Articles

Totalitarian Ideological leader of MKO

If political objectives are determined in accordance with true requirements of the society, they can simply play their role in the way to achieve human rights, freedom and the ideal democracy. The investigation of MKO’s objectives, ideas, functions and political positions, clearly show that the group’s ideological leader is a totalitarian, fascist one.

The manner a political group evaluates its political goals, will justify the existence or non-existence of the group.

Therefore, the gang of Rajavi who has been engaged in terrorist acts, armed struggle policy and suicide operations, for more than three decades – to achieve power in Iran – will have no fate except removal from international political scene although they have never had a significant role.

The final objective of terrorist cult of MKO is the absolute sovereignty on human beings and the accomplishment of Rajavi’s middle-aged ideas under the cover of religion and democracy.

The investigation of MKO’s objectives, ideas, functions and political positions, clearly show that the group’s ideological leader is a totalitarian, fascist one.

The totalitarian, fascist approach of the leader is obviously represented in the internal relations of the group. Camp Ashraf, as the ideological and strategic container of MKO is the concrete symbol of totalitarianism in MKO style where the worst terrorist, manipulative approaches are performed.

The testimonies of a lot of defectors of the cult reveal physical and psychological torture of dissident members, solitary confinement, and suppression of emotional and sexual needs in the name of ideological revolution.

The mind control system which includes manipulation meetings and brainwashing sessions (Cult jargons) helps the ideological leader relate all aspects of the lives of Ashraf residents to their so-called armed struggle and terrorist strategy. When a group of individuals are isolated in a Camp in desert, under a mind control system behind physical and mental bars, for three decades and the relations are organized on the basis of an ill-minded leader’s thoughts, totalitarianism is definitely achieved. It is obvious that opposing such a horrifying system is not simply feasible.

In a totalitarian system, one can except any kind of behavior such as terror act, suicide, homicide, hunger strike … since the people in the system are some humiliated individuals without free will. They are very useful victims for their leader.

Doubtlessly, in the age of democratic evolutions, cults like MKO and Al-Qaida that prepare violent terrorist agents to accomplish their ambitious goals, will never succeed in running their ideas. The historical experiences prove the declining way of such cults as an unchangeable tradition.

By Arash Rezaiee

September 16, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Hunger Strike: Idiot Behavior or Negative Reaction

Imposing hunger strike on Ashraf residents is a reality. It is a being which is now showing off in Camp Ashraf but it is not a truth. According to MEK leaders “the reality is the wisdom”: a formula that was only made to intrigue public opinion. This rationale is based on covering the true facts. Hunger Strike: Idiot Behavior or Negative Reaction

In political terms, hunger strike is a behavior that is acted as the last resort to achieve some logic demands while MEK leaders imposed hunger strike on the members to draw American attention and protection to themselves although the isolated members are totally unaware of the regional or international affairs going on.

With their silly demand, Rajavi’s gang is in fact driving to an amazing paradox. They forgot their reaction to September 11th disastrous attack on twin towers of WTC which ended with the death of thousands of innocent Americans and non-Americans.

At the time, Massoud Rajavi and Maryam Azdanlou held a public meeting in Camp Bagher zade, celebrating the event, cheering with victorious gestures.

Massoud Rajavi told his brainwashed members:”this was the reactionary Islam to do this to America, Wait for the revolutionary Islam when it shows its iron fist”.

During the meeting he tried to combine the violent acts of Usama Bin Laden with MEK’s terrorist trends, to conclude his own plan for the audience. In the September 11th meeting at Camp Bagher zade, he said:”If those courageous forces of Usama Bin Laden who are not well organized and are only able to commit military acts could enter our organization, they would be able to achieve many other objectives.”

In fact, Rajavi believed that terrorist acts should be led in MEK manner under its coherent organizational system, and then the objectives would be better achieved.

Thinking deeply about the ill mind of MEK’s ideological leader who just thinks of terror and killing to achieve power, brings questions on the motive of current hunger strike in Camp Ashraf. How could MKO leaders ask for favor of Americans whom they cheered their massacre on Sep.11th. A look at the two contradictory events recalls us that hunger strike of Ashraf residents is a deceitful behavior for vain goals.

The recent report issued by RAND notifies the motives of MEK leader for spying for the US and receiving the support of American officials.

