BY SUSAN PRICE
Jamal Darwand escaped from Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War in 1991. Twelve years later, on the eve of another Gulf war, Darwand is standing as a member of the Socialist Alliance ticket for the Legislative Council in the March 22 NSW election.
“I think Socialist Alliance as a political party can have a big role and it must be in the forefront of the campaign against war”, Darwand told Green Left Weekly. “I have seen what Saddam Hussein has done to the Kurdish people, and to the people of Iraq, but I know this war is not about freedom or democracy."
As a young boy living in the Kurdish region of Iran, Darwand rapidly developed an awareness of political issues. During the civil war in Iran, after the Ayatollah Khomeini took power and began to crush the left, refugees began passing through his village on the way to the Iraqi border.
“All I knew was that these people needed help, so I just packed a bag full of bread. My mother asked me what I was doing, and I said to her `people are hungry', and just ran towards them. They actually didn't need bread, but that was just how I felt about it. It was a big shock. Their city was being bombed, and I had never been through this before.”
By the time Darwand was 14, he had joined a leftist political party which had recently formed and whose leaders were in exile in Iraq at the time. Darwand worked in the political underground, organising supporters to listen to radio broadcasts by the party and assisting underground cadre travelling back and forward from Iraq to Iran.
Darwand was inspired to deepen his revolutionary commitment by the tragic death of one of the revolutionary leaders of the resistance who spent time living with Darwand's family in 1980. “He was working in my district at the time and living with us. He was caught and executed by the government. He was working as a doctor and a teacher.
“One time when my mother was sick and he was helping her, she asked him why he had separated from his wife, and he told my mother that his wife had not liked him helping the poor and working-class people.
“During a time when his brother came from the next village to visit him, they were both caught and executed, even though his brother was not political."
After this experience, Darwand became fully aware of the level of political tension in Iran at the time. "I knew I had to take sides."
Throughout Darwand's teenage years he continued to carry out underground political activity, including supporting conscripts in the Iranian army who had deserted and who were hiding in the mountains.
In spite of his youth, due to the respect he had won by his activity, when he was 15 Darwand was asked by local leaders of the resistance to distribute a letter among his fellow villagers protesting against compulsory armed sentry duty, which all villagers were ordered to perform by the government. The sentry duty was ostensibly aimed at “protecting” the village from the peshmergas (guerrilla fighters opposing the Khomeini regime).
“My family was required every six nights to guard the village", said Darwand. The villagers were mostly peasant farmers, working 12-hour days in the field and then being forced to stay awake all night “guarding” the village.
As a result of the protest, there was a successful “disarming” of the local arms depot carried out by Darwand and others from the village. “The guards wouldn't shoot at us because we were all from the same village. They shot into the air instead."
However, Darwand was later captured by the authorities. After that, he was subject to continual harassment by government officials. “Once I was arrested for no reason, and kept in a stable for two nights. They wouldn't let me sleep and interrogated me, accusing me of distributing pamphlets and of helping the peshmergas."
During the Iran-Iraq war, Darwand was forced to leave Iran after he was made aware that he was in danger. Helped by the peshmergas he made his way across the border into Iraq, where he remained for four years in a camp near the Iran-Iraq border. During this time, he worked as a guide, assisting the guerrillas and other members of the resistance navigate the local area across the border in Iran, seeking out support for the resistance and helping to ensure the safe distribution of political literature to towns and cities, including Tehran.
Darwand used these four years to deepen his understanding of Marxism. “The first year we were studying, listening to the radio, reading papers. I used to spend a lot of time in the library reading books. It wasn't just armed struggle and underground work, but study as well."
It was during the Gulf War that Darwand was forced to flee Iraq after the failed Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein's regime. “At that time when Iraq was defeated, the Kurdish opposition rose up. As it turned out this resistance involved many different forces, and posed an even bigger threat to the US as it tore Iraq apart and destabilised the country. In response, the US permitted Saddam Hussein's forces to crush this resistance.
“I walked for 40 hours around the mountains to cross the border through Turkish army lines."
Darwand was in Turkey for four months before being granted refugee status by the United Nations. “My brother was sent to prison in Iran after being accused of helping me. The UN was aware of his case and this helped me to gain refugee status.
“I found out I was on the list to be deported to Iran at that time by the Turkish authorities. The Turkish secret service took me and 12 others to interrogate us. They randomly took two of our group and beat them to unconsciousness. They then threw them outside in front of us, where they lay for half an hour. They were trying to terrorise us. For two hours they interrogated me but I told them nothing."
While in Turkey, Darwand and his comrades helped newly arrived refugees and campaigned for their rights through rallies and demonstrations. “In Turkey I lost my illusions in religion. I began to see people as either capitalists or workers. It didn't matter what they believed, it was who they were. It helped me to overcome racism and prejudice."
Darwand finally arrived in Australia after seven months in Turkey as a refugee. In 1993, Darwand and his comrades organised 300 people to march on May Day. “We were carrying pictures of Marx and Lenin in the rally. The media swamped us and we were everywhere in the papers. Communism had `collapsed' but here we were."
Darwand's political activity in Australia during the 1990s focused on organising social; activities for Iranian refugees. “We organised soccer games and picnics for them".
By 1996, Darwand was collaborating with members of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran in Sydney, and joined the WCPI a couple of years later. “We organised a lot of refugee rallies, and campaigns for workers' strikes in Iran."
In 1998, the WCPI campaigned in solidarity with maritime workers during the waterfront dispute. “Members of the MUA were so surprised when we organised about 150 people to march down to the docks at Botany Bay. They looked at us and said, `how did you do this?'
``I spent most of my nights and days at the picket line. I had a small child by then. I'd come home for a couple of hours sleep and go back again in the morning. I even left my car as a barricade when there were no people left to hold the picket line."
Darwand was also a student at the University of Technology Sydney at this time.
In 2001, Darwand joined the Socialist Alliance. He has since left the WCPI to concentrate on his political activity inside the alliance.
“I've made my home in Australia. I'm an internationalist anyway. I could be in Australia today and in Chile tomorrow and still I would be politically active."
From Green Left Weekly, March 12, 2003.
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