The Time

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

The late Iraqi dictator did kill many thousands of people—but very few were terrorists

(Benjamin served as Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department 2009-2012. He is director of The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College)

Donald Trump is, by his own admission, “like, a really smart person,” and someone who has “a very good brain,”

Trump, roughly: Saddam Hussein was thiiiiiiiiis good at killing terrorists.

but he don’t know much about history. His remarks this week—and on multiple other occasions—about Saddam Hussein’s skill at counterterrorism are a reminder of this.

“He was a bad guy—really bad guy,” Trump opined during a rally in North Carolina. “But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists. Over.”

Hussein, it is true, killed a lot of people. The estimates run into the hundreds of thousands, and he murdered in a variety of appalling ways: He had his victims shot, gassed, blown up, beheaded and even torn apart by wild animals. And while all of his victims had excellent reasons for not liking life under the longtime Iraqi dictator, almost none were terrorists. On the contrary, terrorists in Iraq were mostly honored guests and worked at the regime’s behest.

Thousands of terrorists called Iraq home, and their organizations had the blood of Israelis, Turks, Iranians and Europeans from numerous countries on their hands. Among the killers were members of the Palestine Liberation Front, the Arab Liberation Front, the Kurdish PKK, the Iranian Mujahidin e-Khalq and the Abu Nidal Organization. Saddam promised to pay the families of suicide bombers who killed Israelis for their deeds. It is true that he despised jihadists and had nothing to do with al Qaeda, but that hardly diminishes his record. Not for nothing, Iraq was among the first batch of countries designated by Washington as state sponsors of terror in 1979.

Perhaps Trump has information that is not widely available, but only one case of a terrorist being killed in Iraq comes readily to mind: the death of Abu Nidal. Before Osama bin Laden came along, Nidal—also known as Sabry al Banna—was widely considered the most vicious terrorist alive. He worked, by turns, for the Syrians, the Libyans and the Iraqis, engineered notorious airport massacres in 1985 in Rome and Vienna, and ultimately was credited with some 900 deaths and injuries.

Nidal was a particular favorite of Hussein, who employed him for assassinations and other wet-work from the beginning of his career in the 1970s. But as rumors of an approaching war with the United States swirled in the August of 2002, Hussein is said to have worried that Nidal, who lived in Baghdad, might be working for the U.S. Though Hussein might also have decided that as Washington was making its case for action against Iraq, Nidal was a non-essential burden. Iraqi press accounts afterward that said Nidal committed suicide and that he had multiple gunshot wounds. Perhaps that was what Trump was thinking when he applauded Hussein for killing terrorists “so good.” But the bigger picture of Iraq’s ties with Abu Nidal begs the question of whether the end was the most important part of this relationship.

It also seems to have slipped by Trump that the Iraqi dictator often used his own intelligence service to stage terrorist attacks. The best known case got more than a little press because it involved an effort to kill a former American president. In April 1993, shortly after leaving office, George H.W. Bush visited Kuwait, the country his administration liberated from Iraqi occupation. Hussein sought retribution through a car bombing arranged by his intelligence service.

The Kuwaitis uncovered the plot before Bush arrived. Two months later, after the suspects confessed and the full picture of the operation was clear, President Bill Clinton sent 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Iraqi intelligence headquarters. It was his administration’s first use of military force.

This was not exactly a hidden chapter in history. Indeed, President George W. Bush reminded everyone in late 2002 that Saddam was “the guy who tried to kill my dad”—a remark that launched countless conjectures about the motivation behind the American march to war in Iraq.

It is odd that Trump seems to have no memory of the incident and odder still that he holds up Hussein as being on the right side of the terrorism issue. Unimpeachable ignorance and no moral compass. Trump does that so good. Over.

By Daniel Benjamin,

July 10, 2016 0 comment

MEK Camp Ashraf

Could the MEK be evicted from Camp Ashraf?

Iraqi Government is determined to expel Mujahedin Khalq Organization from its territory but in order to fulfill its desired decision; Iraqi officials have to challenge the absolutely cultlike structure of the group. The problematic obstacle against Iraqi will is the nature of the terrorist destructive cult of MKO . Rania Abouzeid of the Time describes the incidents at Camp Ashraf based on Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN who himself seems to be not enough informed on what exactly happened in Camp Ashraf:
Could the MEK be evicted from Camp Ashraf by Iraqi Military?
For years, Iraq’s increasingly pro-Iranian government has threatened to evict the 3,400 Iranian members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a fiercely anti-Tehran group, from its sprawling former military base at Camp Ashraf, some 40 miles (65 km) from Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, and 50 miles (80 km) from the Iranian border. Despite the heated rhetoric, however, Baghdad has never fully articulated how it will uproot the exiles — who refuse to leave their decades-old enclave — beyond saying it will not forcibly do so. The dead include at least seven women, according to Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. "Most of those killed appear to have been shot. However, several suffered other types of injuries that would suggest they were hit by vehicles," he told TIME from Geneva. "It has been extremely difficult to gain access to the camp, and many details about the exact circumstances surrounding this tragedy remain unknown at this point. The Iraqi authorities and the [MEK] are giving wildly differing accounts."

