Omid Pouya

A Probe into Never Responded Questions

It seems that Maryam Rajavi’s recent trip to some European countries as Iranian president-elect in exile and her interview with a variety of Medias creates her an opportunity to provide appropriate answers to many existing but ambiguous challenges. Naturally, most of the journalists and media men have got tired of hearing and penning mediocre issues like that of Iran’s nuclear file, claims of the West granting concessions to Iranian regime, human rights violations, terrorism, women’s violated rights, the third democratic option, referendum, and many of the like articulated in her speeches. The details have always remained undiscovered for the reporters as she is most interested in generalization.

She always tries to avoid expounding on issues that disclose her organization’s clear stance; its inclination to the armed struggle as the main strategy, its past collaboration with the ousted Iraqi dictator, the reach of its publicity among its own insiders, sympathizers and Iranian people, its general view on the global terrorism, its ties with Israel and many more. Hardly any questions have been arisen in respect to the mentioned. Karim Haghi’s correspondence with Paulo Casaca, a Portuguese MP, inspired me for the first time to suggest questions that media men might put forward for her to answer, questions that should have already been asked but dropped to be published for certain reasons.

The following questions are examples of hundreds of questions that I myself as a journalist might have asked her if came face to face with her. You may add many more if you like.

1. Can Mojahedin once and for all express their clear stance on the armed struggle strategy?

2. If they have converted to be pro-democratic, can they explain about the internal revolutionary spark behind it?

3. Seemingly, unlike the early Mojahedin, they crow to be no anti-imperialists. Thus it requires them to be democrat, liberal, advocates of unlimited private properties, and so. Can they explain where and when they have discussed the details on the approach?

4. If Mojahedin have really foresworn the armed struggle, then, for what reason they are fully preserving the so-called Liberation Army?

5. How could Mojahedin justify the absolute contradiction between the contents of their ideological revolution and their seemingly inclination to the Western democracy?

6. Most of the defectors, analyzers, Human Rights Watch, and intelligent agencies believe the organization follows a cult-like procedure. How can Mojahedin justifiably reprove?

7. The Iranian opposition in general consider Mojahedin as hegemonist. What do they have to say?

8. Can Mojahedin prove how popular they are among Iranian people?

9. Is it logical that their estimation of their popularity among Iranian is based on a comparison made on Camp Ashraf residents and that of Iranian population?

10. Can Mojahedin explain about their impartial role in Iraq under the tyranny of Saddam?

11. What position do they take on bombings inside Iran killing many innocent civilians?

12. What Mojahedin think of UNHCR’s resolve that any decision on Mojahedin’s future in Iraq is up to the decision of Iraqi authorities?

13. Mojahedin propagate they are supported by Iraqi people. The authorities, in contrast, insist to expel them. Does it mean that they believe the Iraqi government fails to be people’s legitimate representative?

14. They have preferred to take a silent position on Saddam’s past atrocities against people while they reiterate to advocate a democratic Iraq. How do they justify the controversy?

15. Why Mojahedin have remained silent about many proven evidences of their past close collusion with Saddam’s intelligent system disclosed by many news agencies?

16. Common in all political groups and parties, the insiders have the freedom to leave whenever they wish. Is it also the same in MKO?

17. Suppose Mojahedin have formed a transitional government emphasizing democratic freedoms. As they have repeatedly rejected activities from the side of the advocates of the Islamic Republic and the monarchists in their government, how do they define democracy? And what if people vote for a system of monarchy?

18. Self-immolation and self-burnings are commonly practiced in MKO. Are they ideologically adopted practices?

19. Mojahedin believe that MKO’s proscription in the list of global terrorist organizations was the outcome of a move to appease Iranian rulers. The West is now taking a hostile position against Iran, as seen in Iran’s nuclear file. Why Mojahedin are still labeled as terrorists?

20. Published in Mojahedin’s documents, they have announced the responsibility of 140,000 political assassinations in Iran. Do they still reiterate their claim?

21. Is the proposed democratic solution the outcome of Mojahedin’s failure in armed struggle strategy or a fundamental change in their ideology?

22. Mojahedin state that the State Department added the MKO to a list of global terrorist organizations as ‘a signal’ of the U.S.’s desire for rapprochement with Iran’s reformists. Now the fundamentalists have assumed the power as they believe. Besides, the US has taken a more hostile attitude towards Iran and Mojahedin claim to a have close role in Iran’s nuclear file. Yet, they still remain a blacklisted terrorist group. Where the discrepancy lies?

23. To stay in Iraq, Mojahedin claim to be relying on people’s support, then they state they are enjoying the protected status granted by the coalition forces, and last, they get hold of international conventions. Can they define which has the real priority?

24. Mojahedin and the NCRI pose to be the main Iranian opposition. What about other opposition? Where they have achieved the superiority or the legitimacy?

25. Mojahedin have recurrently attacked Iranian embassies in many countries. How do they justify such undemocratic attempts?

26. Besides Camp Ashraf in Iraq, Mojahedin have a variety of bases in France and other European countries. Are the members dispersed in different bases equally treated as to the organization’s internal parameters?

