On the anniversary of the death of Comrade Foad Mostafa Soltani, speaking about him is in fact a revisiting of the experience of a generation that, during one of the most difficult periods in Iran’s contemporary history, sought human freedom and liberation through the organization and conscious struggle of the people. In his short life, Foad succeeded in connecting thought and action, ideals and organization, and individual struggle and mass movement. For this reason, his name has gone beyond the boundaries of a single organization or historical period and has become intertwined with an important part of the history of the revolutionary and communist movement in Kurdistan and Iran.
Foad Mostafa Soltani was born in 1948 in the village of Almaneh, in the Mariwan area. He completed his primary and secondary education in Almaneh and Sanandaj and entered Tehran Polytechnic University in 1966. He studied electrical engineering at the university and obtained an engineering degree; however, his life path did not remain limited to a professional and individual future. The political atmosphere of the 1960s, the growing opposition to monarchical dictatorship, and his familiarity with revolutionary and Marxist literature led him toward political activity.
Through these activities, Foad came to the conclusion that scattered protest and individual dissatisfaction, without consciousness, organization, and a connection to mass struggle, could not lead to fundamental social change. Therefore, in 1969, together with a group of like-minded comrades, he undertook the establishment of an organization that later became known as Komala. This took place under conditions in which the Shah’s repressive apparatus responded to any organized political activity with imprisonment, torture, and execution. Establishing an underground organization in such an environment required sacrifice, discipline, mutual trust, and a careful assessment of circumstances.
In 1974, Foad was arrested by SAVAK in Sanandaj and, after being transferred to Tehran, was interrogated and tortured in the joint SAVAK and police detention center. He spent a long period under harsh and inhumane conditions, but he protected organizational information and the secrets of his comrades. His resistance in prison was not merely an individual act of courage; it was part of the responsibility he had assumed toward an organized movement. Foad knew that the torturer was not confronting merely one individual, but was attempting to destroy a network of trust and struggle.
After three years, he was transferred from Qasr Prison in Tehran to Sanandaj Prison, where he spent the final year of his imprisonment. Prison was not the end of political activity for Foad, but another arena of collective struggle. In prison, as outside it, he thought about organization and strengthening the spirit of resistance. The long hunger strike by political prisoners in Sanandaj Prison, organized and led by him, ultimately resulted in his release and that of a number of other prisoners. This experience showed that Foad’s leadership abilities were not limited to underground and organizational activity; he could also gain people’s trust in open and collective struggles and unite them around a common demand.
Foad was released from prison in October 1978, at a time when Iranian society was on the threshold of a great uprising. He had only eleven months to work openly, but this short period was one of the most intense and influential periods in the history of the revolutionary movement in Kurdistan. Komala, which had been secretly founded years earlier, publicly declared its existence as the people’s uprising intensified in Iran and, within a short time, transformed from an underground organization into a mass, broad, and influential organization in Kurdistan.
An important characteristic of Foad during this period was his ability to recognize the historical moment and transform political opportunities into an organized social force. He understood well that the people’s uprising against the Shah’s regime would not end simply with the fall of the government. With the collapse of the previous order, social and class contradictions would become more visible, and various forces would attempt to shape the future of society according to their own interests. From the outset, Foad had no illusions about the nature of the Islamic Republic and its efforts to reclaim the gains of the uprising. In his view, organizing the people around the struggle against the Shah’s regime was simultaneously preparation for what could be anticipated after the fall of the Shah’s regime.
During the 1979 uprising, Foad and his comrades played an active role in organizing protests in the southern areas of Kurdistan. In Sanandaj, the formation of the mass movement and the establishment of city councils provided an arena for experimenting with new forms of direct popular participation in political and social affairs. These councils, despite all their limitations and contradictions, demonstrated that the people had not taken to the streets merely to overthrow one government; they also wanted to play a role in determining their own destiny.