The TIME correspondent view Camp Ashraf and Mujahedin Khalq as a source of contention in US-Iran-Iraq relations :
The camp is a major irritant to Baghdad’s ties with Tehran and is perhaps one of the strangest holdovers from the dramatic shift in relations between Iraq, its once bitter foe Iran and their former and current mutual enemy the United States. The MEK, which is also known by the acronym MKO and by the name the People’s Mujahedin, was given Camp Ashraf by Hussein during his bitter eight-year war with neighboring Iran. He funded and armed the group, which launched attacks on Iran from Iraq.

Although the camp was disarmed in 2003 by the U.S. military, both Baghdad and Washington consider the MEK a terrorist organization. Washington has blacklisted the group for its attacks against U.S. interests in the 1970s and ’80s. Iraqi officials have frequently said the Iranian exiles are "illegal aliens" with no legal right to remain in the country and that they must travel to either Iran or another country. They have repeatedly warned that they will close the camp, which was under U.S. military protection until 2009, when responsibility was transferred to Iraq under a comprehensive bilateral agreement. Deadlines for closing Camp Ashraf have come and gone. This week Iraq said the group must leave the country by the end of the year.

She describes the cult-like structure of MKO:
Camp Ashraf, with its gender-segregated dormitories, manicured lawns, flower beds and tree-lined streets, is the only home many of the residents have known. The MEK maintains firm control over its members, preventing them from marrying and restricting or preventing contact with family elsewhere.

Abouzeid views the issue of Camp Ashraf as a difficult problem to cope with due to the stubbornness of the MKO and the hatred of Iraqi people towards MKO:
The standoff is unlikely to end well or soon, given that the MEK won’t even consider relocating within Iraq (the government wants to move the group away from the Iranian border), let alone overseas, unless strict (and some say unrealistic) conditions are met. Kia, the MEK representative, says the group will consider returning to Iran if "freedom of speech and political activities are guaranteed," an impossibility for a group determined to bring down Tehran’s clerical leaders. "The second option is to transfer all of the residents to the U.S. or one of the E.U. member states," he says.
..
The recent raid wasn’t the first instance of bloodshed between the Iraqi military and the camp’s residents since the U.S. handed over responsibility for it, but it was the most serious. In mid-2009, Iraqi security forces briefly tried to wrench control of the MEK base from its leaders after the Iraqis were denied a request to establish a police station inside the camp. At least six residents were killed and dozens wounded in the ensuing clashes. Things can rapidly devolve into violence once again, given growing Iraqi frustration with the organization, whose members exhibit a cultlike obedience and willingness to sacrifice themselves for their cause.

MKO propagates the residents of Camp Ashraf with it’s increasingly accelerate machine:
The MEK’s slick and efficient p.r. machine is well primed to exploit the situation. It has a ready list of European and American political figures eager to defend it (and who are looking for reasons to argue against its terrorist designation in the U.S.). These include former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, former National Security Adviser General James Jones and former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. After a legal battle, the E.U. removed the organization from its terrorist list in 2009; the U.K. did so in 2008.

April 17, 2011 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq as an Opposition Group

In Iran Crisis, Paris Exile Group Plays Disputed Role

As millions of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran over the past week to protest the presidential-election results, exiled opposition group the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) saw its moment. "This uprising is the result of 30 years of murder, oppression and corruption by an Iranian regime we’ve dedicated our entire lives to fighting," Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of foreign affairs for the Paris-based group told TIME. "Even if protesters aren’t calling for [the NCRI] to take power, it’s only natural that, given our organization’s experience, our clandestine networks are playing an important role informing and assisting the Iranian people to achieve its desire of regime change."

Iranian police accused the NCRI and its "terrorist" supporters of fomenting the violence. As evidence, Iran said several NCRI-linked operatives had been arrested after smuggling guns and explosives into the country and carrying out "terrorist acts." On Sunday, the NCRI dismissed the story and mocked what it called the "preposterous and threadbare claims to justify the suppression and killings inside Iran.