27. Can Mojahedin make it clear about their budget and the financial sources?

28. How do Mojahedin define terrorism?

29. How Mojahedin justify compulsory divorces of the members, ban of procreation, and denial of familial life?

And there are many more questions to be proposed. We hope the European parliamentarians bear these questions in mind when they hold meetings with Maryam Rajavi.

Mojahedin.ws – Omid Pouya – December 10, 2006

December 12, 2006 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq 's Function

Gone With the Wind

In mid November, the Algeria TV network in one of its political briefings, implicitly referred to the utilization of MKO by the Iraqi government as leverage of pressure against the Islamic Republic. The remark seems to have been mainly made on the Iraqi president’s, Jalal Talibani, earlier distorted comment. Hambastegi site, a MKO-run website, two weeks earlier had quoted Jalal Talibani saying that Iraq could utilize MKO against Iran if it continued its meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs. The next day, in an interview with Iranian correspondents in Iraq, he made it clear that Mojahedin had distorted his statement and once more stressed on the group’s terrorist nature which is a proven sine qua none for its expulsion from Iraq. However, the Algeria TV’s recent position is taken in line with other supporters of MKO and Saddam’s loyal remnants to resurrect Mojahedin’s lost weight and the crucial role they dream it might play in Iraq.

All those who evaluate MKO with an optimistic eye have never developed a good understanding of the group’s faculties, neither in the past nor at the present, when inflating it as a threat against Iran. The function of Mojahedin at least through the past 25 years well indicates that they had availed themselves of given opportunity, Saddam’s overall backing and other reactionary political factions as well as the debilitating, prolonged war and controversies among the countries of the region. Of course, Mojahedin had given a pledge to make up for all protections and backings they had received after assuming power in Iran. In fact, any overt or undeclared investment on MKO proves to be the outcome of a political bargain.

Before Saddam’s fall, MKO were enjoying the best given opportunity; being situated close to Iranian territories with an easy access to cross the borders besides being fully armed and financially protected by Saddam. Besides, at the time it was not yet blacklisted as a terrorist group by the US and other European countries and the light was green to get on with its terrorist deeds. The result? All the group’s achievements were a few failed military operations and ultimately veering from the path of a political campaigner to that of a cult practitioner. As a result, it disappointed all its defenders.

Mojahedin’s new approach to the US and the Westerners’ does not necessarily mean that the group has been endowed with new potentialities to gratify its past protectors; they know the beaten road is the safest. Anybody with an average IQ knows the adverse consequences of working with a terrorist group.

Maryam Rajavi has recurrently offered the capabilities of the disarmed fighters stuck in Camp Ashraf so as to regain the group’s lost legitimacy among its supporters to be reutilized as a potential leverage against Iran for whatever reason. However, for them, MKO is nothing more than a weightless instrument and they prefer not to play the card that is burned. But it remains a good plaything in the margins. MKO is a product whose date has long been expired and do not seem to return any interest if recycled.

Mojahedin.ws – Omid Pouya – November 28, 2006

November 30, 2006 0 comment

Iraq

The Bare Facts vs. the Elusive Claims

Of the important news of the past weak was the announced death verdict against the Iraqi ousted dictator. Making Iraqi people yell jubilant cries, the sentence at the same time perturbed the remnants of Saddam’s devotees and those who had secured a collective strategic alliance with him. The accomplices who during the past three years of his fall preferred to remain silent over the Baath Party and whom they persisted to respect not less than president.

The deliberate silence occurs at a time when MKO wrestle with the encountered predicaments in Iraq by taking advantage of the internal chaos and the deepened rift between the opponent factions and al-Maliki’s government. Mojahedin’s propaganda machine has never stopped dispersing the threats that democracy in Iraq is unattainable unless through the support of Mojahedin as it was advertised through the statement issued by 25 Sheikhs of the Dialy province. Enticing a few local papers, Mojahedin promulgated to have summoned the support of 5,200,000 Iraqi people and proceeded to proclaim to have bolstered supporters in some provinces. But Mojahedin’s silence, in contrast to peoples unanimous approval, on Saddam’s trial and death sentence has reached a juncture where their contradictory attitudes surface.

People will never forget Saddam’s crimes and the heavy price they have paid for his tyrannical rule although not all his crimes done against people can possibly be brought before the tribunal. These untried crimes might sink into the historical oblivion but his accomplices, especially Mojahedin, can be pursued to unveil facts on genocidal cases like that of the Iraqi Kurds and Shiits. The absence of Massoud Rajavi at the moment might fill Mojahedin with the induced forlorn hope of having escaped the trial and that Saddam’s announced sentence means the termination of further inquiry. However, the proven evidences of collaboration refute possibility of escape from the justice. Moreover, the existing challenge between people and the coalition forces is partly because of the latter’s support of Saddam accomplices.

