Mitra Yusefi , her husband and children

Mitra Yusufi, a long term member of the MEK, and a victim of this policy of enforced divorce, breaks the silence:
“I traveled a long road. I underwent a real brainwashing and I have to be alert all the time. The Iranian people detest Rajavi and I hate him. My story is simple. I was a young newlywed when it all started. My husband was a popular man; since he had played for the Iranian National Football team. This was the team that qualified for the World Championship in 1978 and played in Argentina. We were living in England when the revolution happened.
We returned to Iran before going to the United States. In the Eighties, we had heard bad news about things that happened to our friends. In fact, at the time, we were very cut off from the realities of Iranian society. Rajavi wanted to use my husband’s name. We agreed and we were moved to Greece to organize the movement. When Rajavi, after his divorce from Banisadr’s daughter married his comrade’s wife, Maryam, we were shocked. My husband then took a strong position, saying that you cannot take another’s wife. Two days later, though, they convinced us of the opposite.We were such fools…”.

Nadereh Afshari

Nadere Afshari also lived inside the Mojahedin. She knows the reality:
“Rajavi used the family institution as an instrument at the service of his own power. To keep the men in the organisation, he forced them to marry. To do this, he used women as bait and ‘gave’ them to his most docile servants. Yet, at the slightest sign of disobedience, he took away their wives. Women were, therefore, objects passed from hand to hand.

Thus, a docile woman like Atefeh, who had the rank of Major, was forced to divorce four times, on the personal orders of Rajavi. Her comrade, Mahboubeh Jamshidi, divorced and remarried at least three times.
Rajavi considers the family as an integral cell in his organisation. He, therefore, feels free to intervene in the marital relations of members against their own will. The truth is that he dislikes the family which always posed a problem for his ‘regime’. This was for a very good reason: it is very difficult to keep ‘the light of love for the Leader’ burning bright.
From 1991 on, marriage changed its meaning. It became a barrier which kept the organisation’s members from loving their Leader”.

A third defector states:
“At this time, Rajavi also imposed on the leadership a fixed ceremony at the beginning of meetings: everyone had to place his hands on the table to make sure that no one was wearing a wedding ring, which he called ‘a slave ring’.”

Deconstructing the Family Of course, the MEK defended itself. The impact of these statements on its internal practices on international public opinion created a very negative impression. The National Resistance Council wrote, in its response to the American accusations:
“Further on, they claim that the Mojahedin had forced couples in Iraq to divorce and send their children to Europe and the United States. Here, it must be taken into account that the individuals who wrote this report were repeating, word for word, the allegations used by the Iranian regime and by the survivors of the Shah regime.
The National Liberation Army of Iran is based in the territory of a country where family-Iife in the camps became impossible during the unprecedented bombardments of the Gulf War and thereafter, because of the international embargo.

During the bombings, families, voluntarily and sometimes in writing, asked the organization for assistance in sending their children to Europe and the United States to live with their parents or our supporters. Despite many obstacles and risks, the movement spent millions of dollars to move these children to safe places. The alternative would have been accepting the possibility of numerous victims among them “.

The MEK children

The facts, however, are stubborn and the eyewitness reports are very precise:
‘in the terms of the ‘Second Ideological Revolution’, children had to be separated from their families and sent abroad. Rajavi made sure personally that this order was carried out case by case, finding militants or family members living in Europe or the United States who could take the children in. In the absence of family abroad, the children were sent to orphanages or special schools established by the Mojahedin in Germany and the Netherlands. More than 500 children were sent abroad this way: they were handed over to the organization during a special ceremony in which the parents recited a text affirming: ‘I give my child to Massoud and Maryam’.”

Yet the MEK justified itself by comparison with others:
“Moreover, this policy is not without precedent. During the Second World War, children were separated from their families and sent outside London during the bombings. If this way of doing things is unacceptable, the State Department should have published a declaration criticising Winston Churchill “. (219)
The People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran could have cited two other 20Ih Century precedents, ones more troubling indeed.