Dramatic as all that sounds, it doesn’t square with the reality described by Iran experts. Diplomats, academics and intelligence officials say most people inside Iran want nothing to do with the NCRI or its primary member organization, Mujehadine-e-Khalq (MEK) — whose bloody attacks on the Iranian regime in the 1980s and ’90s landed it on the U.S.’s terrorism list. Experts say the NCRI’s support in Iran is now tiny and its international base is shrinking. The NCRI and MEK, say Iran watchers, have become little more than an excuse — or handy alibi — for Tehran’s crackdown.

"The Iranian population is generally frightened of or repelled by [the NCRI], and the supporters in [Iran] … have all mostly vanished," says Olivier Roy, one of France’s leading experts on Middle East politics and Islam. "It now basically operates abroad as a sect with international branches whose membership is dwindling as its base grows older and young people shun it."

The group’s officials disagree. They claim the NCRI has thousands of members in Europe and North America. As evidence, they point to a rally outside Paris on Saturday that drew as many as 90,000 people to protest the situation in Iran. NCRI leaders are also quick to point out that the organization supplied information from inside Iran that was pivotal in documenting Tehran’s military nuclear ambitions — a fact acknowledged by Western diplomats.

While conceding that the NCRI’s clandestine networks in Iran have been hit by the execution of what he says has been thousands of members and sympathizers over the past two decades, foreign-affairs chairman Mohaddessin says a recent burst of recruiting and activity has restored some of the group’s ability to operate inside the country. Operatives there, he says, are busy gathering intelligence and organizing to undermine the regime. According to Mohaddessin, sympathizers secretly monitored more than half the polling stations during the presidential election, providing the NCRI with enough information to claim that scarcely 15% of Iranian voters bothered casting ballots at all, a number at odds with the reportedly massive turnout seen by foreign media and other observers and the government figure that put participation at 85%.

The NCRI was founded in 1981 to serve as an umbrella organization to Iranian opposition groups, and its dominant force has always been the MEK, which espouses a curious mix of Marxism and Islamist militancy. MEK originally worked with radical Islamist organizations to topple the Shah and rid Iran of what it described as Western imperialism. In the wake of the 1979 revolution, though, the group found itself under attack by its former allies in the new Islamic regime and took up arms. Its military wing was based in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. From there, MEK carried out assassination and terrorist strikes inside Iran and fought alongside Saddam’s army in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

"Many Iranians know victims of MEK violence or still feel the fear and fury its name provokes," says a French counterterrorism official who has followed the NCRI and MEK. "Because MEK remains widely hated in Iran, the mere threat by Iranian leaders that it and NCRI are waiting to take over in the event of crisis tends to chill musings of regime change in Iranian streets."

The U.S., Canada and European Union put the MEK on terrorism blacklists nearly a decade ago. Those governments also alleged that the NCRI was essentially the political arm of the MEK, a claim the NCRI says misrepresents the relationship between the two groups. Though the resulting blacklisting has withstood legal challenge in the U.S. and Canada, a European court this year struck down the MEK’s terrorist listing in the E.U. The new ruling was based on an earlier British court decision that ordered the terrorist designation be lifted because of a lack of evidence that the MEK had been involved in terrorist activity since it renounced violence in 2001. (In Iraq, the U.S. Army disarmed MEK’s Ashraf compound in the country’s east in 2003, calling it a security threat. The Iraqi government has indicated it will close the camp completely.)

Middle East expert Roy says the claims and counterclaims miss the bigger point. While Iranian leaders obsessively hate the NCRI for historical reasons, he says, the NCRI is largely an irrelevancy these days..
TIME – By BRUCE CRUMLEY – Jun. 22, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/
0,8599,1906172,00.html?xid=rss-world-cnn

June 24, 2009 0 comment

MEK Camp Ashraf

An Anti-Iranian Enclave in Iraq Fights to Stay

The dozens of middle-aged Iranians standing in six neat, gender-segregated rows stare straight ahead from behind the chain-link fence close to the entrance of Camp Ashraf, some 40 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala near the Iranian border. "Ashraf is our home, Ashraf is our home," they robotically chant in Iranian-accented Arabic, as they jab their right fists into the air in unison.

Some of the women, who are all dressed in pantsuits with long jackets and colorful headscarves tied under the chin, carry placards in Persian. A bright yellow banner shimmers in the mid-morning sun. "Ashraf is the city of peace," it says in Arabic.