The coalition forces, well aware of Mojahedin’s close collaboration with Saddam, should at least make it clear that how sincere are Mojahedin in their claims of standing by the people. Those who strive to justify Mojahedin’s stay in Iraq according to international conventions have to acknowledge on whose side were Mojahedin through their past two decades’ presence in Iraq. Nothing can conceal the broad fact of Mojahedin’s being the most favorite mercenaries of Saddam, who roamed on Iraqi soil fully armed while the oppressed people were under the hideous suppression of the dictator. What about many instances of Mojahedin’s meetings with Saddam’s high officials where they stressed their entwined destiny. The mind of the world is not devoid of the pictures of Rajavi shaking hands with Saddam and sharing hugs and kisses as if two brothers. The Iraqi people are clear-sighted enough to distinguish between the bare facts and the elusive claims.

Really, with so many evidences persisting, who dares to pass over them? Do they think that people have a weak mind as they do? What hands and for what reasons are in attempt of covering up Saddam’s crimes? The future might tell the hitherto untold.

November 13, 2006 – Omid Pouya – Mojahedin.ws

November 24, 2006 0 comment

The MEK; Baath Party Accomplice

The Death Verdict Repudiating Assertions

Since the very beginning of the multinational forces’ settlement in Iraq to the Saddam’s pronounced death sentence, MKO have been making big claims of appreciating the existing empathy between them and Iraqi people. Two years ago, they first announced to have procured the support of 2,800,000 Iraqis. Then they continued to claim:

– tens of Iraqi political factions considered MKO’s presence in Iraq as legal and in accordance with People’s just demands

– any decision concerning MKO guaranteed Iraq’s strategic democracy and that its stay dammed the emergence of another Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq

– they enjoyed advocacy of hundreds of Iraqi lawyers and intelligentsias

– to have summoned the support of 5,200,000 Iraqi people, each vote representing 5 people

– to have support of many tribe sheikhs and chieftains

– to have established a strategic alliance with Iraqi people

– and ….

But Mojahedin have never taken any position against the Baath regime. They never referred to the key issue of who has been responsible for the violation of Iraqi people’s basic rights and crimes against people and dissident clerics and intelligentsias. Voicing for peace and democracy in Iraq, MKO has absolutely forgotten the center cause of all the past predicaments long plaguing Iraq.

Moreover, while Mojahedin’s feeling of loyalty forbore taking insubordinate stance against the ousted dictator, they, pretending not to interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs, refrain to stay on an indifferent line. They protested against the Iraqi Constitution and made indirect threats to escalate insurgencies, through the statement issued by 25 Sheikhs of the Dialy province, in case the Iraqi government expelled them. They condemned al-Maliki’s government and advertised its incompetency especially in controlling the armed insurgents and tried to escalate the ethnic and religious tensions to reinforce the US further stay and domination in Iraq.

Undoubtedly, Saddam loyalists and the remnants of Baath Party’s activities to restore Saddam’s rule is believed to play a crucial role in the expansion of the tension, something Mojahedin crave for. MKO’s silence over Saddam’s announced death sentence that drew the jubilant Iraqis into the streets antagonizes its previously claimed solidarity with people. If possible, it joined the insurgents to condemn the verdict as it yet believes in Saddam to be its strategic alliance. Saddam was only tried for the 1982 killing of 148 Shiites in the city of Dujail. The world would develop a better understanding of MKO and Saddam’s complementary collaboration if the ousted dictator’s further crimes, including the Kurds suppression, are brought before the tribunal.

Those in the West who repeat Mojahedin’s claims of receiving Iraqi people’s support should come to know that Mojahedin’s strategically contradictory conduct well justifies falsity of their assertions. Those who believe that Saddam’s sentence might put an end to Iraq’s black era do not need much speculation, seeing MKO’s silence and passiveness, to picture Mojahedin’s virtual play in the extension of disorder and tension.

Omid Pouya – November 9, 2006

November 14, 2006 0 comment

The MEK; Baath Party Accomplice

Saddam’s Trial and Evidences on His Accomplices

The new round of Saddam’s trial on charges of killing thousands of Iraqi Kurds in a series of events under the code name of Anfal has already started. It is the second file of Saddam’s atrocities against the innocent Iraqi people. His previous file accused him and a number of his regime’s official of slaughtering about 148 Shiits of Dejil in 1982. The second file accuses Saddam and other defendants of destroying hundreds of Kurd-residing villages and killing the inhabitants using mass destruction chemical weapons.

A rereading of Saddam’s crimes against the Iraqi Kurds will reveals facts on Mojahedin Khalq (MKO) whose hands are dabbled with the blood of the Kurds. As mercenaries of Saddam, in cases they have referred to their role in these crimes and have tried to make justifications over them. The coalition forces that attacked Iraq to end, as they state, Saddam’s rule of tyranny and free the nation have to be faithful in their claims and let the truth on Saddam’s crimes and Iraqi Baath Party be exposed.