It is clear that American political, military and security officials are determined to stop using MKO since their role is expired. Thus victimizing Ashraf residents, forcing them to go on hunger strike, is an idiot behavior which is like a suicide. But as usual the leaders of MKO will not bear the least expenses; instead they use the blood of the residents as the fuel of their propaganda machine. The members are the only ones to pay the raison of Rajavi’s blind strategy.

By Arash Rezaiee

September 13, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Inept at Both Killing and Coddling Terrorists

The latest rationale – an old one, really, now recycled – for the endless NATO mission in Afghanistan – is that we are there to cleanse that country of terrorists. But not all terrorists are created equal. Some terrorists we rather like.

Washington is angry at Baghdad because Iraqi troops recently stormed a camp north of Baghdad belonging to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq.

That’s the Iranian group that several American administrations have backed, even though the state department branded it a terrorist organization for killing Americans and others in the 1970s. (Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyed Khamenei, is partially paralyzed from an alleged Mujahid attack).

In 1986, the group was welcomed and armed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, then waging a war on Iran – with American blessing.

The group joined his war on Iran and reportedly also his domestic wars on the Kurds and Shiites.

Even after the U.S. turned Saddam from friend to foe, it continued his policy of befriending the enemy of the enemy. Hawkish members of Congress shilled for the Mujahideen, despite reports that the group had become a cult. Defectors were telling horror stories of devotees being indoctrinated, forced to live gender-separated lives, and of families being broken up.

In a twist of fate, the U.S. inherited the Mujahideen camp after its 2003 occupation of Iraq. It disarmed the group but provided it protection. It ignored Iran’s calls for the extradition of the "terrorists."

With last month’s transfer of security to Iraq, the camp lost its U.S. military post. On Tuesday, Iraqi troops moved in. At least seven people were killed, dozens injured.

Iraq wants to close the camp and send its 3,400 inhabitants to Iran or some third countries. About 1,000 are said to hold non-Iranian documents, including Canadian papers.

The Camp Ashraf Iranians cannot be deported to Iran. They won’t feel safe there. That leaves the U.S. and its allies to resettle them. Any takers in Canada, the U.S. and Europe?

The European Union and Britain recently lifted the group’s terrorist designation. Perhaps the more enthusiastic pro-Mujahideen politicians in Europe and North America would now offer their home districts as hosts for their friends.

The war on terror in Afghanistan is going terribly and has been since 2006, as recently acknowledged by Robert Gates, U.S. defence secretary, and Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

The policy of eradicating poppy production has also been "a failure," says Richard Holbrooke, special envoy for Afghanistan. "We wasted hundreds of millions of dollars, put farmers out of work, alienated families, and drove them into the arms of the Taliban."

Casualties, civilian and military, including Canadian, are at a record high. So are Taliban ambushes.

The situation is to be turned around by having more troops take on the Taliban; training more Afghan soldiers; minimizing civilian casualties from air attacks; letting poppy crops be, for now, since they are the largest source of income for farmers; and engaging "moderate Taliban" in negotiations.
Haven’t we heard this before?

How long have NATO and United Nations officials been saying that you can’t win by killing civilians?
Hasn’t the U.S. alone spent $15 billion on training programs? Why would another $10 billion to $20 billion that’s needed to train the required 260,000 Afghans be less prone to corruption and incompetence?

Hasn’t it been accepted wisdom for years that what Afghanistan needs is a political solution? Yet there’s no discernible effort.

While there’s a more honest assessment of the crisis as well as a military and a diplomatic surge under Barack Obama, there’s no coherent long-term plan. What we see instead are limited objectives:

Get Afghanistan through the Aug. 20 presidential election in as peaceful a manner as possible, and prepare the ground for an American exit in time for the midterm U.S. congressional elections in the fall of 2010.

by Haroon Siddiqui – August 2, 2009 by the Toronto Star/Canada
Common Dreams.org

September 12, 2009 0 comments

USA

U.S. will stick to plan for Iraq pullout

U.S. will stick to plan for Iraq pullout – [U.S. monitoring MEK situation at Camp Ashraf]

The United States expects to keep to its plan to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within a year despite a spate of bomb attacks, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said on Thursday.

"During this year we’ll ensure that our troops are withdrawn on schedule, by the president’s timetable," U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In their place would be a "strong healthy relationship between the U.S. and Iraq," he said.

U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein and 130,000 troops still remain to help secure the country and train Iraqi forces. They withdrew from urban centers in June.