Most of the time there’s nobody outside Camp Ashraf to hear the members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a fiercely anti-Tehran group who have been based here for the past two decades. That is, unless you count the Iraqi security forces who took over control of the perimeter of the 19-sq.-mile camp in February from U.S troops. The Americans had protected it since the 2003 invasion. But the Iraqi soldiers, like their government in Baghdad, don’t appear keen to listen to the chanting. The MEK should "understand that their days in Iraq are numbered," National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie said recently. "We are literally counting them."

Saddam Hussein’s regime — no friend of the ayatollahs of Iran — welcomed the MEK in the mid-’80s, inviting them to set up a military camp and supplying them with hundreds of armored vehicles and other forms of support. Although in recent months Camp Ashraf’s residents have swapped their once-mandatory olive green military fatigues for civilian garb, both Iraq and the U.S State Department consider the MEK a terrorist group. In 2003, the U.S military disarmed Ashraf. (After a legal battle, the European Union removed the organization from its terrorist list in January; the United Kingdom did so in 2008).

The camp, which is more like a sprawling village with flower-filled parks and tree-lined avenues dotted with old-fashioned white lampposts, is home to 3,418 people, about a 1,000 of whom are dual citizens with non-Iranian travel documents issued by Western governments including the U.S, Canada, Australia, and the European Union. It has become an irritant to Baghdad’s increasingly close ties to Tehran. Iraq wants to close it, on the grounds that its residents are "terrorists" and "illegal foreigners." Still, deadlines for doing so have come and gone (the most recent was in late March). The stalemate continues: The MEK refuses to leave, and the Iraqi government has said it will not force them out.

"They want to physically purge everybody here," says Hossein Madani, an MEK spokesman and liaison to the Iraqi government. "There is an Iranian agenda that wants Ashraf residents out of Iraq." That may be, but government officials say the camp’s closure is also in Iraq’s national interest. "We do not want any friction with our neighbors," Rubaie says. The days when Iraq was used as a base to launch attacks against its neighbors, whether by the MEK along the eastern border with Iran, or by the Kurdish separatist PKK along the northern border with Turkey, are over, he says.

While the Iraqi government has made it clear it’s withdrawing the welcome mat extended to the MEK by Saddam Hussein, it has stopped short of saying how it will get them to leave. Despite its assurances against forced repatriation, especially if individuals may be harmed in their home country, MEK members fear they will be deported to Iran, where they say they will face imprisonment or execution. MEK representatives talk loudly of a potential humanitarian catastrophe.

While the MEK may question the veracity of Baghdad’s concerns, in recent years the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has helped more than 250 members enter Iran from across the Iranian border with little fanfare. "We are there as witnesses to make sure everything goes well," says Dorothea Krimitsas, ICRC spokesperson for the Middle East, adding that if allegations of ill treatment arose, the ICRC, would take them up with the authorities. Krimitsas says the ICRC hasn’t received any new requests for voluntary repatriation. But that’s only one way to leave. There are reports that in recent months defections from the camp have increased, although Ashraf leaders deny that anyone has left since January.

In the increasingly acrimonious debate about the future of Camp Ashraf, especially between Rubaie and MEK leaders, the quest for straight answers sometimes seems like a fool’s errand. It’s made more so by each side’s well-oiled PR machines that are adept at periodically sliding slippery claims and counter-claims into the media. For example, the MEK claims that Iraqis are withholding food and medical supplies and preventing doctors from entering the camp. That’s "baseless, it’s a pack of lies," Rubaie says. Similarly, Rubaie insists that the MEK is a cult, whose "brainwashed" members need to be separated from the 25 or so leaders and "detoxified" so they can resume normal lives. "Sheer lies," says Madani, the MEK spokesman.

Nevertheless, former members claim that the MEK is a cult, one that isolates adherents from their families, seeks to control them by limiting access to outside information, and prevents them from having sex. Indeed, there are no children at Camp Ashraf. The youngest residents are in their 20s, something MEK legal advisor Behzad Saffari says is because "military camps are not places for family life."

Yet when pressed for reasons why they should remain in Ashraf, given that they are not Iraqis and the new regime doesn’t want them, Saffari, Madani and several other MEK leaders as well as a number of residents, all bring up fervent, personal feelings. "We are not talking about different regimes, we are talking about personal lives," says Madani. "We have made a home here." He goes further. "We are not trying to have any impact on the Iranian regime. What does the Iranian regime want from us?"

The misunderstandings don’t stop there. An inter-agency task force including the CIA, FBI and other U.S bodies screened the residents of Ashraf in 2004 to determine if any were prosecutable under U.S law for alleged terrorist activities. The MEK insists that its members were all cleared. "The U.S. does not officially consider Ashraf residents as terrorists," says Madani. "MEK is something else." However, a U.S. official says that the residents of Ashraf who are members of the MEK are considered part of a terrorist organization. The official adds that non-member residents may also be considered to have provided material support to the organization. An MEK spokesman says all of the camp’s 3,418 residents are members of the group.