The US state Department is now facing a paradoxical state because in 1994 it published, required by the Congress, a documentary report of the group’s terrorist evidences. The report contained minute details on the group’s terrorist activities and its share in Saddam’s brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion that consolidated its position and other aliases in the State Department’s list of terrorist groups in 1997. The unassailable facts in the report corroborate reciprocal dealings between MKO and Saddam. In a part we read:

In return for weapons and the use of approximately 232 square miles of Iraqi territory, the Mojahedin provide Iraq with political support. Disregarding the casualties inflicted upon Iran after Saddam’s 1980 invasion and overlooking his 1990 assault of Kuwait, the Mojahedin remain staunch supporters of Saddam Hussein. *

Quoting the Iraqi media revealing facts on Saddam-Rajavi contact, it states:

Government-controlled Iraqi media accounts of recent Saddam-Rajavi contacts provide further insights into the MKO’s current relationship with Baghdad. Meeting between the two are announced to buttress Saddam’s isolated position…

In respect to MKO’s assistance in suppression of the Iraqi Kurds and insurgents the report elaborated:

The Iraqi Kurds also claimed the Mojahedin had assisted the Iraqi army in its suppression of the Kurds, a claim-substantiated by refugees who fled near the Iranian border. The leader of the patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, told reporters that "5,000 Iranian Mojahedin joined Saddam’s forces in the battle for Kirkuk”.

Quoting a Wall Street Journal report, the report exposes more information on Mojahedin’s Liberation Army wholly equipped and financed by Saddam:

A recent Wall Street Journal report stated that the NLA’s "only major offensive in the past six years came in 1991, just after the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein ordered Mr. Rajavi to help quell a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq, participants in that operation say."

Rajavi’s insolent collaboration in slaughtering the Kurds evolved as a cause for many members to separate from the organization:

A former MKO member who was in Iraq said his trouble with the Mojahedin leadership, began when he questioned the MKO’s operation against the Kurds.

Too sure of Mojahedin’s terrorist nature, the report makes it clear that no other state in the world could support such a terrorist entity unless it advocated violence and terror. The presence of the group in Iraq well defined the true nature of the Iraqi regime:

It is no coincidence that the only government in the world that supports the Mojahedin politically and financially is the totalitarian regime of Saddam Hussein.

No doubt, so close joint cooperation between Saddam and terrorist Mojahedin has never been alluded to by the coalition forces after Saddam’s fall. It has to be noted that all these allegations is attributed to Mojahedin by no other country but the US State Department. The organization has also implicitly accepted the allegations for it took not more than one year to publish a 384-page book entitled Democracy Betrayed as a response to the US State Department’s report.

In spite of many controversies among the Congressmen, the State Department, and other politicians about the group’s future, one fact should never be overlooked; Saddam committed crimes against the Kurds with the connivance of Mojahedin. Now Saddam’s second round of trial is a good opportunity for the US to prove the degree of its sincerity in recognizing MKO sharing crimes with Saddam. A restudy of the State Department’s report as a reliable evidence at the present will shed light on other accomplices who have the blood of the massacred Kurds on their hands.

*. All quotes are excerpts from the US State Department’s report on The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran; Library of Congress, Doc. call no.: M-U 42953-1 no.92-824F.

Mojahedin.ws – Omid Pouya – August 28, 2006

August 30, 2006 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq 's Terrorism

The Operation Eternal Light, a Product of Hegemony

Now, eighteen years after Mojahedin Khalq’s military Eternal Light operation, the feat is referred to as a turning point by Mojahedin while its dissidents regard it as a challenge. The dissidents, non-mojahedin diaspora as well as defectors, unanimously believe the operation was nothing more than a suicide en masse on proven evidences. Unlike them, Mojahedin, by reason of their self-analyzed achievements, in any occasion bring it up as the first initiated solution to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

The major discrepancies between the two reasoning are too wide to help arrive at a sound judgment. One has to penetrate into the inner layers of the organization to unravel paradoxes. Before going any further, it should be noted that Mojahedin’s organizational structure and its echelon are under the impact of the party philosophy of Marxism, exclusively Leninism. A look at its early works and pamphlets explaining on the necessity of establishing a revolutionary organization founded on democratic centralism as well as its methodology and epistemological foundations well identifies it to be a paradigm of Stalinism that spread the shadow of terror over half of the world during the Stalin’s domination over the Communism Party. These early works are the cornerstone of Mojahedin’s first theoretic achievements to justify pertaining principles of the party dictatorship on individuals and, consequently, on all political relations.

The philosophy of party in Marxism explains for the domination of a class as a vanguard that leads perforce to ascertain a proletariat dictatorship that, being intrinsically anti-democratic, leads to an authoritative autocracy over the party. Stalinism was the product of such a party structure that heavily influenced Mojahedin. The influence, according to many Mojahedin’s critics, led to Hanifnejad’s invisible dictatorship. As the charismatic leader of Mojahedin, he was known to be the main cause of inflicting the crushing blow on the organization in August 1971 (when SAVAK arrested the majority of Mojahedin’s members). He was succeeded by another leader who in a four-year process fundamentally changed the ideology of the organization under his hegemony. Taqi Shahram changed Mojahedin’s Marxist-Islamic eclecticism and discarded Islam completely in favor of Marxism.