President Barack Obama has set a deadline of August 2010 for the removal of U.S. combat forces and all American troops are to be withdrawn by the end of 2011. Some 4,300 U.S. soldiers have been killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis have died and millions displaced in the past six years.

Hill said the Aug. 19 bombings that killed nearly 100 people at the Iraqi finance and foreign ministries had been "particularly horrifying" but he believed the Iraqi people rejected a new cycle of violence.

"The bombings in recent months show that we still have to deal with al Qaeda in Iraq that tries to rekindle violence," said Hill, who has been ambassador since April. "To the great credit of the Iraqi people, they have not risen to the bait."

The top U.S. commander for day-to-day operations in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Charles Jacoby, said he believed that most of the high-profile attacks since June had been carried out by al Qaeda, and that any accelerated U.S. troop withdrawal may hinge on whether those attacks subsided.

DISSIDENTS
"It’s too early really to say right now whether the operational environment is going to support accelerated troop withdrawals. We’ll be ready to do that if we’re asked to and if we think that the security environment has improved," Jacoby told reporters at the Pentagon in a video-conference from Iraq.

"One of the questions is how much longer al Qaeda can continue these types of high-profile attacks. They are not frequent … we will see if they punch themselves out."

In the Senate, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry said that if Iraqis rejected a bilateral security pact with the United States in a possible referendum next year, "then I believe we have no choice but to withdraw all of our forces as quickly as we can."

Hill also said the United States was monitoring the status of Iranian dissidents who were arrested in Iraq in July when Iraqi security forces moved into an Iranian exile camp.
He said U.S. officials had sought and received assurances from Iraq that the 36 detainees would be treated humanely and not sent back to Iran.
"We have made it very clear to the Iraqi government, that we are interested in the well being of these people, the preservation of their human rights; that they should not be forcibly repatriated to Iran," Hill said.

Residents of Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border say the Iraqi government killed at least seven people when security forces moved in on July 28, an incident that raises concerns about the dwindling U.S. influence in Iraq. Thirty-six camp residents were arrested by Iraqi police on charges of rioting.
Camp Ashraf is home to the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) dissident group, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Iraq and Iran. The U.S. military had awarded the 3,500 camp residents protected status after they agreed to surrender weapons in 2004.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous)
By Susan Cornwell

September 12, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK as Human bargaining chips in deals with Iran

Seven summers ago, in a crowded conference room of a Washington hotel, an Iranian exile leader gave the first detailed public account of Iran’s until-then secret nuclear projects at the cities of Natanz and Arak. It greatly turned up the volume of a seemingly endless international controversy over Iran’s nuclear intentions.

The disclosures, on August 14, 2002, did little to earn the group that made them, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), merit points from the U.S. government. A year later, the Washington office of the NCRI, the political offshoot of Iran’s Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) resistance movement, was shut. The State Department placed the group on its list of terrorist organizations. (The MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahideen Organization of Iran, had been given that designation in 1997).

Now, another five summers later, two dozen MEK supporters are on hunger strike across from the White House to exhort the U.S. government to stick to promises to protect some 3,500 members of the organization in a camp north of Baghdad. Iraqi forces stormed Camp Ashraf in late July and the MEK says nine residents were killed in the initial assault. Two have since died of their injuries.

Hunger strikes in solidarity with the residents of Camp Ashraf were also taking place in Berlin, London, Brussels and Ottawa and at the camp itself. They draw attention to an arrangement that was both unique and bizarre – an enclave of people labeled terrorists by Washington but protected by U.S. military forces – and speak volumes about erratic U.S. policies on a group hated by Iran’s theocracy.

Those at Camp Ashraf, including around 1,000 women, have become, in effect, bargaining chips in the complicated relationship between the United States, Iraq and Iran. The raid on the camp coincided with a visit to Iraq by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. What better way for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to demonstrate that the Iraqis, not the Americans, are in charge now that Iraqi troops have assumed control under the Status of Forces Agreement signed last year?

What better way, too for Maliki, once derided as an American puppet, to show Iran’s hard-liners and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated government wants to tighten relations with Tehran? The raid on Camp Ashraf drew applause from Iranian officials, including Ali Larijani, the hard-line speaker of parliament. "Praiseworthy," he said, "even though it is rather late."

The MEK was founded in 1965 by leftist students and intellectuals opposed to the Shah of Iran, and it played a part in the Islamic revolution that toppled his rule in 1979. But it soon fell out with the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and was banned in 1981, when it began a campaign of bombings and assassinations of government officials.

