JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
After a month of war in Iran and the region, one of the biggest targets of Iranian attacks has been in Iraq against armed Iranian opposition bases in the Kurdistan region. The bases have been there for decades, many dating back to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. After years in exile, many opposition fighters see this moment as an opportunity to finally go home. NPR's Jane Arraf and producer Sangar Khaleel visited some of the fighters.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR OPENING)
SANGAR KHALEEL, BYLINE: Spas.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Spas.
ARRAF: We pull into a base of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, known by the Kurdish acronym, PAK.
KHALEEL: (Speaking Kurdish).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Kurdish).
ARRAF: The base held housing for fighters' families and an office of the PAK leader. They were evacuated before Iranian missile strikes a few days before killed one of the fighters and destroyed the office. Amir Azizi (ph) was posting guard when the missile hit, killing another fighter.
AMIR AZIZI: (Through interpreter) I came here. So three of our members were fallen on the ground, wounded. And then I saw the other one, Kawan (ph), who was also, like, wounded and severely injured. So we tried to give him the first aid and put him in the car, but we lost him in the car.
ARRAF: Azizi says he became an opposition activist when he was 18. He later came to Iraq to help Kurds fight ISIS, the militant group that took over parts of Iraq and Syria. PAK was among the Kurdish groups trained by the U.S. in the battle against ISIS.
A AZIZI: (Speaking Kurdish).
ARRAF: Azizi lists the guns U.S. forces drilled them on.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
ARRAF: We go to the PAK cemetery that has grown over the years. It's on a windy hilltop, surrounded by pistachio trees and green fields of spring wheat.
There are about 30 white marble graves and markers of fighters who have died here. The most recent one, though, is just a mound of earth.
(SOUNDBITE OF WIND BLOWING)
ARRAF: There's a traditional Kurdish scarf that the fighters wear - black and white and blue - that's spread out across the bare earth of the grave.
The white roses and wildflowers placed in a jar of water on Kawan Rashidi's (ph) grave are still fresh. He was in his late 30s and he left behind a 5-year-old son.
A AZIZI: (Speaking Kurdish).
ARRAF: "Despite that," Azizi says, "this war is different - that Iranian Kurds are closer to gaining Kurdish rights in Iran than they've ever been." But to do that, he believes they need U.S. air support to help topple the regime.
(SOUNDBITE OF KNOCKING)
ARRAF: About 90 miles away, in the city of Sulaymaniyah, there's a safe house for another of the major opposition groups here, Komala. It's full of young people evacuated from bases after Iranian airstrikes. Almost all Iranian opposition members are in a precarious position here, allowed to stay but not given refugee status or residency.
(SOUNDBITE OF DISHES RATTLING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (Speaking Kurdish).
ARRAF: An Iranian opposition TV network brings the latest news from the battlefront. Suhaib Azizi (ph), who's 23, sits on a sofa with his hand in a sling. He was injured in an attack that killed another fighter, also in his 20s.
SUHAIB AZIZI: (Through interpreter) We ran down, the two of us, and the drone hit. I thought he's also down, you know, there. I couldn't see him. I went up to see if something happened to him, but I saw he's, like, martyred, and he was killed.
ARRAF: Azizi says he knows that if fighters cross the border now into Iran without U.S. air cover, they'd be killed. Sitting next to him, Kowsar Ahmadani (ph), who's 20, says she joined as a fighter because she wanted to help herself and other women determine their own lives.
KOWSAR AHMADANI: (Speaking Kurdish).
ARRAF: "I was seeing the injustice women face. I was seeing how powerless they are, how speechless they are," she says.
Afshin Dadvand (ph), who's 39 and a media relations officer, joined the party here after graduating from law school in Iran in 2013. As a child, he says he would sit with his father and listen to broadcasts from opposition radio.
AFSHIN DADVAND: In early morning, we had the "Voice Of America."
ARRAF: In Persian.
DADVAND: Yeah, in Persian.
ARRAF: He points out portraits on the wall of party fighters and leaders, most of them killed by Iran.
DADVAND: Kak Foad Mustafa-Soltani (ph), who is one of the Komala founders.
ARRAF: Near the city of Koya, we meet the deputy head of the oldest Kurdish Iranian opposition group, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, known as KDPI. We interview Mustafa Mauludi (ph) on a country road because attacks have made their bases too dangerous fighters either dispersed or withdrawn into the mountains. Mauludi has been a peshmerga, a Kurdish fighter, and opposition political figure for 47 years. He's been wounded twice. Two of his sons have also been injured. He says so far, they've held off on armed action in Iraq and Iran, waiting for the Iranian regime to weaken further.
MUSTAFA MAULUDI: (Through interpreter) We need to study everything before we make any decision.
ARRAF: "We're not waiting for America to tell us what is good and what is bad," he says. Jane Arraf, NPR News, near Koya in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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