Khomeini forced to retreat

Scan page 2

Ayatollah Khomeini has been forced tr beat a humiliating retreat on one front of his holy war against struggle in Iran.

Despite the invasion of Kurdistan by Khomeini's army, brutal repression by the Islamic militia and the murders organised by the hangman Khalkali, the Kurdish nationalist movement has asserted its power and forced the 'Revolutionary Council to admit its own. weak. ness.

Armed militants from the bourgeois Kurdish Democratic Party and the Fedayeen have recaptured Mahabad and other major towns from the government forces:

Starvation While the army is still imposing a blockade which threatens to bring starvation to the towns of Kurdistan, Khomeini's generals are powerless and despairing before the rising power of the Kurdish rebellion.

But even as the Ayatollahs were agreeing to send a delegation to discuss terms with the KDP leaders, the Kurdish bourgeois nationalists themselves were confronted by mass oppos ition.

Their • ceasefire with Khomeini's army has been ignored !. by left-wing forces, while a mass rally in Mahabad against the government was attended by thousands-despite a KDP call for a boycott as a gesture of peaceful intentions.

Peace mission

Such demonstrations of militancy create difficult conditions for the KDP to negotiate a sellout deal with the "peace mission' of government ministers.

Khomeini's climbdown on Kurdistan is the sharpest expres sion of the disorientation which is besetting his drive to impose a stable dictatorship on the Iranian masses through the medium of the Islamic clergy.

On the one hand, the militias and tribunals formed in support of the 'Islamic revolution' against the Shah are refusing to surrender their authority to a central power and continue to defy instructions (even from Khomeini himself to moderate their reactionary zeal.

Regrouping

Factional struggles also continue within the eligious hierarchy.

At the same time, the forces of the left are regrouping, despite repression and censorthe servants of imperialism from this attack, and Khomeini himself swiftly exploited the situation to splash some fresh gloss on his dowdy anti-imperialist credentials.

It is of course very possible that the whole flamboyant incident was staged by Khomeini's supporters to serve the purpose of diverting the attention of workers away from their continued exploitation and reviving the class confusion of the struggles to overthrow the Shah.

But the fact that Khomeini must resort to such methods reveals the crisis of his rule-a crisis which the religious leaders no longer have the power to control by themselves. UPPORT 3: 38 4231 Zimbabwe National L Assemble: 1.30, Spea March A CELL-OUT BUCCLE NO TORY SELL-OUT kers Corner, march to Trafalgar Square rally. and Intercontinental Press has applauded every act and statement of the FSLN and Casto including the expulsion of the Simon Bolivar Brigade by the FSLN and Castro's open political support for Portillo and other Latin American bourgeois nationalists.

Not only has this "Trotskyist" party supported the suppression of the left and its own comrades but it has also defended private control of the economy in that country:

In the October 8 issue of Intercontinental Press, Fred Murphy supports workers' control of a school "as long as it takes to get the back ivages paid* • This according to Murphy and the FSLN leader. ship is assuring that the workers needs are met.

Conscious blackout Again in Murphy's article there. is full support for the suppression of the "ultra left and sectarians' while absolutely no mention of the Nicaraguan Trotskyist movement which until the overthrow of Somoza