WARNINGS OF HUMANITARIAN DISASTER

In 1986, under an agreement with Saddam Hussein, it established bases in Iraq from where it launched cross-border raids into Iran.

Since 2003, when U.S. forces disarmed MEK guerrillas in Camp Ashraf and took over its protection, the government in Iran has repeatedly demanded that they be turned over to Iran. Their prospects there would be bleak, more so at a time when the Iranian government is staging mass trials of people who demonstrated against Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June.

In an open letter to President Barack Obama, in the form of a full-page advertisement in the Washington Times, MEK supporters this week warned of a humanitarian disaster unless U.S. forces reassumed control, at least temporarily. "The long-term solution to the problem is the presence in Ashraf of United Nations forces or at least a U.N. monitoring mission."

This is not the first time that the MEK has served as a bargaining chip in Middle Eastern politics. The group was placed on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations in 1997 at a time when the Clinton administration hoped the move would facilitate opening a dialogue with Iran and its newly elected president, Mohammad Khatami, who was seen as a moderate.

The European Union put the MEK on its terrorist blacklist five years later. Critics of the decision saw it as kowtowing to Iranian demands to avoid harming important trade relations. After years of legal wrangling, the EU took the MEK off its list of banned terrorist organizations on Jan. 26, a decision that infuriated Tehran.

Somewhat ironically for a country described as the world’s "most active state sponsor of terrorism" by the U.S. State Department, Iran said the EU’s decision meant Europe had "distanced itself from the path of the international community in fighting terror."

The Obama administration has shown no sign of even considering taking the MEK off the terrorist list and thus further complicate its already complicated relations with Iran. Is abandoning the people at Camp Ashraf to an uncertain fate an option?

Bernd Debusmann August 20th, 2009

September 9, 2009 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

As US Eases Out, Iraq Takes Control of Terrorist Camp

We cannot accept the presence of such organisation inside Iraq

The women formed a human chain while the men chanted, confronting Iraqi troops moving into their compound. Gunfire rang out, and the soldiers waded in with batons, wooden bats and automatic weapons.

As US Eases Out, Iraq Takes Control of Terrorist Camp

By the end, officials said, 11 Iranian exiles were dead _ shot, beaten or run over by military vehicles.

Throughout the confrontation, American soldiers who once protected the Iranian opposition group stood by. According to U.S officials, they had no legal authority to intervene. One video taken by the exiles even shows soldiers get into a white SUV and roll up their windows as the bloodied men plead for help.

The deadly melee at Camp Ashraf, the base of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, provides a glaring example of what can go wrong as the U.S. military scales back and the Shiite-led Iraqi government flexes its muscles.

The U.S. military guarded the camp since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 under an agreement that made its 3,400 residents "protected persons" under the Geneva Conventions. The military stopped observing the agreement after a new security accord with the Baghdad government took effect in January, U.S. Embassy spokesman Philip Frayne said.

Responsibility for the camp then passed to the Iraqi government, which promised not to use force against the group. A small contingent of U.S. military police still monitors the camp, but the military said they were under orders not to intervene in the July 28 confrontation.

"We could not become decisively engaged with a situation that really is up to the sovereign Iraqi government to settle in a peaceful manner as they have assured us that they would do," a senior U.S. military official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

"Even in a situation that allowed engagement, we didn’t have nearly the amount of forces present to jump in the middle of this fray," he said.

Iraqi officials said they were trying to establish a police station at the camp. And there are numerous other issues on which the Iraqi government could go its own way _ like the fate of anti-al-Qaida Sunni militias, which are strongly supported by the U.S. but now seem to get less backing from Iraq’s Shiite leaders, or the multiple disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdish north, which the U.S. has sought to mollify lest they explode into violence.

"These kinds of things are only going to happen more often and in other places, and the U.S. has to decide what are we going to do about it," said Army Reserve Col. Gary Morsch, who was stationed at Camp Ashraf and maintains close ties with the exiles there.

The bloodshed brought rare criticism by Washington of the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces. But U.S. officials tried to balance it with the larger policy goal of handing over greater responsibility to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki while U.S. forces reduce their presence.

"Iraq was trying to extend its sovereignty to Camp Ashraf. We understood what they were trying to do. They did not do it well," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters in Washington two weeks after the raid.