Massoud Rajavi continued the same organizational structure of his two descendants tightening his hegemonic leadership atop the pyramid power of the organization. His hegemony had to be strengthened through justifiable ideological principles and it happened in 1974 following the internal ideological revolution, first secretly revealed to upper layers of the leading cadre and then to lower layers through the organizational general assemblies. The cornerstone of the ideological revolution was to discard collective leadership in favor autocracy. He was turned to an absolute leader to whom all had to submit with unquestioning obedience. In a definition to this essence of the ideological revolution we read:

For the first time in the history of the contemporary revolutions, a revolutionary organization dismissed its principal matrix of “democratic centralism”, an achievement of hundreds- years of organized revolutionary struggle experiences, to submit to a leader who is responsible only before God. [1]

The ideological revolution, in fact, legitimized Rajavi’s perpetual hegemony that was deep rooted in the organization’ structure and which was invisibly practiced by its first charismatic leader Hanifnejad. Tinctured with sacredness, the pillars of hegemony would be stabilized and ended any further wrangling.

The main core of Mojahedin’s ideological revolution was to solve the issue of leadership. It could put an end to a problem known to be the Achilles’ heel in most contemporary revolutions and movements; only a stabilized theory of imamate inside the organization could lead the new revolution. [2]

The ideological metamorphosis opened a new gate onto a path where, in the first place, the rationality and even the social-political understanding of individuals were targeted. In other words, individuals would be transmuted into obedient and subjugated creatures serving the wills of the leader. The whole idea can be concluded as:

That is clear that such process could pursue in no rational route. The dominant element in the process is “love” and “emotion” that bypass “logic and reason”. The means are not those of polemics and persuasions but self-devotion. That is the point where Massoud claims Mojahedin’s heart. [3]

It is a preliminary course to transform from a Marxist political party into a highly clandestine, sect-like establishment. All the adopted political and ideological principles as well as the insiders’ long recorded struggle backgrounds lose their legitimacy and the main criterion to assess the members’ potentialities is the extent of their devotion to the leader. To be regarded as the followers under the guidance of the guru, the members had to surrender physically and psychologically:

In processing a good, modern understanding of the same ideology, Mojahedin are required not only to offer their life but also their soul. To bestow the physical body does not suffice; the individual’s highest emotions and dearest attachments are targeted. Not the physical body but the emotions have to be sacrificed. It is the least accepted thing in the organization. [4]

The move to Iraq was a political test to assess the members’ degree of devotion and the Operation Eternal Light was the culmination. An operation doomed from the start needed devoted volunteers to be sacrificed on the leader’s demand in blind obedience. Rajavi, before the operation, insisted on the necessity of launching the operation itself rather than expecting any achievement. That is why he congratulated the forces in the explanatory convention on the eve before the operation:

The result of the operation, above common calculations, is a work of divine providence. But as far as it concerns Iranian Mojahedin Khalq and the National Liberation Army, I congratulate you one by one beforehand regardless of what the result might be. [5]

The operation before anything was a resolution of Rajavi’s own volition, a proven suicide operation excluding the leader himself. The failure proved to be a victory for Rajavi; the made amendments to the ideological revolution after the operation guaranteed his position as a hallowed figure with the sole authority to question anybody while the members were not in the least permitted to violate the leader’s sacramental sphere. Thus, the operation’s aftermath had the priority over its military achievements, a self-administered purge to remove all who had avoided accepting Rajavi’s leadership as their article of faith:

To create a compelling control atop, all the individual attachments and values had to be detached. The detachment did not include physical spectrum, but above that, psychological scopes. The physically divorce of spouses and children did not suffice; they, as well as the world outside, had to be cleaned of the mind and devalued. One has to replace them with an alternative that is no one but Massoud Rajavi. [6]

The discussion serves as a good response to all those who search an iota of rationality behind the operation. It was not the product of a rational mind; it was the practical part of an intrinsically mal-founded ideology.

Notes

[1]. Nyabati Bijan; “A distinct look at Mojahedin’s internal revolution, slightly from inside, slightly from outside”, 35.

[2]. Ibid, 90.

[3]. Ibid, 113.

[4]. Ibid, 57.

[5]. “The tenth anniversary of Eternal Light”; the first book, Mojahedin’s Publications.

[6]. Nyabati Bijan; “A distinct look at Mojahedin’s internal revolution, slightly from inside, slightly from outside”, 113.

mojahedin.ws – Omid Pouya – July 31, 2006

August 5, 2006 0 comment

Duplicity of the MEK nature

Saddam Devotees Hail Community of Strategy with Iraqis

It is common in political sphere for two political currents to concur in a community of strategy when they have mutual political axes to grind. The alliance does not necessarily mean that they have to reconcile with each other’s different ideologies. Years before the Islamic revolution, for instance, Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) and People’s Fedayan Militia, two ideologically different campaigning anti-monarchical movements, formed an alliance against Shah’s regime and the US imperialism.

Iraqi people in general, regardless of being Kurds, Shiite and Sunni, advocated a community of strategy in their struggle to topple Saddam’s regime. Even the pro-Saddam factions in creating post-Saddam disorders moved on a line of consensus strategy.

With these preliminaries in mind, it was shocking to hear Dowlat Nowrouzi, the MKO’s representative in UK, saying “Mojahedin-e Khalq have a community of strategy with Iraqi people”. Before going any further, it should be noted that MKO have developed a comprehension of the magic role the numbers and statistics play in today’s political world and the adopted Western policies according to these figures. As a result, MKO have developed a talent of digging statistics out of any performed tasks. The significance lays in the fact that rarely the tally of these figures, being multiplied by a favored coefficient, are reliable as authentic. That is to say, the promulgated figures are too much exaggerated to be accepted.

