A guerrilla who was in much love with Islam and Imam Khomeini

The Role of Oral History in Making a Documentary on the Life of Martyr Mahmoud Kaveh, Commander of the Special Brigade of Martyrs.

Jafar Golshan Roghani
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2021-1-26

        Martyr Mahmoud Kaveh, the commander of the Special Brigade of Martyrs, is one of the commanders about whom many articles have been written so far; but in the world of the movie, not much attention has been paid to the narration of his life from birth to martyrdom. Mr. Ali Hamid paid attention to him in making one of the episodes of the documentary series "Commanders" and narrated his condition in the form of 25 minutes. Using a few films of martyr Kaveh and several photographs, he recounts his position and activities during the Iraq imposed war against Iran, but what stands out most is the large volume of images from an interview with one of his contemporaries in this film. Hamid, as the director, has based this documentary on oral history. Although the narrator of the text, Mr. Mohammad Hossein Mahmoudian, narrates it and conveys a lot of information to the audience, certainly the role of the words of Mr. Majid Ayafat, a comrade of martyr Kaveh, cannot be ignored in this documentary. To be more precise, Ayafat is the key part of this documentary and his words and memories have given it an identity. Martyr has been identified and narrated from the words of Ayafat. Of course, unfortunately, no information is provided by the director about him and his position and status in the Special Brigade of Martyrs, and it is enough to say that he is a martyr. However, in expressing his memories of martyr Kaveh, he speaks in such a way that the addresses are well aware of his closeness to martyr Kaveh, so much so that he goes to visit General Rahim Safavi as the commander of the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) along with martyr Kaveh in Operation Badr. Of course, it should be noted that in expressing his condition from the years and years before the revolution, the words of his father Haj Mohammad Kaveh were also used in the form of interviews, and somewhere Mr. Houshang Bozorgi as a companion of martyr Khatereh has stated briefly about his courage and bravery. This documentary is based on the narrative and memory of a single witness, and it was better that there was witnesses and other contemporaries. However, it can be guessed that due to the limited budget and time set for the documentary, the director probably did not go to interview with other comrades and even high or low commanders of martyr Kaveh like the commanders of the battalions under his command in the Special Brigade of Martyrs.

       According to the documentary, Mahmoud Kaveh was born in 1962 in Mashhad. He was an only son and, as his father narrates, he enrolled him in the seminary at the Bagheria Theological Seminary in Mashhad at the same time as the school lessons. He became aware from one of his relatives that Mr. Khamenei, as one of the clerics who had just arrived in Mashhad from Qom, was attending the Abaselat Mosque to teach the interpretation of the Qur'an. So the father took Mahmoud who was 6-year-old to the mosque. Mahmoud Kaveh's father narrates the presence of Mr. Khamenei in the parliament as follows: "The Supreme Leader had just come here from Qom. I used to take Kaveh to during the meeting. Every day we used to go to the mosque and sit near the pulpit. There were several of us. Whenever he did not see Kaveh, he said: "Where is Kaveh?" I replied: "Sir, he is in the shop." He said: "Well, you should be there and he should come here." He used to remember Mahmoud whenever we did not take him."

       Mahmoud Kaveh's father's upbringing and acquaintance with clerics and revolutionary fighters, on the one hand, and his attachments to religious issues, led Mahmoud Kaveh, along with his father, to distribute Imam Khomeini leaflets and tapes throughout Mashhad from the age of 12. They did the same in the villages around Mashhad. In addition to working in this field, he had started a business for himself in the corner of his father's shop. He bought and sold plastic balls and things like that, and in this way, he bought a tape recorder with which he reproduced Imam Khomeini's tapes. Mahmoud's father, who accompanied him, well remembers how he distributed and reproduced leaflets and speech tapes: "We had thousands of leaflets taken from the end of the street and I gave them the shops one by one. I also had 50-60 tapes, we had Mr. Motahari's tapes, Mr. Khamenei's tapes Mr. Hasheminejad's, and Mr. Beheshti's tapes. We would put these tapes in a bag and go to a street every day. Then, we went to another street."

        With the victory of the Revolution and the formation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mahmoud enrolled in this organization and arrived in Tehran to take a training course in guerrilla warfare. After that, he returned to Mashhad and took charge of training the Basij and the IRGC, until he went to Tehran to protect Imam Khomeini's house and was there for six months as one of the bodyguards. With the invasion of the Ba'athist army, the war and sacred defense were begun. He was responsible for training the Basij forces in Mashhad. His training method, which trained fighters for difficult and sensitive situations, is still remembered by his forces. Majid Ayafat describes his education as follows: "He was very serious about education. That is, from the way the forces dressed to the very theory classes he gave. In practice, he was very serious and very strict. Due to his seriousness in training and strictness, and his strange talent in training and coaching, he was able to become the head of the tactical committee of Imam Reza (PBUH) training barracks within a few months. "The training course, as I mentioned, was taken place almost two months after the start of the imposed war, and all those who were trained were to be sent to the southern front."

