's need to maintain security. We just want to be involved."

For the same reason, the Kurdish party, unlike some other groups, refused to boycott the constituent assembly election and even nominated three candidates of its own. Says a Kurdish lawyer: "We want to be inside the tent."

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