The MEK also insist its members still have the "protected persons status" issued by the U.S after the 2003 invasion. Madani pulls a photo ID out of his wallet that indicates that he is a protected person. "This is a permanent card," he says. "It has no time of expiration." The obligation to treat the MEK as protected persons under the law of war ended when the Coalition Provisional Authority handed over responsibility for governing Iraq to the Iraqi interim government in June 2004 which ended the occupation of Iraq. "Protected person status is never a permanent status as it applies only during circumstances of armed conflict or occupation," a Western official says.

The claims and counterclaims will no doubt continue to ricochet between Baghdad, Tehran, Washington and of course, Camp Ashraf. As two journalists head out of the camp in the early evening, past the segregated, one-story barracks-style dormitories and canteens, along paved streets lined by eucalyptus and palm trees and dotted with orange and yellow daisies, the faint echo of chanting protesters gradually gets louder. The people with the placards are still standing near the entrance, still staring out beyond the camp, still chanting. And there’s still nobody there to listen.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1890590,00.html

Rania Abouzeid / Camp Ashraf

April 13, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Iran Group in Iraq Poses Thorny Issue for U.S.

many years, the roughly 3,500 members of the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) living quietly in Iraq drew little attention. But now the relatively obscure group is at the center of an increasingly contentious argument among leaders in Baghdad, Tehran and Washington, where decisions the new White House makes about the rebels will probably set the tone for U.S. relations with Iran in the near term.

The simmering issue of the MEK’s fate flashed into the open earlier this month when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki unexpectedly declared that the group would no longer be allowed to remain in Iraq. Shortly after that, Maliki’s national security adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, said the MEK’s camp roughly 40 miles north of Baghdad would be disbanded within two months, declaring during an appearance in Tehran that Iraq would not play host to threats toward its neighbor.

The issue grew more complicated on Jan. 26, when the European Union removed the MEK from its list of terrorist organizations, a roster that includes organizations such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The E.U. move, which came after a long lobbying campaign by the MEK’s supporters in Europe, sparked an outcry in Tehran. About 300 people were gathered around noon on Wednesday in front of the British Embassy in Tehran to protest the E.U. decision. Some in the crowd threw stones at the embassy, while others held up shoes on sticks in a show of deep disrespect in the Middle East.

"What people side with the enemy and kill their own people in a war?" said demonstrator Sina Zamanian, 17, referring to the MEK’s alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, which led them to settle in Iraq. "They are the worst kind of opportunistic terrorists and should be forever marked as such."

Nevertheless, some in Baghdad are calling for the group to be allowed to remain in Iraq, or at least to not be turned over to Iran, for political reasons. "We have to deal with this issue very delicately," says Ayad Jamal al-Deen, an Iraqi parliamentarian aligned with Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "I’m not here to defend this organization. I have no interest in them. But I am looking out for the Iraqi national interest." Al-Deen and other Iraqi political figures see the group essentially as a bargaining chip with Iran, one of the few Iraq holds against its powerful neighbor. They argue that simply shuttering the MEK camp as Iran demands squanders what precious little leverage Iraq has against Iran. Al-Deen adds, "In my opinion, Iraq has only this card, MEK, to pressure Iran."

At the moment, however, the MEK’s ability to remain in Iraq depends on the will of the Americans. The Bush White House continued to use the military to protect the MEK at Camp Ashraf despite its current status as a terrorist organization on the U.S. list and periodic complaints by the emerging Iraqi government and Tehran, which says the group is still involved in subversive activity inside Iran. Outwardly, U.S. officials have said disbanding the camp would be in contravention of international humanitarian law because the group’s members are likely to face persecution in Iran or Iraq. But many Iraqis and Iranians suspect that the U.S. keeps the camp open for intelligence purposes, since the MEK’s spy network played a key role in uncovering Iran’s secret uranium-enrichment program in 2002.

Maliki appears intent on pressing the issue anew with the Obama Administration, which will have to decide soon whether to keep offering U.S. protection to the group or to yield to Iraqi demands to close Camp Ashraf. If the White House allows the Iraqi government to close the camp, the Iranian leadership is likely to see the move as a sign that the new Administration is eager to ease tensions between Washington and Tehran. A continuation of the status quo, however, could chill Obama’s early outreach efforts.