During 1936-37, the evacuation of the children of Spanish Republicans fighting Franco’s Nationalists is one. To protect them from the bombings which struck some cities very hard, especially Madrid, young girls and boys were sent by convoy to the Soviet Union. But once the Popular Front Government was swept aside and taken over by the Communists, these kids stayed in the USSR for an orthodox MarxistLeninist education.
The same scenario took place a few years later in Greece, during the civil war that immediately followed World War ii. There again, children kidnapped for the stated motive of putting them out of harm’s way remained in the USSR.

Kidnapping could also take place at home. The Hitler youth stole the minds and loyalties of children, turning them against their teachers and even their parents. The “Racially pure” S.S. breeding facilities were only a continuation of kidnap, but with the result of bringing thousands of parentless children into post-war Germany. Uprooted, far from their country and cut off from their culture, these children became wanderers without identity. They only had that given them by the movement or the organisation which took them in hand and led them where they wanted to for their own purposes.

For more than 20 years we know exactly how the MEK has used these kids: easier to lead, because they are more docile than adults who have developed their critical faculties. This included abandoning them to their fate when times went bad:
“In Evin, the model prison of Iran, built by the ex-Shah, one section is completely devoted to the ‘curables’, who undergo a reeducation programme. There, we find a certain number of inmates who discarded their former masters, like Banisadr’s embody guard. But the overwhelming majority are children. They are the ones the Mojahedin threw into the street fighting, without any military or political training at all. These kids (13-15 year olds) cracked, naturally. They turned against themselves”.

From the book: Autopsy of an Ideological Drift by Antoine Gessler, translated by Thomas R. Forstenszer

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Mohamamd Nazari left for Karachi, Pakistan, where the Mojahedin had offices. From there, he went on to Baghdad a month later. He says:” I had changed a lot. I wasn’t myself anymore. My personality had been stolen from me. I could no longer think for myself. I was completely devoted to the organization and ready for terrorist actions in Iran. “ his first operations were against military targets in Iranian Kurdistan. During the period 1985-1986,the unit he commanded was in combat several times against the Iranian army. He also helped reconnoiter and map Iranian military positions, intelligence which the organization passed on to the Iraqi authorities. The former Mojahed recalls:” dressed in an Iranian Military jacket, I entered the country to scout the situation on the front. Sometimes, I captured Iranian soldiers and handed them over to the Iraqis”. In total his unit fought fifteen engagements against the Iranian Army and carried out dozens of reconnaissance operations in Iran.

In 1992, Mohammad Nazari began to realize the truth about the organization and refused to fight the Iraqi Kurds. He served 45 days in solitary confinement and his break with the organization was now complete. But, fearing for his life, he agreed to a self-criticism and rejoined the ranks. But he had one idea: plan his escape.
A little later, he asked for permission to travel to the United States, in order to visit the brother. His superiors refused to let him go. As a compromise, however they sent him to Germany, now free to travel, Mohammad Nazari went to Italy and asked for political asylum. Eleven months later, he returned to Iran, with the help of country’s embassy in Rome. Now,43, the former Mojahed says: ”I am not proud of my past. I fought for 19 years, but it was for nothing. If I have now agreed to describe my past, it is to unmask the Mojahedin Organization which stole the best years of my life and all dreams of my youth.” He adds:” Rajavi is not a Commander Massoud.

He is a Bin Laden. The afghan leader gave his life for his people. The Iranian,for his part, has not the slightest qualms about sending his men to their deaths. But he, himself, avoids touching a rifle. During all the years during which I worked side by side with him, I never knew where really lived.”