         His training method caused martyr Sayyad Shirazi, as the commander of the ground forces, and many IRGC commanders, to observe it, to offer martyr Kaveh and his trained fighters a presence in Kurdistan, which was welcomed and volunteered by martyr Kaveh and his forces. Thus, Mahmoud Kaveh and some Basijis and Revolutionary Guards of Mashhad left for Kurdistan and were present in Saqqez as one of the most important counter-revolutionary bases.

         Ayafat, who was present with martyr Kaveh when he entered Kurdistan and the city of Saqqez in 1981, describes the situation in the city of Saqqez and the presence of the counter-revolutionaries of the Democratic Party and Komala as follows: No one dared to go because if he did, he would get involved. That means we were in Saqqez day and night. They were also 5 km away from a village and they had a permanent headquarters there and we were in Saqqez for an hour a day. The other night was under their control. If we wanted to enter the city, we had to do it in a combat manner with the forces, in patrols, or ambush for military purposes, otherwise, no one would have dared to walk in the city from 2-3 o'clock, because the counter-revolution would have killed people in different ways in the city. He either assassinated or arrested and imprisoned. Sometimes they would come to the city in the middle of the day and start with all the headquarters in the city, including the Saqqez 1st Brigade barracks, the IRGC, the gendarmerie, and the various bases we had in the city, and it was like that in some places, for example, When we wanted to change positions, we would go to the chest, because there were snipers and they were shooting. I mean, it was like that. Mr. Kaveh and some of us, inexperienced combatants, entered Saqqez in this state of security and the situation of the enemy."

         The merit and method of Mahmoud Kaveh's command caused Nasser Kazemi to choose martyr Kaveh as the commander of the Special Brigade of Martyrs. The activities of this brigade under the management of martyr Kaveh were such that the counter-revolutionary forces set an award for his head. "The early counter-revolutionary forces may not have believed it at first, and it did not want to believe that its defeats were due in large part to a commander named Kaveh, but little by little they acknowledged this. So, they were going to give a reward of 10 thousand Toman (Iranian currency) for every assassination or the head of each of the Basijis and 15 thousand Toman for the head of each guard. That is, if they killed each guard and handed him over to the counter-revolution, they would receive a reward of 15,000 Toman. Mr. Kaveh was first on the same list of 15,000 Toman, but within the first month or two, he was awarded up to 2000,000 Toman for his head. I remember that until 1982, the last award for his head was two million Tomans. "This 2 million Toman belongs to the time when the salary of a guard was two thousand Tomans, and this showed that they had confessed by their action that Kaveh, who is the main enemy and a worthy opponent in front of them."

         The result of two years of presence of the Special Brigade of Martyrs and martyr Kaveh’s command in Kurdistan, the liberation of Saeindej-Takab road, the liberation of Piranshahr-Sardasht strategic area and destruction of counter-revolutionary radio center, the conquest of important border heights of Alvatan region, and finally liberation of Bukan dam and 47 km road by killing about 750 counter-revolutionaries. The liberation of the Buchan dam, which was in the hands of the counter-revolution, is one of the most significant operations of martyr Kaveh, which he narrates as follows: "The Buchan dam, a dam 40-45 km from the city of Buchan, which was in the hands of the counter-revolution. This 40-45 km was also completely in the hands of the counter-revolutionaries, and the counter-revolutionary forces had threatened that if the forces of the Islamic Republic reaches this area and this road, and we will blow up the dam. Zarrinehroud dam or Bukan dam was one of the very large dams and if it exploded, very large areas of Miandoab, Mahabad, etc. would all be flooded. We had a fundamental problem with how to release the dam before the counter-revolutionaries could react. We were not able to do something against them until Mr. Kaveh came up with a plan that conveyed his kind of genius. He said: "The plan is for a force become counter-revolutionary intentionally with 15-16 people to get on a tractor." So we went with a tractor in the heart of the counter-revolutionary forces and he said: "You must go ahead as far as possible, far away from the main forces. We can go ahead for 45-kilometer in half an hour in daylight, but at night, if you go forward with a tractor, wherever you encounter the counter-revolution, we will be ready for attack. Before that, all the forces come a few kilometers behind you, which, thank God, we reached the dam to a height but the sun raised. Due to these incidents, Mr. Kaveh said: It was enough and immediately the forces were very well trained and well-running in the mountains, that is, they ran up the mountain, so that all the counter-revolutionaries who were in the Buchan dam and wanted to blow up the dam…, they were asleep."

