Purpose of PAK was showing fake and false power and creating the illusion of power and effectiveness in us!
According to the Iranian Kurdistan Human Rights Watch, one of the most important reasons for the deception of Iranian Kurdish youth and teenagers and joining armed and militant groups and being imprisoned in the mafia structure of these groups is financial problems. In fact, the cycle of “creating insecurity and lack of development in Iranian Kurdistan, financial problems and lack of suitable jobs, and finally deceiving young people and becoming members of these groups” has caused a large number of Iranian Kurdish nationals to be deceived by these groups for several decades and by joining them, they will spoil their future and destiny, career and academic progress and if they survive, they will experience many problems. One of these armed and militant groups is the PAK group, which not only admits to its terrorist activities, but its leaders also use children as their armed guards, while international conventions and regulations have explicitly criminalized these actions.
The reporter of Iranian Kurdistan Human Rights Watch visited one of the former members of this armed group in Baneh. This person whose name is P.Mohammadi and was born in 1380, was once deceived by this group and has been a member of this group for 4 years. This Iranian citizen cited financial and family problems as the reason and emphasized: “I was looking for order in my life. I found that armed group in virtual networks. They made a lot of promises to me, they told me that if I become a member of this group, they will pay me and I can even work and earn money to help my family.”
The beginning of false promises
Mr. Mohammadi told the reporter: “The lies started when I arrived at the headquarters of this group. There were no money and no comfortable life, and we just had to work long hours like workers. We were doing a series of daily breathing exercises, which were not helpful at all. Instead of a useful exercise, they gave us exercises that destroyed all the bones of the body.”
He continued: “The purpose of these exercises was only to tire us. And the other was filming just for show and that’s it. Purpose of PAK was showing fake and false power and creating the illusion of power and effectiveness in us! They wanted to falsely show us as strong and fighting people, while really we were tired and had not gone there to fight at all. Many young people were deceived like me and were looking for jobs and income. PAK needed these images to create show power, and the leaders of this group also knew that they did not have real power. These exercises really tired us. After filming, we were curled up in pain. After those exercises, they organized classes on the group’s manifesto, psychological warfare, theory, teaching the Kurdish language, etc., and at the end, they gave us a bowl of beans, peas, or lentils, and all the food we had was the same.”
Discrimination in PAK structure
Pak is a group full of contradictions! He considers himself to be the claimant of the freedom and rights of the Kurds; but we saw ethnic and city-based discrimination. I was very bothered of categorizing residents of each city were, for example, they categorized and differentiated between the people of Soran, Horam or Kalhor. This also caused problems and fights. It means the structure of a group was formed on the basis of ethnicity, race, language, etc. A group that did not have many members, but they witnessed many ethnic conflicts and contradictions.
Sometimes, when several people did not like each other, they used lies and slander to make the commanders beat them or imprison them. I endured these deplorable conditions for nearly 4 years, although I begged them to let me return to Iran from the very first day, but they did not allow me to do so. I was sorry, but no more regrets….
Countdown to escape
Mr. Mohammadi told the reporter about escaping from the group: “I was tired. I was waiting for the three-year attendance date in PAK to get out of that prison. After three years when my contract with the group expired, they should have allowed me to leave the group, but they kept me for different reasons. These excuses caused me to be stuck there for almost 4 years instead of 3 years. That is, not only did not they pay, but I was also a prisoner of these stupid thoughts for more than one year. In this group 4 years of my life and youth and those like me were destroyed. Instead of working, studying and living with my family, I lived with armed people who only thought about themselves and learned me nothing.
Finally, one night when I was bored, I started yelling and beating myself and after a week, I could get out of the group camp after 4 years and quickly reached the Consulate of Iran .There, they quickly returned me to Iran. I am also working on the farm with my father and hope to finish this work faster to enroll in school again and get my diploma. If I weren’t in Pak, I would have gotten my diploma and started working. But in Pak, I learned to work with weapons and theory. Now on the farm, I don’t have any stupid theory of PAK, nor do I intend to do armed work. There was no money, no comfortable life and no seeing parents for 4 years. Such promises and the like only destroy life and I was lucky to be able to return to Iran alive.
