Word: marivan
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...Both men concede that the invasion dealt a heavy blow to Ansar. With no base to call their own, ranking members lie low just over Iraq's eastern border in the Iranian town of Marivan. Iranians there do a busy trade producing fake identity cards for Ansar fighters for their return to Iraq across the 5,000-foot mountains. With overburdened Iraqi border patrols guarding a 1,000-mile frontier, Ansar's return is almost impossible to block, and Kurdish guards expect little help from Iranian officials in stopping the infiltration...
...late afternoon sun still seared the dusty streets of Marivan, a scramble of mud and stucco houses on a mountain slope near the Iraq border, as "solidarity" marchers arrived from Sanandaj, the Kurds' provincial capital (pop. 150,000). The more than 2,000 men, women and children had walked the 90 miles of gravel roadway from Sanandaj in four torturous days just so they could, as one of them bluntly put it, "tell the Tehran government to go to hell...
...troubles in Marivan had begun two weeks before, when a force of Islamic revolutionary militiamen called Pasdaran moved in to reimpose the government's authority on the town, which had insisted on running its own affairs. After clashes that took the lives of 13 militiamen and twelve Kurds, Marivan's 10,000 residents left for fear of government reprisals, and many set up camp in the nearby forest. When the army then dispatched a convoy including a dozen American-made M-47 tanks to reinforce the militiamen, men and women from the neighboring town of Kamyaran lay down...
...week's end the government and Kurdish representatives had worked out an agreement in principle. In a formula that is likely to be followed in other Kurdish towns, the local provisional council in Marivan would be permitted to decide local matters. The hated Pasdaran were to be withdrawn, and the regular army would assume control until a local police force could be established...
...could have blasted our way through at any stage," said Defense Minister Raqi Riahi, "but we didn't. We support the Kurds' demands for running their own affairs and for being consulted when troops are assigned to the area." A Marivan resident concurred: "We respect the army's need to maintain security. We just want to be involved...