MKO has been on this path from the beginning. Once, soon after the Islamic revolution, they announced that more than 150,000 rallied in Amjadieh soccer stadium in Tehran. The stadium in full capacity, according to mathematical evaluations, could entertain a crowd of not exceeding 30,000. Later, on the anniversary of the 20 June event, MKO’ TV reported a rally of 200,000 in the same place. Even on the 20 June 1981, the day MKO organized a protesting rally in different Iranian cities, MKO announced a swarm of 500,000 sympathizers in Tehran’s streets never thinking of the destructive potentialities of such a crowd if they really existed; demonstrators were easily dispersed and the irritated MKO announced armed struggle against the Islamic Republic.

Last year, MKO reported the declaration of 2,800,000 Iraqi people issued in support of MKO. This year, the number has increased to 5,200,000. Regardless of the authenticity of so big a figure, the Iraqi supporters of MKO are nearly multiplied, that is to say, a nearly 100 percent increase. More above that, according to reports broadcasted on 8 July by the group’s TV, as any single vote of this big figure represents an Iraqi family of five, consequently, it can be multiplied by 5 to reach a total figure of 26,000,000 supporters.

On 20 June, MKO reported that 300,000 French citizens had urged support for Maryam Rajavi. Then, they concluded that as any single vote of these French citizens represented a French family of three, so the number of supporters reached a total 900,000.

At the present, MKO claims the Islamic Republic has so far executed 120,000 members of the group. The number of the executed in 1987, the year they settled in Iraq, did not exceeded 20,000. It is not amazing to see the number jumping to such an extent because the “martyrs” have gone through the coefficient system of the organization. In another instance, Ebrahim Khodabandeh, a high-ranking separated member, admitted that once in a meeting of the European parliamentarians he had claimed, as was dictated by the organization, that about 300,000 political prisoners were under regular and daily torture in Iranian prisons. As he said, he never thought of a simple fact that if any of these prisoners were to be tortured by nothing more than a quick slap, what a great number of guards and torturers had to be provided! There are more and more examples of these kinds.

Accordingly, depending on case and place, they make the most of the words rather than the numbers. Seemingly suffering hypomnesis to remember what they have stated or done earlier, or maybe they think people are inattentive and unmindful, MKO expatiate on something they had controverted before. An organization commonly known to have formed a close alliance with Saddam, leaps forward to proclaim they “have a community of strategy with Iraqi people”. The words indicate that they have been in the same front along with Iraqi people in their struggle against the ousted dictator! That they too were victimized and oppressed under the tyranny of Saddam and the Baathists! That they are naturally democratic and advocates of freedom!

If uncertain about anything of Mojahedin’s past, the world vows that MKO was the most enthusiastic, strategic alliance of Saddam. The evidence? They were given land to establish a “city” of their own. With Saddam’s donated dollars in their pockets, armed with Iraqi weapons, and trained under Iraqi officers they recurrently violated Iranian borders at a time when Iranian were busy dealing with Saddam’s assault. Any body in doubt? They were the most trustworthy forces cooperating with the terrible Iraqi intelligence system. They had the permission to freely move around Iraq carrying arms. They gladly accepted the mission to have a key role in suppressing the insurgent Iraqi Kurds. They put their unsatisfied insiders in the same gruesome, terrific cells of the notorious Abu-Ghorib prison where the dissidents of Saddam’s regime had been consigned to oblivion. A look at videotaped secret meetings of Saddam’s high-ranking officers with MKO’s heads seems to suffice.

To “have a community of strategy with Iraqi people”, Mojahedin have to prove they have been their brothers in hardship. They proved it, not for people, but for Saddam. They were ready to sacrifice their life for Saddam. Once Maryam Rajavi announced that all girls and women under her command were ready to fight shoulder to shoulder with Iraqi forces to die for the great leader Saddam Hussein as she did.* Of course, no body can blame them for what they fail to remember!

To achieve their objectives, Mojahedin never care whose body they crush under their feet. The advocates of Machiavellianism deny the relevance of morality in political approaches and strictly hold that collusion, treachery and deceit are justified in pursuing and maintaining political objectives. They needed and need to survive. Once they colluded with Saddam and today they move on a treacherous line to deceit Iraqi people. The fact is that they have no community of strategy with anyone.

*. Daily Mail, England, August 17, 1990.

Omid Pouya, July 10, 2006

July 16, 2006 0 comment

The MEK; Baath Party Accomplice

A Ba’ath Party Replica

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

July 10, 2006 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq 's Terrorism

17 June, an Autopsy of Violence and Terrorism

Maryam Rajavi’s arrest and imprisonment in France on 17 June 2003, not talking of its prejudicial impact to her political character, made Mojahedin face a new challenge. The challenge was the outcome of an encounter of Western democracy and civility vis-à-vis the dominant social anarchism and wild adventurism in Mojahedin organization that attempted to forge legitimacy by comparing itself to one of the most prime anti-fascism resistances in the Europe.

