Komala and its politics

1- A brief history

Komala was formed in the autumn of 1969 by a couple of Kurdish intellectuals. Like all other anti-monarchist opposition political organizations, they faced severe repression by the government and its secret police -SAVAK- and so had to organize underground. After 9 years of successful activity prior to the beginning of Iranian revolution in 1978, it could attract the most important section of Kurdish intellectuals in Iranian Kurdistan, and developed a significant influence and social base amongst the workers, peasants, and women of Iranian Kurdistan.

During the first wave of the Iranian revolution, Komala actively participated in the anti-monarchist movement and played an important leadership role in this mass movement in Iranian Kurdistan. On March 16, 1979, a few days after the victory of the Iranian revolution, Komala launched an open public political party. By this time Komala had already become of an organization of revolutionary cadre within an influential mass political party.

It is important to notice that the birth and growth of Komala, was a combination of many new factors that arose in Iran’s transition from a traditional and patriarchal society to a modern nation-state, including the development of a modern working class, the devolvement of urban populations, increases in literacy, increase in roll of women and youth in society, and all the growing expectations in social, political and cultural life of Iranian people. With these new social developments and with the 1960's radicalization in Iran, Komala as a left movement and as a vanguard of the mass struggle was born. Komala was created out of this new era, and in its turn introduced a new political culture and a new politics that influenced the entire left movement in Iran generally and the Kurdish revolutionary movement particularly. The formation and presence of Komala in Iranian Kurdistan had a great impact on popular consciousness of the struggle of workers and peasants in Kurdistan. Komala had become the champion, in fighting for rights of the Kurdish people, and uncompromising into the struggle for democratic freedoms, civil rights and women’s rights in Iranian Kurdistan. The Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom in Iran benefited immeasurably from the radical and socialist political methods of Komala.

From the beginning of the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Komala opposed religious fundamentalism, and unlike some current Iranian opposition groups, has never supported this regime and has consistently warned against the danger of its Islamic ideology, which from the beginning of the revolution destroyed the gains and the goals of the revolution. In the first referendum on the question of establishing or not establishing the Islamic Republic in Iran, Komala declared the referendum to be undemocratic and boycotted it. 

Komala, as a leader and vanguard party of the Kurdish revolutionary movement, has gone through tough times and has lost thousands of its members in the fight for justice and freedom, and as such occupies an unforgettable place in the history of working class and the revolutionary movement of the Kurdish people.

In 1982, Komala was the main participating force in the formation of the Communist Party of Iran. This was not a successful experience for the left movement in Iran, and even in Kurdistan the resulted was inactivity and inconsistency in the party’s activities. After a long and the heated debate in the Communist Party of Iran, during the summer of 2000, a large majority of the cadre and the member of Komala left the party and formed again the Revolutionary Organization of People of Kurdistan -Komala.  This move by Komala was welcomed by a great proportion of the people of Kurdistan and generated a new wave of political activity by workers, intellectuals, women and youth in this area. Komala, in July 2001, held its ninth congress and made some important decisions on its political position and on social issues and the direction of the Kurdish struggle. The central committee of Komala consists of 23 members with 3 provisional members. This body elects a 7 person political bureau.