Camp Ashraf and the presence of the Iranian exile group have long been a source of friction between Washington and Baghdad. For years, Iraq’s Shiite-led government has wanted to remove the group, because of its past ties to Saddam. Iran, a close Shiite ally of Baghdad, has also been pressing for the expulsion of the group, which seeks the overthrow of Tehran’s clerical rulers.

The Iraqi treatment of the exiles could also be an indicator that Iran’s influence in Baghdad is growing as Washington’s wanes, though Iraqi officials staunchly deny the raid was at Tehran’s behest.

"If you want to know how independent the government of Iraq is from the Islamic Republic of Iran, watch what happens to the people of Ashraf," said Raymond Tanter, president of the Wshington-based Iran Policy Group and a member of the National Security Council in the Reagan administration.

Baghdad "wanted to establish its independence from the United States and possibly was motivated to show that independence by cracking down on Ashraf," he said, pointing out the raid coincided with a Baghdad visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The People’s Mujahedeen is deeply controversial. Critics call it a cult with an ideology mixing Marxism, secularism, an obsession with martyrdom and near adoration of its leaders. The U.S. considers it a terrorist organization, albeit one that has provided the Americans with intelligence on Iran. The European Union removed it from its terror list this year.

The group _ also known by its Farsi name the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq _ is the militant wing of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran. It carried out a series of bloody bombings and assassinations in Iran in the 1980s, though it says it renounced violence in 2001.

The MEK fought alongside Saddam’s forces during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, and Saddam set up a number of bases for them _ including Camp Ashraf, their last remaining foothold in Iraq, located in a barren desert stretch north of Baghdad, 50 miles from the Iranian border.

After Saddam fell, U.S. troops took control of Camp Ashraf and disarmed its fighters, confining them to the 30-square-mile compound. In return, the military signed the agreement with the camp’s residents giving them protected status.

The exiles transformed Camp Ashraf into an oasis of well-kept gardens, water fountains and palm trees along marked-out streets, where the residents _ including 900 women _ live in barracks-like housing segregated by sex. Morsch, 58, of Bucyrus, Kan., recalls how American soldiers guarding the camp got to know the residents well, sharing meals and inviting each other to celebrations.

The government has barred media visits to the camp since the raid.
The Iraqi government says it was exerting its right to establish a police station in Camp Ashraf and blames the violence on the resistance by Iranian exiles. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told the AP on Monday that the forces entering to set up the station were met by "demonstrations with people wielding sticks, swords and knives."

The U.S. military sent a medical team into the camp two days after the raid and 19 people were transported to an American hospital with serious injuries. Iraqi forces also detained 36 men accused of violently resisting the raid, prompting a hunger strike by some camp residents demanding their release.
The fate of Camp Ashraf’s residents remains up in the air.

The Iraqi government has forwarded several proposals, including sending them to third countries other than Iran, where they would face possible execution. "The world has to help us find a place for them," al-Dabbagh said, reiterating the promise to treat them humanely and not to forcibly expel them. "We cannot accept the presence of such an organization inside Iraq."

The People’s Mujahedeen insists that the protected status agreement has not expired because of a clause saying it is valid until the situation is resolved. The group has called on the Americans to reassert control over the camp until another arrangement could be made, such as the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers.

September 5, 2009 0 comments

Massoud Rajavi

The fall of Ashraf: Collapse of Rajavi’s strategy

Years ago, when Rajavi’s strategy for “ cutting the regime’s finger tips” failed, he fled to Iraq and claimed a new strategy called “ New Liberating Struggle” and formed a tool to fulfill this strategy ; “ Iran Liberation Army”. This strategy was allegedly taken due to the particular situation ruling Iraq which was fighting Iran.

Liberation Army and Camp Ashraf were introduced by Rajavi as the symbols of the new strategy. Considering that Rajavi was always seeking for manipulating the members’ minds, labeled all his acts as ideological; he claimed himself as ideological leader; his so called Liberation Army was also the ideological aspect of his strategy.

Following the ceasefire between Iran and Iraq, the Liberating strategy and consequently, the existence of Liberation Army came under question. Thus Rajavi tried to remove the label of being remnant of the war, launching a deadly attack on Iran, through his “Eternal Light Operation”. The attack ended with heavy casualties for the group and expiration of that strategy but heavier casualties were collapsed on Massoud Rajavi as “owner of the theory.”

