After the setback of the Republic and the withdrawal of the Barzani forces to Iraqi territory, a new phase of war and clashes with the Iranian Army and tribes loyal to the government began. A number of these battles were crushing blows to the Iranian Army and its supporters. One of these battles that occurred during this withdrawal between the Barzani forces and the Iranian Army is the Battle of Sufian. After the victory in the Battle of Nalus, the Barzani forces were informed that part of the Iranian Army forces were stationed in the village of Sufian, which is located 10 kilometers south of the Nalus sub-district, and this prompted the Barzani forces to target this place. Therefore, at 7 AM on March 17, 1947, they began the attack on the Iranian Army forces in Sufian, which were previously under the control of the Mamash and Mangur tribes, who had fled from it.
Initially, after 12 hours of fighting with the Iranian forces, the Barzanis were able to control the heights of the region, benefiting from the power of artillery and heavy weapons. In this battle, eight members of the Barzani forces were martyred and 12 others were wounded. From the Iranian side, an Officer named Reza Qarabaghi and one soldier were killed, and 11 others were captured by the Barzanis. When the Iranian Army saw that it had suffered a defeat in Sufian as happened in Nalus, it began to launch a counter-attack, benefiting from the Lorestan Cavalry Battalion, two artillery battalions, and warplanes. As a result of this attack, which was carried out in bad weather conditions, the Barzanis were forced to retreat?!.
But here we must consider the opinion of Basiani, the hired Iranian journalist who wants to promote that the Barzanis were defeated in the Battle of Sufian, as a false opinion, because first of all, he was just a journalist allowed by the Iranian authorities to cover the events, so that he most of the time shows the Iranian forces as victorious and portrays the Barzanis as defeated. An example of this bias appeared in the Battle of Sufian, where First Lieutenant Qarabaghi and a number of soldiers were killed; he turns this defeat into a victory in which 16 of the Barzani Peshmerga were martyred and 20 others were wounded, which is in fact baseless except for lies, because when the Battle of Sufian broke out as mentioned, due to bad weather and rainfall, the Iranian Army could not move in its place, and this very reason led to the victory of the Barzanis.
On the other hand, the journalist Basiani talks about the use of air power in this battle, which we can say was nothing but propaganda for the Iranian Army forces, because the planes that were in the possession of the Iranian Air Force were not advanced enough to fly in bad weather and hit their targets in a mountainous region. On the other hand, there is no other Iranian source, even the Iranian Army center itself in its book written during the Pahlavi era, which is titled (History of Fifty Years of the Imperial Iranian Ground Forces), sees the reason for the defeat of First Lieutenant Qarabaghi's forces as the fact that the weather conditions in the region were bad for the attack, and it does not mention in any way receiving help from the Air Force.
Sources:1- Najafqoli Pasian, From Bloody Mahabad to the Shores of the Aras, (Joint Stock Printing Company - Tehran - 1328).
2- Alaeddin Sajadi, Kurdish Revolutions, (Ma'arif Printing House - Baghdad - 1959).
3- Lieutenant General Mohammad Kazemi, Colonel 2 Staff Manouchehr Alborz, History of Fifty Years of the Imperial Iranian Ground Forces, Tehran, 2535.