At Camp Ashraf, MEK members simply wait for word on what may happen to them as discussions continue in Baghdad, Tehran and Washington. Shahriar Kia, a spokesman for the group, says a closure of the camp would be a disaster for those living in what amounts to a protective quarantine for roughly the past seven years. "Closing down Camp Ashraf and the displacement of its residents, who are protected by the Geneva Conventions, against their will is a war crime," says Kia. "This will cause a humanitarian catastrophe."
— With reporting by Tariq Anmar in Baghdad
By Mark Kukis / Baghdad

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1875917,00.html

February 1, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Iranian Resistance Group a Source of Contention in Iraq

During his speech on New Year’s Day to celebrate the official transfer of Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone to Iraqi control, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared Jan. 1 the “day of sovereignty” and congratulated his Iranian Resistance Group a Source of Contention in Iraq compatriots for having waited so long. He also warned that an Iranian resistance group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), would no longer be able to have a base on Iraqi territory.
To some Western observers in Baghdad, it seemed like an odd thing for al-Maliki to mention, given the more momentous theme of the day. The MEK is an obscure group known for launching attacks on Iran in the 1980s and ’90s, when Iraq and Iran were bitter, warring enemies. But since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the MEK has been stripped of its weapons, confined to its base at Camp Ashraf about 80 miles north of Baghdad and guarded by U.S. troops. The group is hardly an immediate threat to Iraqi security, or even particularly relevant to the challenges Iraq faces under the new U.S.-Iraq security pact.
But when the U.S. military formally transferred control of Camp Ashraf back to the Iraqi government on Jan. 1, the MEK’s fate suddenly became an issue. The group is a source of contention for Iran and the U.S., Iraq’s two biggest allies, who are increasingly vying for influence as Baghdad’s post–Saddam Hussein Shi’ite government asserts its independence. All three countries label the MEK a terrorist organization. Iran wants the group handed over for prosecution. But the U.S. has pledged to ensure the group’s rights under international law.
The question now isn’t just what to do with the 3,500 Iranians at Camp Ashraf — it’s also who decides their future. Past U.S. ties to the group suggest that the Geneva Convention isn’t the only reason Washington might not want to throw the MEK to the wolves just yet. But how deeply is Washington invested? The answer may lie in how Baghdad chooses to deal with the group.
Founded in Iran in the 1960s on an ideological platform merging Marxism and Islamism, the MEK worked alongside followers of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini to overthrow the shah in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and assisted in the ensuing U.S. embassy hostage crisis. But they clashed with Khomeini in the years that followed, leading to the killing, imprisonment and exile of thousands of the group’s members. In 1986 the MEK set up a base at Camp Ashraf, located in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province, and began receiving funding and protection from Saddam to launch attacks over the border into Iran.
Despite its position on the U.S. terrorist list since 1997, and reports by former members of abusive and cultlike practices at Ashraf, the MEK has gathered support from some surprising places abroad — especially since the U.S. invasion — by pitching itself as a viable opposition to the mullahs in Tehran. “They have been extremely clever and very, very effective in their propaganda and lobbying of members of Congress,” says Gary Sick, a Persian Gulf expert at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute and the author of All Fall Down: America’s Tragic Encounter With Iran. “They get all sorts of people to sign their petitions. Many times the Congressmen don’t know what they’re signing.” But others, Sick adds, “are quite aware of the fact that this is a designated terrorist organization, and they are quite willing to look the other way for a group that they think is a democratic alternative to the Iranian regime.”
The group’s Paris-based umbrella organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has held fundraisers in Washington. One of the group’s former spokesmen, Alireza Jafarzadeh, now serves as a Fox News foreign affairs analyst. From Paris, the group’s leader, Maryam Rajavi, has waged an effective p.r. campaign, gathering a following of European MPs to support removal of the group from the E.U.’s terrorist list and to oppose Ashraf’s closure.
Even some Iraqis see value in keeping the camp intact. “We have many differences with Iran, and Iran is very deeply involved in Iraq, so I don’t think it’s wise to end the Iranian resistance,” said Salah al-Mutlaq, a Sunni member of parliament from the Iraqi National Dialogue Front. “For the Americans, surrendering the Mujahedin-e Khalq file to the Iraqi government is a big mistake.”
For the most part, however, the MEK is no more popular with the Iraqi population than it is with the central government. In his speech from the Green Zone on New Year’s Day, al-Maliki made it clear that the MEK would lose its protected status. “This group has been labeled a terrorist organization,” al-Maliki said. “It can no longer operate in Iraq after today because it has caused a political crisis that contradicts the constitution … We will never force any of these people to go back to their country … but Iraq cannot be a base for these people.”
The move to oust the MEK was anticipated, but the promise not to deport them to Iran was a welcome relief for the group’s supporters and human rights organizations. For months, the National Council of Resistance of Iran has led demonstrations in New York, Paris, Geneva and Washington to protest the possible transfer of Camp Ashraf’s residents to Iran. Al-Maliki’s decision not to hand them over may indicate a small U.S. victory.
While the U.S. government has remained relatively quiet on the Ashraf issue lately, Washington’s approach isn’t entirely passive. In a Jan. 1 press release, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad said an unspecified number of U.S. troops have remained at the camp since the formal handover of control to Iraq. “U.S. forces will maintain a presence at Camp Ashraf and will continue to assist the government of Iraq in carrying out its assurances of humane treatment of the residents of Camp Ashraf,” the release stated. The Iraqi government provided written assurances that the group would be treated in accordance with Iraqi law, and the U.S. government would remain involved in resolving the group’s future, according to the release. U.S. embassy officials declined to comment on what that future might look like.
Just two days after making his declaration to the MEK, al-Maliki left for a scheduled diplomatic visit to Iran — his fourth since taking office. The Iraqi Prime Minister was expected to try to ease fears that Iraq might be used as a base to attack Iran. He has pledged that won’t happen. But it remains uncertain as to what is in store for the MEK.
— With reporting by Mazin Ezzat / Baghdad

