Intense shelling by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has precipitated intensive environmental injury within the Shaho mountainous area close to the villages of Tangivar and Palangan in Kamyaran, Kurdistan Province for the second day in a row.
On January 29, IRGC forces stationed across the villages of Tangivar and Palangan carried out aggressive shelling, inflicting important injury to the protected mountain space, in line with the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN).
Local residents have reported that the IRGC has restricted entry to the mountainous area since yesterday, citing army safety workouts as the rationale.
These army workouts are believed to be maneuvers to instill concern and create a way of terror within the area following Iran’s current execution of 4 Kurdish political prisoners – Pezhman Fatehi, Mohsen Mazloum, Mohammad Faramarzi, and Vafa Azarbar.
Environmental activists have acknowledged that the IRGC has been constructing a number of army bases within the Shaho and Kusalan protected areas since 2007 beneath the pretext of countering the presence of armed forces of Kurdish opposition events.
Despite objections from environmental activists, a lot of the pastureland and forests in these areas have been destroyed within the development of the army bases and the roads resulting in them.
The IRGC has additionally intentionally burned the pastures and forests across the army bases in what it calls an act to ‘forestall the Kurdish opposition events from utilizing the vegetation cowl for assaults’.
The Shaho and Kusalan protected areas, protecting 57,236 hectares, are situated between the cities of Sarvabad, Ravansar, Paveh, Marivan and Kamyaran, on the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
In 2009, these mountainous areas had been designated as protected areas beneath the administration of the Department of Environment by Resolution No. 303 of the Supreme Environmental Council (Government Infrastructure Commission).