Rajavi couldn’t admit this fact so he continued his presence in Iraq and prolonged strategic existence of his organization in Iraqi territory. Camp Ashraf found a typical ideological aspect in Iraq.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1992, Rajavi was disappointed since he could see no more hope for another war between Iran and Iraq. His NLA theory was blocked in Iraq that was attacked by the US in the first Gulf War.

Rajavi didn’t want to admit the failure of his strategy so urging on his so called armed struggle strategy he tried to heighten pressure on Iraqi internal relations and to band members from leaving the organization in order to cover his scandalous failure.

Second American invasion to Iraq, once more, pointed out the fact that NLA and also MEK’s existence in Iraqi territory was not feasible. Massoud Rajavi insisted on the presence of his disarmed NLA in Camp Ashraf, although he and his wife fled the Camp to France.

To flatter American forces, Rajavi ordered his members in Camp to sign an agreement with US army. The MEK were engaged to condemn any act of violence, but residents of the camp continued wearing military uniforms and chanting “Viva NLA, solid arm of heroic Iranian people.” however, NLA was an army neither in form nor in content.

The last step of Iraqi government to inform Rajavi that he can’t stay in Iraq any more, was the takeover of Iraqi security by Iraqi forces but Rajavi still forces his members to maintain Camp Ashraf.

Why does Rajavi never admit the failure of the so–called Liberating struggle insisting on it?

The reason is that Ashraf is the symbol of Rajavi’s strategy and ideology. Losing Ashraf results in losing everything, at least for a few years.
If Rajavi accepted to leave Iraq, he would accept the failure of many of his claims and slogans such as:

• Being the alternative to IRI
• Being the Leadership of new revolution or resistance
• Being the president elect of resistance

Now that Iraqi government has gained the sovereignty on its territory, the recent ultimatum to MKO for its expulsion from Iraq would leave Rajavi with many questions.

Why didn’t he leave the liberating struggle strategy in 1998 after the cease-fire between Iran and Iraq?
Why did he maintain his members in Iraq despite the fact that their presence in Iraq was of no use?
Why did he capture a large number of people physically and mentally for years?
Why did he encourage the residents to resist against Iraqi forces, causing them to die?

He might have left his slogans and accepted the failure of his strategy and ideology. Maryam Rajavi’s statement, on her conditional return to Iran, Massoud Rajavi’s letter to Experts Assembly, are signs of deviation in MKO’s strategy. The outcome of this deviation will end the Rajavis with disastrous problems including denouncification of the cruelty they impose on Ashraf residents, capturing them behind bars of their cult-like organization.

September 3, 2009 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

A clash at Camp Ashraf left 11 MEK members Camp Ashraf dead

In a letter to a British parliamentarian last month, a senior State Department official insisted that the United States was “doing its utmost” to ensure that Iraq’s government would treat 3,400 Iranian exiles living at Camp Ashraf in eastern Iraq “humanely.” Two weeks later, a clash The Iraqi government claims the exiles threw stones and Molotov cocktails when Iraqi forces entered the camp, ostensibly to establish a police post. The exiles have video showing Iraqi forces beating people between the exiles and Iraqi police left 11 Iranians dead, and 36 were taken into custody by Iraqi forces.

Americans troops had guarded the camp since 2003, but recently handed over responsibility to Iraqi forces. Baghdad promised that the exiles would be protected.

There is no authoritative version of events, but it does not look as if that promise is being kept. The Iraqi government claims the exiles threw stones and Molotov cocktails when Iraqi forces entered the camp, ostensibly to establish a police post. The exiles have video showing Iraqi forces beating people with clubs and charging them with vehicles. The administration’s response has been weak. Officials say they will press Iraq to fulfill its promises but can only do so much now that Iraq is in charge.

The camp’s residents are members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK), which is committed to overthrowing Tehran’s government. Saddam Hussein welcomed them to Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war and they have lived at the camp ever since.

Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government now has good relations with Iran and little enthusiasm for the MEK. The Americans are at best ambivalent. The group, which some consider a cult, is on the American terrorism list for attacks against the United States (in the distant past) and more recently against Iran. In 2004, the United States — seeking to stabilize Iraq — recognized the camp’s residents as “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Convention, after they signed statements renouncing terrorism and gave up their weapons.

Residents say that Washington has now betrayed that commitment. They have a legitimate complaint. But the MEK has also made no effort to reduce tensions with the Iraqis.