Maryam Rajavi’s arrest and its aftermath gave the states and the public opinion the opportunity to see behind the pseudo-democratic face of Mojahedin. Accused of terrorist activities, association with a terrorist organization and financing terrorist operations, the French Police raided the office of MKO at Auvers-sur-Oise and arrested 164 suspected Mojahedin cadres as well as Maryam Rajavi. Immediately after the arrests, a number of the group’s insiders immolated themselves in public in a series of premeditated missions as leverages of pressure to buy Maryam Rajavi’s freedom. The human tragedy ended with two deaths; according to the group’s own reports, two women, Sediqeh Mojaveri and Neda Hassani died because of the self-immolation injuries. One more was paralyzed forever.

These acts of self-destruction reveal the covert violent mien of the group’s ideology which is brought to surface and fully practiced whenever the circumstances deem it just. It is not wrong to say that the acts of self-immolations imposed Mojahedin’s demands on the French judges and courts to take a moderate position to stop further agitation of the public opinion.

Violence is rebuked for its transparent contradiction with social and conventional codes. Utilization of violence for whatever objectives never justifies it as a theorized instrument practiced by opportunists to accomplish the ends. The practitioners of violence, whether from a potential military standpoint or frustrated political stance, resort to what is most regarded a reactionary approach. Legalization of violence terminates the rational ways of furthering dialogue to a democratic solution and its utilization as leverage of pressure, a threatening method, and even as a moving element to stir sympathy never justifies its application.

Appalling, sect-like self-immolations once more endorsed Mojahedin’s restoring to complexities of a cult. The ideology does not necessarily suggest application of violence against others since teachings of some cult decree self-destruction practices as the most influential approach. Overt practices of violence against other individuals spread psychological terror among a society while acts of self-destruction, besides spreading psychological terror, endanger emotional and social health. In other words, when someone consents to commit self-destruction in so appalling a way, no doubt he is capable of wiping out masses in cool-blood.

There are many instances of known cult decreed self or collective destructions. So impressed are the insiders by the violent approaches of a cult that they may volunteer to commit suicide before they receive orders to do so. Following the same cult codes, Mojahedin owns a prearranged, deliberate list of registrants volunteered for self-immolation wherever and whenever the organization deems it appropriate. Alireza Jafarzadeh, a Mojahedin’s media spokesman, in a letter published in one of Mojahedin’s newsletters, prior to his demands to be registered as a volunteer of self-burning, stated:

Truly, the ignorant have not fully made out the sharpness, shrewdness and decisiveness of a Mojahed Khalq element more because they have failed to acknowledge Massoud. They are too narrow minded to know what a storm Rajavi’s order might give rise to, and that this generation’s will might leave them in a dark world of absolute desperation. [1]

His words indicate that he is fully under the influence of the group’s non-peaceful teachings as a strategic approach. He does believe in what he is saying and the history of the organization approves him.

Mojahedin’s past history contains a broad practice of violence against the agents of Shah’s regime and, furthermore, against the working Americans in Iran in 1970s to prove they were on a right path of struggle; it is an aspect of its utilizing violence against others. Later on, during the mass trials of the members arrested by Shah’s security system SAVAK, the arrested members decided to commit self-destruction to stir sympathy among people. To achieve the goal, they decided to take a harsh attitude in their speeches made at court defense sessions to incite the military judges to deal harshly with the defendants. Their tactic of self-destruction worked well and most of the leading figures but Massoud Rajavi were executed by the regime. Talking of the method of self-destruction at the time, Massoud Rajavi said:

We had to do our outmost to be executed by Shah. Then, our movement overpowered the proceedings. He [Shah] had to give an answer and we could not let him evade. [2]

First, by utilizing an armed struggle strategy and then by throwing themselves before the fire squads, Mojahedin furthered an overall method of violence. They were thoroughly devoted to a ferocious style of struggle against Shah and nothing but death could stop the move. Hanifnezhad, one of the first founders of Mojahedin, received a life imprisonment by the Shah’s court but his colleagues in prison coerced him, and even threatened him of being given an organizationally decreed revolutionary execution, to move on a self-destruction path so the organization could condemn the regime of his death. He was put before the fire squad, however.

Mojahedin can never think of peaceful ways when seeking for solution to an issue. In the course of Iran’s nuclear file, for instance, they resort to violent proposals or incite other parts to take a hostile attitude towards Iran. Violence is integrated in Mojahedin’s literature and it can be classified as:

– Transparent violence: armed struggle and terrorist operation.

– Advocating violence: inciting others to resort to violent ways to solve a problem.

– Provoking violence: coercing others to take violent reactions.

– Utilizing violence: self-destruction as a leverage of pressure or a moving element to stir sympathy.

The 17 June and its aftermath crystallize terrorism and violence in their full term. The case has to be studied in full details.

Notes

[1]. Alireza Jafarzadeh’ letter; Newsletter of the Union of the Muslim Student Associations Abroad, No. 127, 11.

[2]. The Founders, 96, Mojahedin Khalq publication.

