Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) left France to settle in Iraq with the aim to utilize Saddam and Baath Party’s potentialities to form an alliance against Iran. Saddam, too, had the same idea in mind and could venture on MKO in its war with Iran. The close strategic, political collaboration furthered a brotherhood between Saddam and Rajavi; it may explain why MKO yet avoid taking any clear position against Saddam and his crimes. As a proof of their loyalty, MKO sided with Saddam in suppression of Iraqi insurgents in 1991. They had to because, as Rajavi made it clear in his meeting with Iraqi generals, they moved on the same line of interest with Saddam:
As far as we are concerned I have only one thing to say. In my mind and in my heart, I cannot separate the account of our interests from your interests. They are exactly matching each other. [1]
In the same meeting, General Saber, the Head of Saddam’s Intelligence Services, appreciated MKO’ worthwhile assistance the same as brothers’:
We feel ashamed in front of your speech. And in front of your leadership and your organisation,and you and your army and your fighters and your political stands. Exactly in a situation that a common danger was threatening us and this common danger has put us in the same line of defence. We have an Arabic proverb that says: Brothers show themselves in hardship. You supported us with the bodies of your fighters. [2]
General Saber unequivocally points to MKO’s hand in glove with Iraqi forces’ crackdown on insurgent Iraqis:
Also many thanks to the brothers in the National Liberation Army and their big role in the process of the past uprisings and revolts… The other issue is that during these uprisings that we faced and what we fought against together and defeated… and that was the second phase of the attack and the programs and the plans and plots in this respect. [3]
Regardless of all these corroborated evidences on MKO and Saddm’s close collaboration to secure mutual interests, what really augmented the alliance were the shared political, organizational, and ideological tenets projecting in both MKO and Iraqi Baath Party. The first remarkable and dominant feature in both is the leadership hegemony. Both Saddam and Rajavi were the predominant influence atop occupying a permanent leading seat. Far above a leadership position, they both besought a highly acclaimed position with the potentialities far above those of earthly men and were indulged in practice of discrimination against people and insiders on the grounds of the Party and group’s ideological priority.
Iraq’s political-social state structure, under Baath Party’s hegemony, heavily influenced by Stalinist Parties, was running under Sadam’s hegemony. The bloody internal clearance, the commonly practiced method in Stalinist Parties, emboldened Saddam as the authoritative state power in perpetrating covert group slaughters and blood bathes. It was also so celebrated an idea in MKO with the exception that the authority was limited in the framework of an organization perpetrating atrocities against the insiders and staging violent and terrorist acts against the outsiders. Of course, it projected a future Iran should it succeed to power. In fact, MKO in Iraq were practically testing an ideology they were to administer once in power. Bijan Nyabati, a MKO left element, believes:
MKO’s strategy being stabilized in Iraq, they got the opportunity to test their revolutionary theory in the laboratory of their self-controlled community far from the outside influential magnetic field of ruling systems. [4]
In other words, the Iraqi soil, because of Saddam’s totalitarian and hegemonic control over all aspects of Iraqi people, served to form a microcosm of future Iran:
The formed microcosm had to contain all the political features of a real society. A legal state with a president atop, a parliament in exile, army and police forces, judiciary and prison, a state-run TV-radio station as well as media and news agency, diplomatic bodies, extensive financial institutions and logistics to feed was all the component elements of the microcosm. [5]
There are more fundamental elements shared by MKO and Baath Party. Both justify their hegemonic leadership to survive. The difference lies in geographical and political conditions. The Baath Party and Saddam justify their existence and leading potentialities according to blood and tribal relations. Above that, in a broader extent of advocating nationalism, they chanted slogans of creating a Great Iraq to further the authoritative hegemony. That is in this way that the party mesmerized peoples and exploited peoples’ soul and body to serve its interests; there immerged Saddam Devotees Squads who are ready for suicidal operations on the master’s order.
Somehow the devotedness may seem to be a result of apprehension of punishment for disobedience. Saddam’s inter-Party executions are more disobedience punishments rather than having political and national causes. In MKO, first it is the ideology and then patriotism that serve recruit sympathizers to preserve the organization. The ideology in MKO does the same influential factor of blood and tribal relations in Baath Party. That is the ideology that compels devotees to commit self-destruction operations as ordered. The same as Baath Party, MKO insiders are under the illusion of being led by a heavenly blessed guide. The similarity between MKO and Baath Party is emphasized by Rajavi addressing General Saber in this way:
I think that the relations between us and you and Iraq, being the government of Iraq or the Baath Party and at the top of it Mr President [Saddam], and on the other side, the Iranian Resistance and the Mojahedin and the National Liberation, is not a purely political relation and one cannot interpret our relations like that any more. I think that the brotherhood relation has been completed. Such brothers that would not come short of anything for each other…. And that was how our fates were tied together. Our fates have become one and our bloods have been mixed together. And you know that there is no exaggeration in this. [6]
Thus, whatever threatens the Baath Party might be a threat to MKO as well, that is to say, any democratic and freedom movement could sounded the alarm. That is a fact Rajavi admitted:
Whatever is against you, it is obviously against us, and visa versa. Our security is one. When we receive a blow, it is to both of us. And when there is progress, it affects us both. [7]
Moreover, the alliance between MKO and Baath’s Party before being a pragmatic and tactical one was based on cult-like similarities. Both attempted to develop a community that evolved the ideological tendencies of the party and the cult. The core of all these ideological teachings was expansion of an absolute totalitarian influence on society and insiders under a hegemonic leadership. Elaborating on the importance of these ideological teachings Nyabaty states:
The final solution to the issue of leadership that could put an end to a problem known to be the Achilles’ heel in most contemporary revolutions and movements was only evolution of a stabilized theory of imamate inside the organization that could lead the new revolution. [8]
The mere difference between the two was that MKO had succeeded to assume a classified order of these ideological teachings, a task that Saddam failed to accomplish because of tribal and historical infrastructures. In practice, however, the Baath Party was moving in the same line with MKO.
Notes
[1]. “To be Judged in History”; English Transcript of Videotaped Meetings Between Massoud Rajavi and the Head of Saddam’s Intelligence Services, Iran-interlinl.com.
[2]. ibid.
[3]. ibid.
[4]. Nyabati Bijan; “A distinct look at Mojahedin’s internal revolution, slightly from inside, slightly from outside”,109.
[5]. ibid.
[6]. “To be Judged in History”; English Transcript of Videotaped Meetings Between Massoud Rajavi and the Head of Saddam’s Intelligence Services, Iran-interlinl.com.
[7]. ibid.
[8]. Nyabati Bijan; “A distinct look at Mojahedin’s internal revolution, slightly from inside, slightly from outside”, 90.
By Omid Pouya, – Mojahedin.ws, July 5, 2006