         After the martyrdom of martyr Nasser Kazemi, the command of the Special Brigade of Martyrs passed to Mohsen Ganjizadeh. He was also martyred and after that, martyr Mohammad Boroujerdi was martyred as well. The command of the Special Brigade of Martyrs was handed over to Mahmoud Kaveh. At this time, by the order of the commander of the IRGC in Operation Valfajr 2, the summit 2519 Haj Imran from the special brigade of martyrs led to a successful operation under the command of Kaveh. After that, Kaveh and his brigade took responsibility for clearing the Sardasht region of counter-revolutionary existence.

         The successful operations of martyr Kaveh and his comrades led him to be selected by the IRGC commanders to participate in the southern front and in Operation Badr. The presence of the Special Brigade of Martyrs in Operation Badr and the mission assigned to it by the IRGC commanders required special preparation and training. Hence, the forces under his command were trained in this way.

         "For about six months, we took a special training course in difficult conditions, so-called commando and special forces training, as well as helicopter training, and helicopters came and trained us in Operation Halibour so that to be  Halibour behind Iraqi positions in Operation Badr. Mr. Kaveh was also very pleased with this operation, although it was an almost suicide operation, meaning that we had to go by helicopter to get behind enemy positions and prevent enemy forces and their tanks and military columns from reaching the area in front of the main forces. We were fighting, we were blocking. That is, we were a group of forces that, if we landed behind the enemy, there would be no hope for any of them to return. But Mr. Kaveh was very happy and said: "This is a correct and calculated mission."

         The courage and martyrdom-seeking spirit of martyr Kaveh in this operation is described by Ayafat as follows: I remember Mr. Kaveh was so upset that we went to see of Mr. Rahim Safavi, Mr. Rahim Safavi said: "Mr. Kaveh, bring your forces and defend here and there!" Mr. Kaveh became so angry, and replied: "I did not come here to go to the defense line. I want to go that way, in the heart of the enemy." Mr. Rahim Safavi was puzzled by what Mr. Kaveh was saying ... In any case, this was the necessity of the operation. We went to the Ruta canal and counterattacked 2 or 3 times against the Iraqi attacks.

         Kaveh's reputation for carrying out difficult operations in difficult-to-cross areas with his trained forces prompted the army to seek his help in carrying out Operation Qadr in northern Iraq. Martyr Hassan Abshnasan, one of the prominent commanders of the army commandos, describes him when he encounters him: "If there is a guerrilla in the world who was in much love with Islam and Imam Khomeini, he will be Mahmoud Kaveh."

         "Martyr Kaveh's command was special, and his performance as a commander made him very popular in the hearts of the forces under his command." When we protested to him that you are the commander of the division, and why he always act at the front of the operation and go ahead of the Basij and all the forces, he replied that it was not a question of me being the first, he had to be where he could lead the forces properly. If it required him to sit in the underground concrete camp, he would go to sit there, but if necessary, he must move beyond that of his Basij force. Of course, he always chose the second form. That is, Mr. Kaveh was always ahead of the Basij and commando forces."

         In his last operation, martyr Kaveh, along with the forces under his command, was obliged to capture the summit 2519 Haj Imran; A peak that had previously liberated its heights but could not be reached. Ayafat describes how the operation works: "During the operation, we all knew because that night all the commanders, the night before, including ourselves and Mr. Kaveh's successor, Mr. Mansouri, had gone behind the enemy. We had taken all positions behind the enemy. We had taken the headquarters and the transport road. But it would be useless if summit 2519 did not fall. We were sure that tonight, with the same situation as Mr. Kaveh had said, it would not fall. But, since the order was from the superior camp, we tried not to let Mr. Kaveh go into the operation in any way. We all joined hands and said we would do something to keep Mr. Kaveh in the tactical base. We go to the area where we went the night before and we are familiar with each other and in any case, we try our best. Mr. Kaveh, when he realized that we, like many other situations on which we prevented Kaveh from moving forward, actually deceived us all. He said it was enough for us; because we went the night before, we are familiar with all the area, everyone goes on their area and operates, and he would lead the operation in the tactical base. We went as if he had given us the world, we were ready to go. But he took advantage of all the negligence of the forces, and he, with one of the battalions that were the main target of the same operation and the same area that he had been wounded the previous time, chose the same area in the counterattack and shot along with the battalion commander there." The operation took place on the night of September 1^st in 1987, and he was there with one of the battalions under his command called the Imam Hussein Battalion, and at one o'clock in the morning, while he was near on getting to the summit, a mortar impacted him and caused his soul led him to God Almighty."