Iranian revolution: The Kurdish uprising

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

The story of a boy caught up in the forgotten war for Kurdish autonomy in Iran in 1979. During the Iranian revolution, Kurdish groups had joined the struggle to end the rule of the Shah. They wanted greater autonomy for Iran's Kurdish minority. But after the revolution, the new Islamic regime rejected that demand. A conflict erupted between government forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, which lasted for years and left thousands dead. Kameel Ahmady is an anthropologist and researcher. At the time he was a boy living in the ethnically-mixed town of Naqadeh in northwest Iran. He tells Alex Last how, as demands for autonomy grew, his town became the scene of bitter ethnic fighting.

Photo: Armed Kurdish villagers after the revolution in Iran, March 1979. (François LOCHON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds.
0:29.2	Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:37.9	Alex Last with more first-hand accounts of events that shaped our world and
0:42.3	today we go back to a forgotten story from the
0:45.5	Iranian Revolution when in 1979 with the fall of the Shah, Kurdish Iranians launched a struggle for greater autonomy within Iran, a struggle that led to years
0:57.0	of fighting and the deaths of thousands.
1:00.2	This is the story of just one town caught up in the conflict. The revolution and the events after that dramatically changed my life.
1:20.0	It left big scars of my soul and my mind.
1:24.0	Camille Amade was a child when revolution swept Iran in 1978 and 79.
1:31.0	In the struggle to overthrow Iran's ruler the Shah in major cities thousands took to
1:37.0	the streets groups with very different beliefs unified in protest.
1:42.0	Communists, liberals, Democrats marched alongside conservative Shiite
1:46.4	Islamists and supporters of the cleric Ayatollah Jomani. Eventually the revolution came to Camille small peaceful town of Nagada in northwestern
1:56.4	Iran an area which was home to many of Iran's 3 to 4 million strong Kurdish minority.
2:03.0	There were jeeps and cars
	...

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