The people of Iranian Kurdistan have for years been fed up with the presence of individuals claiming to be defenders of the rights of the people. Hundreds of Iranian-Kurdish children have been abducted, and lured into militant groups’ recruitment traps under false pretenses. Therefore, the government needs to make an effort to prevent the recruitment of under-educated youth and minors in these areas by militant groups.
These groups are trying to recruit children from these areas and recruit them in order to use them as soldiers. Most of them are children from poor, uneducated and rural families, who have no knowledge of militant groups, and are deceived by PJAK’s false promises in complete belief and simplicity.
These children do not know what fate awaits them, they are deceived by ‘nice words’ that appeal to them, such as traveling abroad, studying, mariage or a well-paying job, and without knowing anything more about these groups.
The duty of the “Iranian government” is to increase public awareness of what these groups do. In this regard, it is necessary for the “Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran” to work more in the field of education regarding the reality of the rural population in the border areas, because the main reason for these kidnappings by the PKK and PJAK is their lack of knowledge. .
Children weaving carpets: intensive and hard labor mostly done by young girls and boys to support for their families. These children come from poor environments, and are deprived of education in order to do ‘their job’. They form an easy target for militant groups in the area.
Carpet weavers, shepherds, and smugglers…
Children in these areas are almost deprived of any privileges, including education, in their families, they are forced to work at home and in the family doing things such as carpet weaving, shepherding and smuggling at the borders. To escape this way of life, they take refuge in these groups and fall into the vortex of lies, murder and murder.
The lack of “economic facilities” and work in these areas is another reason for this and their abduction.
There is almost no hope for a bright future for these children and their families, and for a better life and escape from this situation, they have been deceived by the lies of the PKK, PJAK and other groups without knowing the consequences of them leaving with the passing militants they’ve just met.
Mostly, the families of the victims also have a low level of “awareness” and “worldliness”. Their parents have never learned to read and write. Instead of taking the classroom and holding pens, children in these demographics take up arms and learn the lessons of life and survival in a militant group, unaware that being killed is also waiting for them.
The “families of the victims” of these groups are also usually at a low level of awareness and, due to their poverty, are unable to pursue the unknown fate of their children in militant groups based in the Iraqi Kurdistan region. Those who have the ability, are met with a lot of lies, slanders and disrespect when addressing the members of the group about their child, and hopelessly return and wait for news of their child on the group’s affiliated TV channels.
Eventually, those families find out about their son’s fate a year after he was killed, while those groups refer to them as heroes who were killed for the homeland. But the fact is that their children are killed in Syria, Turkey and Iraq after being abducted under false pretenses.
Iranian children and adolescents are driven to death by PJAK
Now the question arises that PJAK, which claims to be the enemy of Iran, why does it send its forces to Turkey and Syria for the PKK ?! Thus, it turns out that PJAK, as the PKK’s puppet to compensate for the lack of manpower of this group, due to lack of credit in Turkey, and that Turkish children are no longer deceived by their false promises, is trying to deceive and target the most vulnerable Iranian Kurdish children.
As indeed, most of their recruits are well under age 20. More than half of them are underage, most of them have no even finished elementary school, and are recruited when spotted alone engaging in some sort of uneducated work in the border areas, and there are even mentally challenged teenagers among them.
Meanwhile, “Zahra Shukru” is one of those people who were recruited by the group from the border villages of Salmas in 2008 and was deceived by PJAK that promised her a suitable marriage, job and life. She was spotted in the fields of her mountain village, and left her previous life behind on a whim. She was simply tired of weaving carpets day and night.
Zahra was only 14 years old and was the fourth child in her family. The group took her to Xakurke area in east-Turkey, behind the border with Iran with the false hope that she would return to Iran after training, but she, like most of the abducted children and teenagers, had a different fate.
From Zahra Shukru to “Berivan Ahmad”
Zahra soon realized that there was no truth to the promise of marriage or a better life. Instead of that, PJAK made her live in a cave, sleeping on dry and rough ground, and of course enduring the war and the bombings of Turkey.
Another point is that a person named “Ahmad Derik” who is leaning on his chair in Syria today, and introduces himself as a politician, is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of abducted Iranian children and teenagers. This person even changed Zahra’s name to the Nom de Guerre “Birivan Ahmad”. The audacity of naming this young girl after himself…
Zahra, who had now become Berivan Ahmad, was a reclusive and nervous person, because she was accustomed to the strict local culture and Sunni Islam of her hometown. Zahra cried sometimes and was isolated because she had no hope of returning, concluding that “dying as soon as possible” might be a way to escape her hard and unbearable life. Zahra – unlike others that had more ‘spirit of life’ in their body – did not even bother to protect herself when her camp was under attack.
Zahra was influenced by the words of Sozdar (who is now a head of the “YPJ” in Syrian Kurdistan, but who was in Botan during Dr. Ali’s time, Cudi region, in 2008 and 2009, when Botan province had serious problems in illicit relations between men and women, especially in Cudi eyalet).
Zahra ended up in Cudi. Her fate was very bitter, and there is a serious need for a “serious intervention by the Iranian government” to prevent its recurrence.
Zahra was killed in Cudi region, Turkey, only a few months after entering the Cudi region, and ten years after living in the caves of the treacherous Haftanin region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The group once stated that Zahra was killed in an airstrike and once again stated that she was killed while fleeing.
But what is clear to us, is that Zahra was killed a few years before the group had announced her death, namely in the aftermath of Dr. Ali’s actions.
Zahra’s family still does not know the real reason behind their daughter’s death.