In various cities of Kurdistan, “democratic associations,” peasant unions, and institutions defending the rights of workers and women were formed. For Foad, these institutions were tools for the people’s sustained presence in politics. Rather than viewing the masses merely as a force for supporting organizational decisions, he saw them as the main force of change. Reporting to the people, winning their support, explaining the goals of the struggle, and involving them in decision-making were all part of Foad’s political method.
One of the most prominent examples of this approach was the protest exodus of the people of Mariwan. This movement emerged in response to the pressure and coercion of Islamic Republic forces, and Foad played a fundamental role in organizing and leading it. The Mariwan exodus was not merely the protest relocation of a city; it was a political and collective action that demonstrated that people could stand against an armed and centralized power by relying on their unity and determination.
The importance of this movement was evident not only in its beginning, but also in the way it was led. During negotiations with government representatives, Foad, while firmly defending the people’s demands, made reports on the activities and progress of the negotiations available to them. He sought the people’s opinions and kept them informed of decisions. In this way, the struggle moved beyond an immediate reaction and became a school for experiencing political participation, collective responsibility, and grassroots involvement.
Despite his determination, Foad was not caught up in voluntarism. He assessed the people’s capacity and ability and, when he saw exhaustion or changing circumstances, considered ways to continue the struggle. When continuing the exodus in its original form became difficult, he sought to preserve its gains and return the people proudly to their city and homes. This ability to draw conclusions from experience, preserve forces, and transform a protest movement into a political achievement was one of the most important characteristics of his leadership.
Foad’s role was also prominent during the negotiations in Sanandaj and Mahabad with delegations of the Islamic Republic. These negotiations, which took place under tense conditions between the people of Kurdistan and the newly established government, constituted another arena for the confrontation between two political logics: on the one hand, the logic of centralized power and repression; and on the other, the people’s demand for freedom, social justice, and the right to participate in determining their own destiny. Foad participated in these negotiations not as a professional politician detached from the people, but as a representative of a social and organized movement.
He and his comrades also opposed and boycotted the Islamic Republic referendum on March 31, 1979. From their perspective, the vote on “Islamic Republic, yes or no,” without guarantees of political freedoms and without the possibility of genuine popular participation, could not provide legitimacy for a regime that was in the process of being established. In Kurdistan, this boycott became one of the first examples of collective resistance to the new government’s attempt to consolidate power.
Foad understood well that, against the government’s centralized and armed organization, party activity alone was insufficient. The main force of resistance had to be formed among the people and on a mass scale. For this reason, alongside the establishment of social institutions, he worked to organize Komala’s Peshmerga forces. The first training center for this force was organized in the village of Gormar, in the Sardasht area. For Foad, armed resistance was not a goal separate from social struggle; it was a means of defending the gains of the uprising and protecting the people against repression.
In this regard, he drew a line against two tendencies: on the one hand, surrender and waiting for an agreement with those in power; and on the other, an armed strategy detached from the people. Foad believed that armed struggle could serve liberation only when it relied on mass struggle and did not become separated from it. An armed force without a social base would become an isolated group; likewise, mass struggle without the ability to defend itself would remain vulnerable to organized repression.
In August 1979, following Khomeini’s “jihad” decree and the beginning of the Islamic Republic’s military offensive against Kurdistan, Foad stood at the head of Komala in organizing the people’s resistance. In the statement “The Kurdish People in the Crucible of Trial,” he emphasized the necessity of collective resistance with all available means. At that point, the issue was no longer merely negotiation or civil protest; the government had decided to use military force to suppress the gains of the uprising and force Kurdistan into submission.
During this same period, while attempting to organize the people’s revolutionary resistance, Foad was killed in battle with Islamic Republic forces on August 31, 1979. His death occurred at a time when the Kurdish movement needed his organizational abilities, political initiative, and leadership capacity more than ever. A few months later, the resistance of the people of Kurdistan succeeded in forcing the government into a temporary retreat and acceptance of negotiations; but Foad was no longer alive to use his experience and abilities in advancing the movement during that critical stage.