By Abigail Hauslohner – time.com

January 27, 2009 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq out of Iraq, into Britain

Labour stands up to judges by backing Tehran on dissidents

Gordon Brown is preparing to defy Britain’s most senior judge to keep an Iranian opposition group on the list of proscribed terrorist organisations.

Ministers will begin moves to lift a ban on the People’s Mujahidin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) tomorrow after Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, found that there was no evidence it was “concerned in terrorism”.

However, Mr Brown has ordered Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, to ban the PMOI’s military wing instead, The Times has learnt. The Prime Minister is said to be keen to take on the courts following the decision to free the radical cleric, Abu Qatada, on bail.

Critics say that his determination to keep the PMOI on the list of outlawed organisations owes more to diplomatic pressure from Iran than with the fight against terrorism.

The dissident group, which claims to be working for a democratic, socialist, Islamic government in Iran, was first banned in Britain in 2001 by Jack Straw, then Home Secretary. He later admitted that it was included “at the request of the Tehran Government”. It is a criminal offence for a person to belong to or to encourage support for a proscribed organisation.

Supporters say that the PMOI gave up violence five years ago and point out that it helped to provide evidence of Iran’s nuclear programme in 2002. Last month the Court of Appeal, led by Lord Phillips, upheld a previous ruling that the ban was perverse. The Court of Appeal stated that the Home Secretary “could not reasonably have formed the view” that the PMOI intended to revert to terrorism.

A Whitehall official has told The Times that the Government will seek to ban the PMOI’s military wing, the National Resistance Army of Iran (NLA) — even though the group says that it is defunct. Ministers are also considering changing the law to expand the grounds on which groups can be banned.

The Home Secretary hinted at further action immediately after last month’s ruling by the Court of Appeal. “The PMOI has a long history of terrorism and this is why it was proscribed both in the UK and by other countries around the world,” she said.

Iran has been exerting pressure on ministers to keep the ban on the PMOI, which is part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. “They have threatened to withdraw diplomats over this unless the ban stays,” one well-placed figure said

Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor,

June 22, 2008 0 comment

Britain accused of failing to outlaw banned terror groups

Some of Britain’s closest allies in the fight against terrorism have accused the Government of allowing banned terrorist organisations to operate openly in this country.

An investigation by The Times has revealed that at least six countries have complained about the failure of the Government to enforce the Terrorism Act 2000, which proscribes 46 foreign terrorist organisations.

The countries include Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Iran has also voiced criticism. America, Britain’s closest ally, is known to have serious reservations about the Government’s commitment to enforcing the law.

The Terrorism Act 2000, which was introduced by Jack Straw, now the Justice Minister, was supposed to prevent London becoming an important terrorist hub, where groups were able to raise funds, distribute propaganda and plan terrorist operations.

From the start, however, the law has been difficult to apply. Many groups simply changed their names, others concealed their operations and some simply seem to have been ignored by the authorities.

One of the most blatant cases is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist movement responsible for a recent spate of attacks in southern Turkey.

A Turkish official said that the group ran a multimillion-pound operation in North London, controlling businesses, running a political office and printing a newspaper.

