Leader’s Address to the People of Marivan

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all sentient beings, and peace and greetings be upon our Master and Prophet, Ab-al-Qassem Al-Mustafa Muhammad, and upon his immaculate and infallible household, especially the one remaining with Allah on earth.

Marivan - the city itself, the people of Marivan, the landscape, and these important areas - is for me one of the most memorable regions in Kurdistan and the western part of the country. I thank Allah the Exalted who bestowed upon me the blessing to visit this land which is full of bravery, beauty of nature, kindness, and loyalty. I have experienced these feelings in this region in the past too.

The dear people of Marivan who have formed this sincere gathering here should know that I consider this city and region and this great public gathering as a divine blessing for the country and the Islamic Revolution.

I traveled to this region and developed a close familiarity with this region during the tough days at the early stages of the Islamic Revolution - when the enemies turned this beautiful green land into a battlefield and the kind, sincere, and faithful people of Marivan were dealing with the problems of war and the resultant shortcomings. That was what Allah the Exalted had determined for me. Our faithful brothers - who have come here from other parts of the country - talked about the kindness, loyalty, and sincerity of you dear people. I myself have seen the manifestation of these traits in the people of this region.

I will never forget the time when I met with a group of sincere people here in the city of Marivan in the year 1359. We went to an educational center - I think it was a primary school - and I talked to a group of teenagers there. Those teenagers are now middle-aged men. From here, we went to Dezli and Daraki, if I remember correctly. They are very important regions. They have a beautiful nature and hospitable people. However, due to the oppression of the enemies of the Iranian nation and the Islamic Revolution, this great region - with its nice people, tall and green mountains, and fertile plains - had turned into the scene of intense war. And the enemy had managed to take advantage of its mercenaries to deal blows to the people. They tried to use those mercenaries to deal direct or indirect blows to the Islamic Republic and degrade the Iranian nation.

I will never forget the time when the people of Dezli welcomed us with open arms on that day. I left Dezli with some other people, and we moved towards the mountainous areas which overlooked Iraqi territories. On that day, those people had been infiltrated by the enemies' mercenaries. Those disgraceful mercenaries had informed the enemy of our presence in those areas, and the enemy sent its aircraft to that region. In the middle of the way, we saw the enemy' aircraft fly over our heads. We knew something was going to happen to Dezli.

When we came back, we realized that they had dropped bombs on civilians. They wounded some people and killed some others. We collected the corpses of the martyrs and took them along with some of the wounded to Marivan. These memories are full of lessons. Those days, the governments that now claim to advocate democracy supported Saddam Hussein. They supported these savage acts. The youth of our country should know that those who claim to support human rights turned our dear country and western borders - such as the Kurdistan region - into a testing ground for deception and irrevocable mistakes.

In Operation Val-Fajr-4, Kurdish, Persian, and other youth went to the battlefields to put an end to the enemies' attacks and free Marivan from the fire of the enemies' artillery. And they managed to do so. The enemies constantly put Marivan under heavy fire using their long-range artillery. These youth along with the members of Basij and the Islamic Republic's Guards Corps - who were in fact brave Kurdish youth and people from other parts of the country - organized operation Val-Fajr-4. They managed to put an end to the enemies' attacks and made the enemies retreat. They even managed to free Halabja [in Iraq] which was occupied by the enemies.

And do you know what the enemies did to make up for that failure? They could not invade Marivan because our brave soldiers had previously proven their power to them. Therefore, the merciless inhuman enemies, who were members of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, dropped chemical bombs on the city of Halabja. Hundreds or even thousands of the Kurdish people who lived in Halabja died in those attacks simply because Saddam Hussein wanted to take revenge on the Kurdish people of Halabja because they had not confronted the faithful Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic and had accepted them with open arms.

The people of this region have experienced these great tests. I do not intend to retell historical facts. Of course, you - particularly the youth - should familiarize yourselves with these facts. You should learn lessons from the great tests which the Islamic Republic has gone through and from the great movement of the Iranian nation which resulted in this great victory. These are great historical lessons...