Foad’s historical importance cannot be measured solely by the number of activities or responsibilities he undertook. Between his release from prison and his death, in less than a year, he played a role in the formation and expansion of the mass movement, the organization of councils and unions, the creation of the Peshmerga force, resistance to the government, and the linking of political struggle with social demands. But what connected all these activities was his clear understanding of the place of human beings and the working masses in the process of change.
Foad was not merely an interpreter of events; he worked to change them. In his view, human beings are not passive creatures condemned to social conditions, but can transform the world around them through consciousness and organization. Yet for Foad, this change was not an individual matter. Individual liberation could not endure without collective and class liberation. For this reason, he emphasized the importance of unity, organization, and organized struggle, and believed that revolutionary consciousness had to be transformed into collective action.
He believed in Marx’s principle that “workers are exploited individually, but are liberated collectively.” In Foad’s political practice, this belief meant organizing workers, peasants, women, and other oppressed people. Theory had value for him when it could serve as a guide to action, and action had meaning when it helped raise the people’s consciousness and organizational capacity. In Foad, theory and practice were not two separate spheres, but two aspects of a single process.
Drawing on Marxism and his class instinct, Foad opposed tendencies that led the people’s struggle toward foreign dependence, compromise with power, or movements detached from the masses. He rejected both the betrayal and surrender of forces dependent on power and armed struggle detached from the people as ineffective. He also critically examined earlier armed experiences in Kurdistan and believed that “a small engine cannot set a large engine in motion”: the main force of transformation is the people themselves.
Despite this, Foad was not a mythical and inaccessible figure. His life was not mysterious; it was simple, down-to-earth, and human. After completing his university education, he could have pursued a professional and comfortable life and attained a high social position, but he did not choose that path. He consciously gave up his personal security and future and placed his life at the service of working people and the struggle for change. His popularity was less the product of slogans than the result of the consistency between his words and actions, the simplicity of his life, and his political sincerity.
During his short life, Foad became so deeply intertwined with a social movement that he cannot be evaluated solely within the narrow framework of an organization or organizational title. Of course, this does not mean separating him from Komala or his communist ideas; on the contrary, his historical importance lies precisely in his ability to connect a political organization with a social movement. He played a decisive role in the socialization of communism in Kurdistan and demonstrated that revolutionary thought can remain alive and effective only when it takes root in the lives and struggles of the people.
Today, 47 years after Foad’s death, his name remains alive for different generations. This persistence is not the result of sanctification and worship, but of the connection between ideals and action. Foad’s memory cannot be honored by turning him into a harmless symbol detached from his ideas. Nor can he be emptied of the class and communist content of his struggle in accordance with the political interests of the day, and turned into a figure compatible with nationalist or liberal narratives about him.
The true honoring of Foad lies in preserving the very qualities that gave meaning to his life: sincerity, humility, courage, organization, trust in the power of the people, the connection between theory and practice, and resistance to oppression. He should not be honored through hypocrisy and the inappropriate and dishonest exploitation of his legacy, which has unfortunately become commonplace, but by continuing his path in the struggle to build a world free of exploitation and oppression, a world of free, equal, and prosperous human beings—in other words, a socialist social system. We must remember the answers to those fundamental questions to which he devoted his life.
Foad Mostafa Soltani died young, but his experience and ideals do not belong to the past. Every generation that faces poverty, dictatorship, discrimination, and deprivation of rights will inevitably confront the same questions that Foad placed before himself: How can people be organized? How can freedom be transformed from a slogan into a social reality? How can a connection be established between individual struggle and collective liberation?
Foad’s answer was clear: people can change their destiny only by relying on their own organized power. For this reason, his memory is not the memory of a hero distant from the people, but of a human being who found himself within the people’s struggle and remained alongside them until the very last moment. It is in this sense that Foad’s name remains fresh; because wherever people come together for liberation, equality, and the construction of a more humane future, his experience once again becomes a living and guiding question.