June 21, 2006 0 comment

Massoud Rajavi

Flight to Iraq, a Pass out of the Impasse

On 7 June 1986 Massoud Rajavi took an unexpected move; he left Paris for Iraq. It was the beginning of a new political phase for Mojahedin organization. Some of Mojahedin’s allies that were dismayed at Rajavi’s earlier publicized meeting with Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s deputy prime minister, in January 1983, when Iran-Iraq war was at its most intense, and took a cautious side to join the National Council of Resistance strongly denounced Rajavi’s move to fly to Iraq. It was a crucial move for Mojahedin, for it had sustained overall defeat inside Iran and moved on the verge of total dispersion. It had failed in its attempts to represent as a legitimate democratic alternative and a number of influential allies like Kurdistan Democratic Party detached from the council in objection to Rajavi’s hegemonic predomination. The detachment cost Mojahedin a lot because Kurdistan granted it a potential citadel to shift its warfare tactic of urban guerilla to a region bound tactic.

Successive failures had convinced Mojahedin that urban guerilla warfare was a failed tactic and inapt for overthrowing the Islamic Republic, but Rajavi’s tenacious insist on the tactic led the group to face more challenges besides separation of insiders. Bijan Nyabati, a left member of the National Council of Resistance, talking on Mojahedin’s failure in both internal and external fronts writes:

The year 1983 was the decisive year in all political, military, strategic, and ideological stages. Political, military, and armed resistance cul-de-sac, and the proven inability to overthrow the regime in short-term in late 1982, proved to be impossible through 1983, forced two options on Mojahedin. [1]

Talking on the political dead-ends following the raised tensions inside the resistance he writes:

It was even worse in political stage. Mojahedin’s failure to overthrow the regime in short-term and to integrate, claiming to be the sole democratic alternative, anti-monarch and anti-cleric political parties put heavy pressure from the inside and outside on Mojahedin. [2]

He further explains about the growing number of critics that precipitated Mojahedin into a dead-end:

Out of the council, an increasing process of antagonism against Mojahedin that had emerged through 1982 and had reached its peak in 1983, formed into an overwhelming confrontation with Mojahedin in 1984. [3]

Rajavi’s meeting with Tariq Aziz in 1983 was in fact a preliminary struggle to break an opening out of the impasse which was accomplished by his official flight to Iraq in 1986. Nyabati believes that in Rajavi-Tariq Aziz’ first meeting, they resolved on Rajavi’s transfer to Iraq which was postponed for some reasons. Although Mojahedin abstinently believed that the move to Iraq was the outcome of international pressure and the French government was persuaded to expel Mojahedin as a good-will gesture to improve Franco-Iranian relations, but the move to Iraq was the only solution to overcome all existing problems threatening the body of the organization.

Another crucial challenge Mojahedin had to face was a possible inter-organizational schism. As Nyabati writes:

It was a prepared condition only if one out of many members of the time’s political bureau or central committee moved on a different path and overtly questioned the failed guerilla armed struggle. Among the other lower-rankings, problem-makers like Parviz Yaqubi and Saeed Shahsavandi and so were enough to sound the alarm. [4]

Rajavi’s flight to Iraq was the product of a failed strategy that believed application of terror was the shortest way to succeed to political power. Rajavi’s unrealistic analyses based on false information had raised doubts about Rajavi’s competence and his armed strategy to overthrow the regime:

In fact, in spite of the members’ commitment and devotion and impressive record of heroism among the leading cadres, main members and sympathizers, the issue of overthrow had remained an unsolved problem at the end of the promised three-year period. [5]

Rajavi’s collusion with Iraq frustrated the hops that Mojahedin would reconsider about its failed armed tactic and completely dissolved the remainder of legitimacy among other opposition groups and instigated a new phase of violent, harsh inter-organizational confrontation. It was the beginning of a disparaging retrogression to collaborate with the nation’s enemy. Now it was restricted to take dictated steps according to fluctuating changes in Iraq the region, in general. Operation Eternal Light, acting as mercenary forces for Iraq, especially in suppression pf Iraq Kurds, and more and more were all the cost Mojahedin paid for its collusion with Saddam Hussein. The question is was the cost imposed on Mojahedin or it knowingly consented to bear the heavy price of ambitions to win power struggle?

Of course, well aware of Iraq’s hostile attitude, Mojahedin had anticipated what awaited it in Iraq. However, it never dreamed to be stuck there to face a desperate situation the same as 1983. The internal ideological revolution was devised to assist Mojahedin out of the newly encountered cul-de-sac, a resolution to put an end to challenging crisis of leadership in the organization. That is to say, it is no more the leadership who has to be blamed for the failures but the members and sympathizers have to shoulder the blame of mistakes made by the leadership. While out of the organization Mojahedin poses eager to lean towards the right, inside it moves to radicalize the ultimate left. In other words, the ideological revolution is the last imposed end-product of its move to Iraq.

Notes:

[1]. Nyabati, Bijan; A different look on Mojahedin Khalq’s ideological revolution, 17.

[2]. Ibid, 16.

[3]. Ibid, 19.

[4]. Ibid, 21.

[5]. Ibid, 18.

mojahedin.ws – Omid Puoya – 7 June 2006

June 11, 2006 0 comment

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