The United States should not retake control of Camp Ashraf. But it must warn Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that it will more closely monitor how the exiles are treated. Iraq’s government must formally charge those arrested, give them a fair trial and take steps to avoid a repeat of last month’s bloodshed. If Iraq is determined to close the camp, Washington, Baghdad and the United Nations should develop a process.

Residents are barred from resettling in many third countries because of the group’s terrorist designation. Finding a solution will not be easy, but none of the exiles should be forcibly returned to Iran.

August 23, 2009 0 comments

MEK Camp Ashraf

The Continuing Story of Camp Ashraf

According to multiple news sources and Iranian exiles with contacts in the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) camp in Iraq known as Camp Ashraf, the camp was attacked by Iraqi forces on July 28 and 28, 2009. The MKO camp was attacked by Iraqi forces on July 28 and 28, 2009

At least eleven camp residents were killed. Also, according to these same sources, the attack was witnessed by US forces who sat by and did nothing, despite pleas from wounded Iranians. It is believed that the reason for the attack was a promise made by the al-Maliki government in Baghdad to Tehran that they would close the camp down. Iraqi officials have denied this, saying simply that they wished to establish a police post there. Meanwhile, the camp residents have asked for US protection.

The PMOI and the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) are the modern day representatives of an Iranian resistance group that goes back to the days of the Shah. Their beginnings are in the student movement that rose up against the Shah and US imperialism, ultimately throwing the Shah out of the country. The group itself has undergone several ideological changes since its inception and is currently best typified as a secular organization opposed to the social conservatism of the theocratic government in Tehran. To go beyond this general description requires considerably more space than is available here.

Unfortunately for the PMOI, it was categorized as a terrorist organization by the Bill Clinton administration. It continues to carry this designation in the US, although the designation was removed by the European Union earlier in 2009. On top of this label, which has certainly isolated the NCRI and PMOI from potential support among certain elements of the US power structure, the PMOI and NCRI have found their friendliest allies in the US amongst the pro-Zionist wing of the neoconservative movement. Although one can conceive of this support as simply a cynical move by the neocons to gain Iranian intelligence available to the NCRI in their never-ending drumbeat towards an attack on Iran, the other side of the coin is that the NCRI and PMOI have curried this favor. This fact alone has made it next to impossible for the members of these groups to get any positive press or support from the US left and antiwar movement. Indeed, this coziness was enough to convince this writer to view these organizations with considerable caution, despite professing guarded support for them in the past. After all, in the US, it does matter who one shares their political bed with.

This attack and its aftermath is not about the PMOI’s all too apparent coziness with elements of the neoconservative establishment in the United States. It is about a human rights violation by Washington’s client government in Iraq. This is also not the recent elections in Iran and whether or not they were fair. It is about a group of dissidents who appear to be somewhat isolated from their natural constituency while also being surrounded by well-armed US and Iraqi military with instructions to keep them penned where they are.

It is wrong that the members of the PMOI were attacked by forces of the Maliki government in Baghdad on July 28 and 29, 2009 while US forces looked on. It is the right thing to expose this action and to ask that it not be repeated. The attack exists as a human rights violation in a country that is a vast ocean of human rights violations, many of them the result of the US invasion. It should be condemned. Yet, for some reason, the PMOI is asking one of the greatest human rights violators in Iraq and elsewhere around the world–the US government–to protect them.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net. Read other articles by Ron, or visit Ron’s website.

Andres Kargar replies to the article:
While I agree that the Iraqi attack on Mujahedin was a violation of the human rights of the residents of the camp, I should also state a few other facts that are missing from this article.
Firstly, the decision of the leadership of the Mujahedin to remain in Iraq was made in order to continue their activities to destabilize the Islamic Republic regime in Iran.
Today, the political orientation of the Mujahedin Organization is no longer what it used to be when they employed a mix of religion and Marxism to struggle against the dictatorial regime of the Shah. They have remained in Iraq to serve the interests of Israel and the United States. Prior to that, they were serving as the propaganda tool of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein against Iran. That was the mistake that eroded any degree of support they might have enjoyed among Iranians.
Many of the residents of camp Ashraf are there against their will. There are many teams of husbands and wives in that camp who have been kept totally separated from one another, since men and women there live in totally separate quarters.
Eager to disband the threat of Mujahedin, the Iranian regime has offered asylum to those members who desert their posts and turn themselves in. Some who have managed to get away have sought and been granted asylum in Iran.
And finally, many (but perhaps not the majority) of those in Camp Ashraf are also citizens of the United States or one of the European countries. If they wanted to and were allowed, they could be repatriated to those countries.
by Ron Jacobs

August 23, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK: The Peril of Paradox in American Middle East Policy

One thing is abundantly clear about American policy in the Middle East–it is based on a series of paradoxical, internally contradictory goals and alliances which typically end in tragic results for friend and foe alike.