“The British Government tolerates the PKK,” a Turkish official said. “if anything the group has increased its profile over the past decade.”

He said that where once the organisation extorted money from local businesses and ran human trafficking rings, now it owned supermarkets, jewellers, cafÃ©s and restaurants.

“We have complained so often about this to the British authorities that we are sick and tired of nothing being done,” he told The Times.

Pakistan, arguably Britain’s most important ally in fighting terrorism, also feels aggrieved. It has repeatedly helped the British authorities to track and apprehend terror suspects, yet it feels that its own problems have been ignored.

A Pakistani official said that Britain was “slow to respond” to the activities of the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), which is on the Home Office proscribed list. The Pakistanis are also frustrated that Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Muslim group banned in Pakistan, has still not been proscribed in Britain despite promises from the Government.

Similar complaints have been made by the Sri Lankan High Commission over the activities of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, another banned group that continues to raise money and distribute propaganda in Britain among the expatriate Tamil community.

The Israeli Embassy in London has also had reason to complain over the activities of Hezbollah, the militant Shia Muslim group in Lebanon, and Hamas, the radical Palestinian group responsible for attacks against Israel.

“Hamas has been using the UK for the past few years as a major centre for publishing and distributing incitement-based material, whilst taking advantage of legal loopholes and lenient enforcement policy, an Israeli official said.

He added that a senior Hezbollah member, involved in the group’s al-Manar broadcasting service, was recently granted a visa to visit London. Al-Manar has been taken off the air in France and other countries for anti-Semitic programmes and glorifying terrorist attacks.

Saudi Arabia, another key partner in the anti-terror campaign, is also unhappy that Saudi exiles in Britain, some with connections to al-Qaeda, are able to operate openly.

“To be allowed to use Britain as a base to attack other governments and societies, to us this is puzzling,” Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, the Saudi Ambassador to London, told The Times.

“We have no problem with people seeing Britain as a safe haven, but they should not use that generosity to attack other countries and to undermine relations between Britain and other countries,” he said. “And they should absolutely not use Britain as a platform from which they can preach an ideology of hatred and violence."

Part of the problem is the support that some groups enjoy from the British Establishment. Last week the banned Mujahidin-e-Khalq won a court appeal to have its name removed from the terrorist list, in a move supported by dozens of MPs.

The group, which currently operates under the name the National Council of Iranian Resistance, was armed and financed for years by Saddam Hussein and is responsible for attacks against targets in Iran.

Patrick Mercer MP, who sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee, urged the Government to enforce its own laws.

“An organisation is either proscribed or it is not. If it is proscribed then it must be given the pariah status that it deserves,” he said. “If the Government will not enforce these proscriptions, what is the point in doing it?”

The Home Office insisted that the proscription was an effective way of preventing terrorist groups operating in Britain.

“It is for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to take action where there is evidence of an offence being committed,” a Home Office spokesman said.

“Clearly, it is easier for the Police and Crown Prosecution Service to take action where they have firm evidence of illegal activities taking place. Any evidence that funds are being directed to a proscribed organisation from within the UK should be passed to the police.”

The Time

Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor of The Times, and Zahid Hussain, December 8, 2007

January 16, 2008 0 comment

Europe

The West cannot take the Mojahedin seriously

In an article by James Graff, “Are The PMOI Iran’s last Hope For A Peaceful Solution?”, TIME Europe has discussed the position of the MKO in the west. Graff wrote:

“…But there are also reasons why Western governments remain wary: among them are the group’s ideological origins in a mixture of Marxism and Islam, the aid they offered to and received from Saddam Hussein, and charges, which they deny, implicating them in terrorist acts in Iran. Many independent analysts, such as Paris-based sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, say the group has few supporters inside Iran.

The PMOI’s terrorist listing was first secured nine years ago as a concession to the reformist government of Mohammed Khatami, but it has been consistently renewed since then. A legal challenge to the designation was denied in 2004 by the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, in a judgment written by John Roberts, now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. At Le Bourget, a number of sympathetic politicians spoke in support of the organization, but none who have the ear of sitting governments.

The widow of President François Mitterrand, Danielle, headlined the French contingent, which also featured Edith Cresson, whose stints as prime minister and European Commissioner brought her little credit. And so the battle continues. The Le Bourget gathering had the harmless character of a political rally-cum-family reunion rather than the menace of a terrorist conclave. But the PMOI represents a Third Way the West is still unlikely to embrace — even if it has no other good options either.

Full article:

http://www.time.com/time/europe/eu/article/0,13716,1211079,00.html

TIME Europe, July 10, 2006

July 12, 2006 0 comment