From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier

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“From the time I arrived in Iraq, the atmosphere of suspicion in the camps shocked me. Our leaders asked us for total devotion, heart and soul, to the organization. They remote controlled us, like robots. They told us, “if you have sexual fantasies, even a dream, you must report it in writing in order to exorcise it”. In a speech repeatedly broadcast in video, Maryam Rajavi told the Mojahedin: “80% of your energy should be used in the fight against your sexual instincts”. Many of the organization’s officers, who protested against this sudden authoritarian and sectarian change of course, paid a heavy price for their insubordination. They were humiliated, tortured and imprisoned.one, named Hassan Rashedi who now lives in Iran, went insane, because of this. I knew him in prison, along with Beijan, from Kermanshah. Houshang, from Eilam, Ali Reza, from Tehran and Mahdi Eftekhari, who before his demotion, had been in charge of organizing Rajavi’s travel”.

Ali Qashqaei spent four years in prison, two months in the movement’s jail in the Ashraf Camp and the rest in the foreigner’s wing of an Iraqi penitentiary. He particularly wanted to share this eyewitness account: “in prison, I knew Parviz Ahmadi, a young man from Kermanshah. He had held senior positions in the organization. Because he refused to support Rajavi’s new ideological line, he was brutally tortured and then killed. Twenty of us were witnesses to his execution. He was only 36”.

From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier

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Three years later, propaganda and brainwashing has succeeded in convincing the couple to move to Iraq. The trap slowly closed on them. Massoumeh was forced to give her two children to an Iranian nurse, a member of the movement. In 1998, using a forged passport,she arrived in Iraq, via Belgium and Jordan. Her husband joined her one week later. The young woman states: “I was personally seduced by Maryam Rajavi’s position on women’s liberation and by the idyllic picture they painted of the situation in Iraq. But we were soon confronted by a reality that was far less attractive”.

As soon as they arrived in Ashraf camp, the Haidaris were separated from each other. They agreed, in writing, to end their married life, to break completely with their families and to write a daily report summarizing what they did, heard and saw. They conformed to the group and underwent military training. Massoumeh learned to handle many different weapons, maintain liaison between networks operating on both sides of the border and even to carry out bomb attacks inside Iran.

In 2001, this young “people’s fighter” took part in an operation in Tehran itself. She marched dozens of Kilometers into Iran, with her fellow women commandos, carrying thirty Kilograms of explosives. On the way back, she was arrested near the town of Ourumieh. After intensive interrogation in the police station,she admitted everything she knew about the organization and was sent to prison. One year later, she was freed and returned to live with her parents in Tehran. But her troubles continue: her husband is still in the Ashraf Camp and does not know that she is alive. Her “death” was announced in “al-Qamar al-Monir”: or “shining Moon”,her nom de guerre.she has had no news of her children, Elahe and Roya, aged nufrse with whom they wee placed is to longer in service. The Netherland success. They remain missing. Have they,too, been sent to Iraq?

Describing the situation among the Mojahedin at the time she left Camp Ashraf, Massoumeh says:” the fighters were weary and losing hope. Those who admitted this were harshly disciplined. I did not know that there were special prisons for Mojahedn. I learned that later from former members I met after I returned to Iran. In fact, we were very badly informed about what went on inside Iraq and knew even less about events outside the country. We had no access to newspapers,magazines or books. Our only source of news was the movement’s own television station. There were no holidays. The few times we left the camp, it was only to bring a sick person to a Baghdad hospital and return right away. All emotional ties were forbidden by the organization. For example, we were not allowed to keep photographs of our own children, write letters to them or our parents, or become friends with anyone else. Since sexual relations had been banned, women could not become pregnant or have babies”.

From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier

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Naser Naderi comes from Shah Reza, near Ispahan in southern Iran. He was 21 when he joined the movement in 1979. He participated in many military actions, but only admits one murder, that of Ardeshir Doudanger, a young security guard in 1981. Tearfully, he recalls:” I was unemployed, a social reject. They made me a killer. I am not proud of myself”.

His downfall:” it was 1981.90% or our networks in the city had been dismantled. I was one of the only people still active. The organization’s leaders counted on me a lot and I was very proud of that. In October they gave me a new mission. I was to kill the security guard on duty at the Al-Jihad Company; a firm specialized in road construction. I did it without thinking about its meaning or consequences. I went right to the company’s building and shot the young man. I emptied my revolver, firing at the guards who came to help him, and then ran away. The operation was a success. The BBC broadcast a story about it. After handling over the weapon to the organization’s leaders, I wandered through the fields alone, like a wounded wolf. Crushed by me sense of guilt, I turned myself in to the police three months later. But I did not admit committing the crime, only membership in the Mojahedin.

Arrested in the meantime, my immediate superior, Ismaeil Dadoghr, told the police I was the murder. He was soon to be tried and executed. I had to confess. The Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced me to death. During the second day of hearings, the victim’s mother came up to me and said,” did you kill my son?” I answered,” Yes, but I was not aiming at him”. She took some candy from her handbag and held out her hand:” eat them, my son liked sweets, too”. When she saw my chains, she cried out:” Let him go! He confessed his crime”. She appealed to the court to reduce my sentence. For a five-year jail term, I eventually served only 25 months. When I was free, it became a habit to pay my respects to Ardeshir Doudangher’s grave from time to time. But when I saw his mother arrive, I ran away because I could not look her in the eye”.

When he was freed, a stage director he had met in prison convinced Nacer Naderi to tell his dramatic story in a play. Lasting almost three hours, it was produced in Tehran and Ispahan toward the end of 1983. The play was a success:” the director told me that:” We are all bastards. In each of us, at some time, something stops working”. Nacer Naderi adds,”People liked the play very much. At the end, a women hugged me, looked me in the eye and cried. By allowing me to publicly admit my crime,the play let me cleanse my soul”.

Now 44, Nacer Naderi married the widow of his younger brother,who died at the front during Iran-Iraq war. The former Mojahed,who has raised his brother’s two children,says:”No, I am not healed from the pain I feel, the wound is too deep. My crime had no justifiable motive: it was not religious, ideological or even political. One day I may use a gun again, but this time it would be against the organization.

From the book: The People’s Mojahedin of Iran: A Struggle for what? “By Victor Charbonnier

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To read the book click here

Part One – From prison to Ideological Revolution

Chapter 1 – Historical context
Chapter 2 – Rajavi’s first bid for power
Chapter 3 – National Council of Resistance
Chapter 4 – Foreign Relations
Chapter 5 – Armed Struggle
Chapter 6 – Internal Relations
Chapter 7 – Ideological Revolution

Part Two – From Ideological Revolution to Cult Status

Chapter 8 – Internal Relations
Chapter 9 – Armed Struggle
Chapter 10 – Foreign Relations
Chapter 11 – Rajavi’s second bid for power
Chapter 12 – Internal Relations
Chapter 13 – National Council of Resistance

Part Three – The Mojahedin in the Present

Chapter 14 – Dissent within the Mojahedin
Chapter 15 – Political Scene

To read the book click here

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She writes of the MKO’s violent background and its devotion to armed struggle and terrorism, noting that the group has never published a statement or confession letter to officially denounce violence.

Revealing facts on cult-like practices of the group, she warns that a full-scale cult exists in the heart of Republic of France. She describes the MKO’s efforts in her working place, French Senate and Assembly:

"…in December 2011, a petition was being circulated in French parliament. It was signed by 74 senators and 282 members of the Assembly. It demanded support for the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran and its leader Maryam Rajavi, as well as guarantee for international protection of camp Ashraf in Iraq.

” As I know, a large number of these representatives think that they are supporting democracy in Iran by embracing the PMOI. However, I should emphasize that the signatories know almost nothing about the history of the PMOI. So I found it useful to notify the history of the group which is Marxist Islamist"

The author refers to the MKO’s treasonous cooperation with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein against Iranian people and Iraqi Kurds and Shiits and notices the lack of support for the group among Iranian community. She poses questions to those French officials and governmental bodies who are involved with the cult of Rajavi:

"How can a group which has had no base in its county since long time, suggest analysis and advice on the current situation of the country?

Can you count on any party or organization that claims to be democratic?"