Nowhere is this conundrum clearer than in the present U. S. quandary over the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Holy Wvarriors, as chronicled by Ed Blanche, Beirut correspondent for The Middle East, in that publication’s June 2009 issue.

As Blanche capably summarizes what is known of the MEK, the organization was formed in Iran in 1965 by leftist students, subsequently adopting a “bizarre ideology that embraced by Islam and Marxism.” The ideology soon became linked to urban revolutionary guerrilla violence. In the final years of Pahlavi Iran, the MEK conducted a series of attacks and assassinations on American military and diplomatic personnel, as it sought the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

The MEK joined forces with Khomeini’s revolutionaries in this ultimately successful effort, only to be expelled by the IRI regime itself in Tehran once its usefulness had expired after the Shah’s departure. The MEK began to conduct guerrilla operations against the Islamic Regime as they had against the monarchy previously, with considerable success. But the IRI applied a level of retaliatory force the “Islamic-Marxists” could not endure. They fled to France, and later joined forces with Saddam Hussein against Iran in the 1980-1988 war between the Gulf rivals.

The shifting paradoxes would continue, as the MEK established a headquarters at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, largely under American and Israeli protection. The one-time adversaries of both Persian monarchy and its American military and intelligence allies, had now become a tool of the United States and the Europeans against the Islamic theocratic regime they helped to usher in 3 decades ago.

And the ultimate paradoxes are these: First, Mr. Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom has resulted in the installation of a central government in Baghdad largely sympathetic to the IRI regime in Tehran, and with identical animosity to the MEK’s presence within its borders.

Second, while Ed Blanche notes that it “was the MEK that disclosed the existence of Iran’s nuclear program in August 2002, stunning the U. S. intelligence and military establishments,” he fails to note credible information provided by Barry O’Connell and IPS’s Gareth Porter that the MEK’s role in “disclosing the existence of Iran’s nuclear program,” has been to serve as a clandestine conduit of information on the subject supplied by the Israeli intelligence community.

Hello, Mossad, meet your new allies in the “Islamic-Marxist” network worldwide.

There you have it. The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Holy Warriors, is an “Islamic-Marxist” terror organization, which assisted in implementing the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979; was subsequently involved in guerrilla warfare operations against the very Iranian Islamic Regime they helped to bring to power; fought on the side of Saddam Hussein for 8 years in the Iran-Iraq war between 1980-1988; and now, according to Barry O’Connell and Gareth Porter, is working with Jewish neo-conservatives and Israeli intelligence in planting false “intelligence” on Iran’s nuclear program with the American National Security State and Western news media, itching for a confrontation between Tehran and Tel Aviv—even as it now possesses an adversarial role with the very regime in Baghdad installed by Mr. Bush’s War. Confused?

You should be. The global international establishment can’t figure out what its position on the MEK is supposed to be, either. Hence, according to Blanche, Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate is trying to find the organization a new place to live; the U. S. State Department continues to maintain a place for the MEK on its terrorism blacklist, as does the European Union; American and Jewish neo-conservatives in the defense and intelligence communities of the United States advocate an alliance with the MEK against Tehran; even as Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled in May of 2008 that the MEK “should not be deemed a terrorist organization.”

Oh, yes. One other thing. Even as Israeli intelligence and the Pentagon pursue an anti-Tehran alliance with the MEK, Tehran, according to Blanche, offered the United States in December of 2003 several senior Al Qaeda operatives in exchange for MEK commanders under U. S. control at Camp Ashraf. The U. S. could have had Saif Al Adel and Mahfouz Ould Walid (Abu Hafs the Mauritanian), even as it avenged the deaths of murdered American personnel from the days of Pahlavi Iran in the 1970s.

Why was there no deal?

Better ask the Mossad, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Kenneth R. Timmerman, and the Project for the New American Century crowd.

Isn’t paradox wonderful?

August 22, 2009 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts