Terrorist groups and the MEK

SIIC: Mojahedin Khlaq cooperated with al-Qaeda

Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization has cooperated with terrorist groups including al-Qaeda over the past five years, says an SIIC official.

Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), Ammar Hakim, confirmed a six-month deadline set by the Iraqi government for the MKO to leave Iraq and added that the MKO had helped former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein commit his crimes.

The Iraqi government and nation call for expulsion of the MKO terrorists from the country, Hakim told IRNA Wednesday.

He added that the MKO gave false information to the US about a number of Iraqi figures who fought against Saddam and whom he said are still kept in US prisons.

Iraq’s Government Spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said on Tuesday that the country will support the voluntarily return of MKO members to Iran or any other country, adding that Baghdad will not consider expelling MKO members forcefully from the country and will deal with them according to international regulations.

The comment comes as Iraqi military forces have surrounded the terrorist group’s Camp Ashraf.

The camp in Diyala province was the headquarters for the MKO during the rule of Saddam Hussein. It had been converted to a training center for MKO terrorists and has been under US control since the 2003 invasion of the country.

The MKO is blacklisted by many countries including EU member states as a terrorist organization. The group has claimed responsibility for hundreds of terror attacks inside Iran.

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Iraq

Iraq takes control of Camp Ashraf

Text of report by Iranian conservative, privately-owned Fars News Agency website

Iraq takes control of Camp Ashraf

Tehran, 26 Aug: After a five-year US military presence and the protection provided by them to the monafeqin in Camp Ashraf [a pejorative that means hypocrites and refers to the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO)], efforts by the Iraqi government have succeed. Yesterday evening, the Iraqi military was able to take over control of the camp.

The al-Forat television network reported that spokesperson for Iraqi defence ministry, Gen Mohammad al-Asgari made the announcement. He said: At this time, the camp is surrounded with support form an Iraqi military battalion and Iraqi forces have placed it inside a security enclosure.

About two months ago, in response to repeated public calls and in line with the national constitution, the Iraqi government asked the US to turn over management of Camp Ashraf to Iraqi forces. The pressure placed on the Americans by the Iraqi government finally succeeded yesterday evening.

Located in Diyala Province, Camp Ahsraf is 45km outside Baghdad. It was gifted to the leader of the monafeqin gang, Masud Rajavi, by Saddam [Huseyn] recognition of his serve

Fars News Agency, Translated by BBC Monitoring

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Former members of the MEK

Mujahedin Khalq used as a terror tool

The Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK) is known to be used bySahar Family Foundation some elements in Pentagon and in the CIA against Iran. These elements consider the terrorists on their side good or useful terrorists. The MKO has always offered its terrorist skills to be used against Iran. After the fall of the former dictator of Iraq they have tried to draw the attention of the US as a substituted in the west for Saddam Hussein.

In an article in the NEWSTATESMAN by John Pilger dated 29 May 2008, it is shown that the MKO is being used by the Bush administration against Iran for terrorist activities, even though the organization has been designation as a terrorist group by the State Department.

Those who would suffer most from such usage of terrorists are the families of the members of the MKO trapped in their base in Iraq called the Ashraf camp. These families’ beloved ones have been used for so long by Saddam Hussein and now they have to see them to be victims again this time by the US.

Sahar Family Foundation certainly denounces such utilization of the mentally and even physically captives in the Ashraf camp and calls all international humanitarian organizations to make sure that the prime victims of a destructive cult (the MKO) are not used again to expand terrorism.

North America

After Bobby Kennedy

John Pilger

Published 29 May 2008

http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/05/obama-pilger-mccain-kennedy 

Piracies and dangers

America’s war on Iran has already begun. In December, Bush secretly authorised support for two guerrilla armies inside Iran, one of which, the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, is described by the state department as terrorist.

Sahar Foundation, Baghdad

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Iran

Change in UK relations not on Iran agenda

Despite a UK court ruling to lift a ban on Mojahedin Khalq terrorists, Iran has no plans to lower its diplomatic presence

Despite a UK court ruling to lift a ban on MKO terrorists, Iran says it currently has no plans to lower its diplomatic presence in Britain.

Iran’s ambassador to London briefed the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission in the Majlis on Sunday, causing members of Parliament to call on the government to reconsider the extent of relations between the two countries.

UK support for the outlawed terrorist group, the MKO and its failure to curb drug cultivation in Afghanistan were the main grievances expressed by the lawmakers.

In his weekly press conference on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hassan Qashqavi told reporters that although the Ministry respects the recommendations of the parliamentarians, it ‘currently has no such plan on its agenda’.

Iran-Britain relations ventured into troubled waters after the British government decided to grant knighthood to author Salman Rushdie, despite the publication of his controversial book, The Satanic Verses, which sparked worldwide outrage in the late 1980s.

Iran described the knighthood as ‘a blatant example of the anti-Islamism of senior British officials’. Top officials from certain Muslim countries also called on their government to sever ties with London.

In a recent move, Britain removed the banned Mujahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO) from its blacklist of terror organizations. The MKO has committed acts of aggression against both Iranian and Iraqi nationals and remains banned by the European Union and the United States.

According to the Iranian Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, Britain has been provided ample evidence of MKO involvement in terrorist operations against the Iranian nation.

"They have even met with some of the victims of the MKO terrorist acts. Still, the London Appeals Court has permitted a dangerous terrorist group to operate in Britain," reads a letter by the Head of the Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi to his counterpart in the British parliament, Mike Gapes.

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The cult of Rajavi

The inside and outside members of the Mujahedin Cult

Cult of Mojahedin, the inside and outside members

Cults generally tend to function in isolation and are usually remote from the society and keep away to have direct contact with people. However, for some purposes cults need to make contact with the outside world, that is, recruiting new members, fundraising and more. Sending the members to live among the free society is even more crucial when the cult comes to be a hypocritically political one that needs the society as the wheels to push the cult forth.

Although cults cut members off from easy and tete-a-tete contact with outsiders, there are a number of members in certain cults that live out of the cult among the ordinary people to fulfill the mentioned purposes. It does not mean that these outside members can escape tense, thought reform processes executed within the cult. These members seemingly living separate from the cult are also under the severe cult control and undergo the same mechanisms that are used against the insiders to changing their behavior. Explaining the mechanism in her book entitled Cults in Our Midst, Thaler Singer states that:

In most live-in cults, every detail of life comes under group scrutiny. For example, there are dress codes, food restrictions, and enforced marriages or relationships. In such cults, the members generally live together at the headquarters or at specified locations around the country or over, seas and work for cult-owned enterprises. However, there are also cults whose devotees appear to remain active in quite a few major aspects of the outside world, earning a living outside the cult. But for all practical purposes these individuals also live under rules governing such crucial features of their personal life as the people with whom they associate, what happens to their money, whether they raise their own children, and where they live. (p. 11)

At the present, Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK/PMOI), or Mojahedin Cult as it is notoriously referred to, may be the sole political cult of personality that avails big number of live-in and live-out members. The group’s main bastion being located in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, its headquarters are situated in Auvers-Sur-Oise in Paris with countless aliases aiding the cult in fundraising activities, recruitment, propaganda blitz, organizing rallies and so forth. Thus, it is of great importance to know:

– Under what aliases the cult is running its illegal activities

– How the members and sympathizers in these affiliated groups are controlled and receive cult instructions

– How essential are these cult relations to the cult

– What is the difference between the mechanisms applied against the Camp Ashraf live-ins and those living in the Western countries

– How crucial is the role of Camp Ashraf to establish contact with the outside world and the live-out members

As released by the State Department Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism on April 30, 2007 MKO is active under a variety of pseudonyms known as MKO; Mujahedin-e Khalq; Muslim Iranian Students’ Society; National Council of Resistance; National Council of Resistance (NCR); Organization of the People’s Holy Warriors of Iran; The National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA); The People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI); National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI); Sazeman-e Mujahedin-e Khalq-e Iran.

However, these are not all aliases but those officially announced. To the list can be added numerous political, social, charity, art and much more groups and societies wherein hardly you can trace them back to the mother group. They all function according to the taste and culture of the societies among whom they live and mostly propagate under democratic standards. For instance, the women and girls officially active as MKO insiders are forced to wear outfits covering all their body parts and the head. Even Maryam Rajavi herself in spite of dressing in colorful non-transparent outfit never shows in the public bareheaded. But there are many occasions in which women sympathizers and activists assemble in extravagant western fashions in favor of MKO.

It has to be also mentioned that many of these sympathizers are unaware of the real nature of MKO and work as propaganda tools to beguile the Westerners. As soon as they are recruited as the formal members, they have to consent to cult principles that includes the clothing as well. And Camp Ashraf is the very same remote bastion of the cult housing the live-in members and where the cult standards are outlined and demarcated for the active outsiders in the West.

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Iraq

Iraqi army in control of Mojahedin Khalq camp

Iraq’s army has finally gained control of a camp holding anti-Iran terrorists after five years, says an Iraqi military official.

Major General Mohammed al-Askari, spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, told Iraqi al-Forat TV that a battalion of military forces has surrounded Camp Ashraf of the Mujahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO) since Wednesday night, Fars News Agency reported.

The action came after the Iraqi government pressured the US forces in Iraq to end its support for the group and give the army control of the camp two months ago.

According to reports, some 3,400 MKO terrorists remain in Camp Ashraf situated in Diyala province, 60 kilometers north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Earlier, The Iraqi government and parliament announced that they are seeking a rapid final solution to remove the remaining members of the MKO from Iraq and shut down Camp Ashraf.

Iraqi officials say the group is playing a significant role in violence and insecurity in the country.

Along with at least six other sites in Iraq, Camp Ashraf was given to the MKO as their headquarters and training site by the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.

It was from this base the MKO launched operations against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and later assisted Saddam in violently suppressing the Iraqi Kurds during the 1991 uprising.

The MKO is blacklisted by many countries including EU member states as a terrorist organization. The group has claimed responsibility for hundreds of terror attacks inside Iran.

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The cult of Rajavi

The NCR, an alias for Mujahedin Khalq

It may seem hard to believe that the first seeds of MKO’s transition to a cult of personality were sown in the heart of the Western democratic and free soil following the initiation of the ideological revolution within MKO. In fact, before MKO relocation to Iraq to execute cultic relations in Camp Ashraf as its main cult bastion, the cult thought had passed its embryo stage at Auvers-Sur-Oise in Paris. The importance of Camp Ashraf lies in the fact that it was the best remote and controlled spot as needed for cult activities. It well reinforces the first of the eight main conditions that Lifton identified as indicating the presence of ideological totalism in an organization:

Milieu control. As Lifton postulated it, this is primarily the use of techniques to dominate the person’s contact with the outside world but also their communication with themselves. People are "deprived of the combination of external information and inner reflection which anyone requires to test the realities of his environment and to maintain a measure of identity separate from it. 1

Burt before establishing its main controlled base to practice its cult process, MKO first requisite was to expand its extraordinarily exalted view of its role in political scene as the main Iranian opposition. As a result, it needed a prestigious ancillary establishment with prominent, opponent figures to confer required political legitimacy. The formation of the National Council of Resistance (NCR/NCRI) in France worked as an important alias that could accomplish the cause. It has to be pointed that formation of aliases was in no way an overnight happening. A look at the history of MKO especially after the advent of Islamic Republic in Iran reveals that the group had taken on the strategy of forming a number of affiliated groups under different pseudonyms as a working tool to recruit from among the social ranks and classes and obtain the needed public support.

Compared with other many formed aliases, the NCR is known to be MKO’s most important political wing in the West. Because of the wide membership diversity, the NCR is an exception to MKO’s cult influence. However, it has been itself utilized to intensify and expand cult relation. Although the formation of the NCR soon after MKO’s settlement in France aimed on creating an exclusively united front against the Islamic Republic, it soon turned to function as another alias for MKO. The main goal was on the one hand to recruit members with no ideology or whose ideology somehow contradicted that of MKO, and on the other hand the NCR was intended to act as a catalyst between the West and MKO. Explaining on the goal, an ex-member has said:

The fundamental reason for this new development of the NCRI was that Rajavi desperately needed to rebuild his contact with the West. He couldn’t do this directly himself as none of the Western countries would accept him whilst he continued to maintain relations with Saddam. Nor would Saddam let him loose to leave Iraq and do what he wanted beyond his control. 2

However, Rajavi needed a second trustable chip to introduce. Presentation of Maryam Rajavi as his surrogate in the West at the head of the NCR is known to be one among many errors made by Rajavi; she is hardly qualified to administer some ordinary organizational affairs let alone be elected and accepted as the president elect:

Rajavi hoped that by presenting Maryam as a President and giving her over 150 devoted members to choose from, she could go to the West and start building a place for him again in the political scene. It became a costly mistake. Maryam, as good as she was at promoting Rajavi for the members of the Mojahedin, could not act as a good CEO and take advice. 3

Still, Rajavi is the one to lead the NCR and his hegemonic rule is the sole cult characteristic that dominates it. That was enough for a number of members to leave it as they did. Yet, MKO’s active members constitute a big part of its membership, that is to say, the insiders living in a cult milieu out of a cult’s bastion.

References:

1. Dennis Tourish & Tim Wohlforth: On the edge; political cults right and left, p. 12.

2. Anne Singleton; Saddam’s Private Army, Iran-Interlink, 2003.

3. Ibid.

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MEK Camp Ashraf

Camp Ashraf, a Cult Behavior Gauge

In spite of the widespread network of many aliases under which MKO runs its propaganda and fundraising activities, the Camp Ashraf in Iraq can be considered the cultic and ideological base of the organization that generalizes the cultic principles to other wings active even in the Western countries. The organization is actually facing a problem in this respect; there exists a great difference in the life-style of the members living in Camp Ashraf, living a harsh, military life of severe restrictions and regular cult practices, and those residing in the West who are benefiting the freedom of a democratic world.

Although heavily influenced by cult instillations, there was the danger for the members leaving Camp Ashraf for the West on some organizational missions to be dissolved in the despised world of bourgeoisie. To counteract the defection, MKO has devised a variety of levers already tested in Camp Ashraf known, in this respect, as Rajavi’s laboratory to test members’ degree of devotion and submission:

Camp Ashraf has been turned into a laboratory of testing Ralavi’s theories wherein the members are used as guinea pigs. 1

Naturally, the members distanced from the influence of the laboratory could cause problems for the organization and they had to be controlled according to the same controlling measures imposed on them in Camp Ashraf despite living in Auvers-Sur-Oise or anywhere else in the Europe. Oddly enough, these cultic, controlling measures proceeds in the heart of the modern, democratic world under the hottest pro-democratic mottos that has even beguiled the Western advocates. These measures and levers are designed for:

– Channelizing the source of information

– Destabilizing the power of thought and analysis

– Making use of spying measures

– Spreading a pathological sense of mistrust among the ranks

– Encouraging collective life

– Discouraging members from study and using modern communication utilities

– Instilling a sense of despite among the members

– Enforcing members to write daily reports and confessions

– Ostracizing the disobedient to enforce submission

– Exertion of organizational control

A point to be noted, soon after MKO’s relocation to Iraq and members’ settlement in Camp Ashraf, the base, regardless of being turned into the organization’s ideological symbol, became Mojahedin’s laboratory of ideological testing and rehabilitation. There were many cases when the organization sent the European insiders back to Camp Ashraf because they had been discovered to have inclinations toward liberalism or some attachment to the world outside that was equal to breaking taboo. There, they had to undergo a process of ideological regeneration. Some were blocked to return to their previous activity status in the West since they failed to acquire the organizational trust.

As a result, even those activists in the Western countries had to run a life similar to those in Camp Ashraf. That is to say, they ran a dual life of living a cultist inside but played the role of a liberal and freedom activist for the outside. As Massoud Banisadr relates in his memorials:

Soon I learned we have to act in meetings as Liberal and as Bourgeois as possible. Those were my own characters that for past seven years I was running from them, for changing myself into a Mojahed. In this type of work, I had to have double character, double life and double behaviour, a character, which I hated most. 2

Not only in political life but even in personal life members had to follow the organization’s standards. To stay an insider and enjoy the appeal of a freedom-fighter, or if they really cared about their joining as campaigning for freedom, members had to observe organizational regulations notwithstanding they lost dearest attachments:

One man had to leave his much-loved black girl friend to become a full time supporter. He put his head on my shoulder and cried for a few minutes, telling me how much he loved her, but with her attitude toward the organisation he could not marry her and work with the Mojahedin at the same time. Another had to leave his brother who was working in the Iranian embassy, and show his readiness to kill him if it became necessary. A third was addicted to alcohol and had to swear never to drink again. Yet another had been in prison opium addiction. By joining the Mojahedin as full committed supporters or members all were leaving something behind, something dear to them…. 3

References:

1. Shams-e Haeri, Hadi; The swamp, vol. II

2. Masoud Banisadr; Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel.

3. Ibid.

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