Ms. Goulet concludes: "Regarding the past of the PMOI, it’s hard to believe that such a group that still suffers all symptoms and problems of a totalitarian cult of personality, violent activities, hidden financial resources, lie, threat, accusation and destruction of civilians under the pretext of enlightening, has turned into a democratic organization!"
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Product Description
The fascinating story of the controversial life of Camp Ashraf in Iraq from its foundation in 1986 to the present day is told in this book. Originally created to accommodate the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (aka MEK, MKO, PMOI, Rajavi cult) and its leader Massoud Rajavi for coordinating the violent overthrow of the regime in Iran, Camp Ashraf became the MEK’s main military and ideological training base. The MEK later became known as Saddam’s Private Army as it became an integral element in the Iraqi dictator’s repressive apparatus.

But, even years after the fall of Saddam the MEK still has the support and backing of many in the West and is therefore able to resist opening its doors to the outside world. It is the hidden life inside Camp Ashraf which renders it so controversial. The isolated garrison became the experimental ground for Rajavi to turn his group into a dangerous, destructive mind control cult.

Rajavi keeps the rank and file in the camp in a state of modern slavery to perform acts of terrorism and to fulfill propaganda roles in Western countries for the group’s many masters.
Massoud Rajavi’s methods of enthralling his followers include banning marriage and having children, instilling irrational phobic reactions to external factors, denying any contact with the outside world through radio, television, letters or telephones. In particular members must have no contact with their families. This book exposes the hidden life of the camp and its inhabitants. It speaks for the silent victims of the Rajavi cult and for the families who wait outside the camp for news of their loved ones.

In conclusion, the book examines the ways to deal with the problem of how to dismantle a dangerous destructive mind control cult and free its members as various parties vie for control over the group for their own agendas.

CONTENTS Page

INTRODUCTION 1
1965 – 1986 THE MEK AND IRAQ 4
1986 – 1991 THE GOLDEN AGE 18
1988 – 1993 THE IDEOLOGICAL PHASE 37
1991 GULF WAR ONE 50
1991 – 1997 THE MEK’S DECLINE 61
1997 – 2003 CAMP ASHRAF PRISON – NO EXIT 84
2003 – 2007 THE MEK PLACED ON LIFE SUPPORT 104
2007 – 2009 A GROWING HUMANITARIAN CRISIS 130
2009 INEVITABLE CHANGE 153
CAMP ASHRAF – PAST ITS ‘BEST BEFORE’ DATE 174
CONCLUSION 196
APPENDICES 201

INTRODUCTION
The controversial life of Camp Ashraf from its foundation to the present day makes a fascinating story in itself. The camp was created by Saddam Hussein in 1986 to accommodate the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and its leader Massoud Rajavi. Founded in 1965 the MEK first took up arms to try to oust the Shah. Two years after the 1979 Iranian revolution Rajavi tried to engineer a coup against Ayatollah Khomeini. It failed and he fled to Paris in 1981. Rajavi then tried to conduct his armed struggle against the new Islamic Republic from Paris but when this failed he was given succour in Iraq where Camp Ashraf became the MEK’s main military and ideological training base.

The close relationship between Saddam and Rajavi led to the MEK being dubbed Saddam’s Private Army; Camp Ashraf played an integral role in the survival of the Iraqi dictator after the First Gulf war when Rajavi used his forces to help crush the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings. In 2003 Camp Ashraf became an enemy target for the Multi National Forces when Operation Iraq Freedom removed Saddam Hussein from power. Then in a paradoxical move the US Government provided military protection for Camp Ashraf for eight years while its inhabitants remained on the US Terrorism List.

Camp Ashraf came under the control of the democratically elected Government of Iraq in January 2009 (under the Status of Forces Agreement). After that time it was inevitable that the camp would close. Successive Iraqi governments since 2003 insisted that the Americans close Camp Ashraf and expel the foreign terrorist group Mojahedin-e Khalq from the country because of the group’s history of terrible crimes against the people of Iraq.

In the course of twenty five years Camp Ashraf has seen many changes. But the real story of course is not about the camp but about the lives of the people who inhabited it; how they came to be there and why they must now leave.

In its forty five year history, the MEK organisation has undergone many public image changes; from guerrilla fighters, resistance army, terrorist entity to feminist democratic opposition. The man who has led the group through all these superficial incarnations is Massoud Rajavi. And behind the glamorous advertisements of a sophisticated and relentless propaganda machine, his single-minded pursuit of power at any cost and his fundamental belief in the use of violence to achieve this aim of power, has not changed one iota in all this time.

Rajavi was a charismatic speaker and skilled psychological manipulator. He discovered in himself a talent for totalitarian control which matched his narcissistic ambition for power. Although he began to convert the Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation into a cult while still in Paris, it was the acquisition of the isolated, closed world of Camp Ashraf which provided the perfect crucible to extend his experiment. In Camp Ashraf he has forced the MEK members along a most extraordinary route of mental and physical anguish to meet his needs.

Over the years former members who escaped from Camp Ashraf have told their stories to a world unwilling or unable to listen. Thousands of them consistently and courageously described the conditions of the internal revolutions and Rajavi’s bizarre requirements for members to divorce and to remove all the children from the camp; to undergo the daily humiliations of public self-confessions which enforce the celibacy and gender apartheid; to suffer micro-management of their every waking moment which imposed deliberately exhausting work schedules and disorienting indoctrination sessions; to be deprived of any information from and contact with the outside world and their families. Rajavi did all this to keep his members from leaving. When this failed, he imprisoned them.

Camp Ashraf is now a double prison for the residents. They are trapped by Rajavi’s psychological manipulations which engender paralysing fear in everyone behind the barbed wire fences which he has had erected to keep them physically inside. But they are trapped ultimately by the misguided ignorance and misplaced sympathy of all those external agencies which could take action to free them but don’t.

The life of Camp Ashraf has reached a critical juncture. It must close. The residents must leave. But over and above Massoud Rajavi’s refusal to leave, there are a host of third parties with their own agendas which militate against closure. The main players are the Americans and the Iranians who have developed their own narratives and myths around the MEK in order to use it as a tool to aggravate and intensify their thirty year enmity. Between the ‘bomb Iran, regime change’ pundits in America and the ‘crackdown on foreign backed violent opposition’ proponents in Iran, all the bases are covered.

It is these voices which dominate political debates and media reporting on Camp Ashraf. But the political and security issues are a decoy to avoid answering the fundamental question. After twenty five years of testimony describing severe human rights abuses why do the individual residents of Camp Ashraf still have no voice? Why do people continue to escape the camp even in spite of the severe restrictions? At the time of Saddam Hussein perhaps these questions could be ignored. But now?

The original inspiration to write the story of Camp Ashraf came from witnessing the determination of the families of the camp’s residents to rescue their loved ones. Since 2003 they braved bombs and bullets to reach the gate of Camp Ashraf in the hope of finding their relatives. They refused to give up, refused to take no for an answer. Even when the MEK began to pelt missiles at them they refused to give up. Their extraordinary love and courage needs to be voiced and this voice needs to reach above the cacophony of the false hand wringing and political wailing to those who are in a position to help.

But as the story unfolded it became obvious that the really voiceless victims of Camp Ashraf are its residents. As the stories of individual members emerged it was clear that many had died and many more had suffered before their information could reach the public domain. Currently around 3500 people continue trapped and held hostage to the callous whims of the various pitiless powerful political forces who do not care about their individual fates. This book must speak out on their behalf.

This book therefore is an attempt to tell their story in the hope that this will halt the diversion of this issue to everything else except this fundamental question – why are people risking everything to run away from Camp Ashraf and the MEK and why is no one listening to them?

By Anne Singleton and Massoud Khodabandeh
First published September 2011 by IRAN-INTERLINK

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REVIEW: Masoud Banisadr, Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel (London: Saqi Books, 2004).

The Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), or the People’s Combatants Organization, was established in 1965 as an armed, underground group opposed to the Pahlavi regime and seeking to establish a "monotheistic classless society." Fus­ing aspects of Marxism-Leninism and political Islam, the MKO played an important role in mobilizing urban, educated Iranians during the Islamic Revolution, yet quickly fell out with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his inner circle in the post-revolution­ary period. Driven out of Iran, Masoud Rajavi and the Central Committee moved the MKO’s headquarters to Western Europe and then after 1986 to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Aside from its of­ficial history, little has been written in English about the inner workings of this highly secretive group.

The memoir of Masoud Banisadr, until 1996 a US and Eu­ropean representative of the National Council for Resistance (NCR), the MKO’s nominally independent political wing, helps present a picture of the organization as it functioned from the late 1970s. Masoud is especially timely, since the MKO, though deemed a "terrorist organization" by the State Department and several European governments, has been identified by neo-conser­vatives Daniel Pipes and Patrick Clawson as a candidate to bring "the tide of freedom" to Iran. The book seriously challenges such assumptions. In fact, Banisadr’s detailed life story corroborates a recent Human Rights Watch report, which describes the MKO’s systematic abuse and torture of members who challenge the Cen­tral Committee or seek to defect.

Banisadr, a cousin of the first popularly elected president of the Islamic Republic, and his wife were postgraduate students in Britain during the 1979 revolution. They became involved with the MKO and its affiliates after the fall of the Shah. A self-described "social democrat" at the time of the revolution, Banisadr was attracted to an ideology that "seemed indistinguishable from [Ali] Shariati’s," the thinker he had read and admired while still in Iran. Interestingly, he acknowledges that many MKO supporters did not "know much about the Mojahedin ideology, especially as it differed from that of other Muslims and Marxists." For him, "it was enough to know that they supported democracy, independence and progress."

At almost 500 pages, Masoud is a meticulous, but often me­andering and disjointed, book. Yet, for the patient reader, it is crammed with poignant details of how the MKO has maintained organizational unity despite external hostility and the many unsa­vory practices described by Banisadr. He tells us how the various "bases" scattered across Europe created a combination of complex, opaque hierarchy and communal living arrangements, how songs and military drills were used as rituals to develop a sense of soli­darity among middle-class college graduates, and how in order to raise funds the MKO established businesses, such as a stand that "introduced the joys of kebabs" to Durham.

But what will receive the most attention are the disturbing psy­chological techniques employed to force members to relinquish all sense of individual identity, to monitor each other and to disavow feelings for all people other than the married couple who make up the ideological and spiritual leadership of the MKO, Masoud and Maryam Rajavi. From the outset, the MKO encouraged members to distance themselves from their families, unless they could support the cause monetarily or through activities in Iran. The detachment from greater society, however, reached new levels after 1985 when the Rajavis announced various stages of the "ideo­logical revolution," whereby the MKO sought to reposition itself against the more consolidated regime in Iran. This "revolution" was initiated by the "marriage of the century," in which Rajavi wed Maryam Azodanlu, who had been married to another lead­ing member until shortly beforehand. All MKO members were expected to go through their own "ideological revolutions" in order to become true Mojahedin and demonstrate their loyalty. This was done at regular group confessionals ("cooking pots") in which Mojahedin would admonish themselves and each other, as well as through writing reports on one’s weaknesses, burn­ing "bourgeois" luxury items, limiting and even ending relations between the sexes, and divorcing one’s spouse to prevent "con­tradictions." The latter step was said to remove the main "buffer" preventing true understanding of the revolution, embodied in "the ideological mother" Maryam Rajavi, the only bridge to her husband. The meetings, taped sermons by the Rajavis and limits on outside sources of information created what Banisadr calls the "mystical efficacy of drip-fed propaganda."

This politico-theological apparatus surely helped to create some devoted followers, as demonstrated when several Mojahedin set themselves on fire when France briefly arrested Maryam Rajavi in 2003. Yet Banisadr describes how this psychologically abusive atmosphere, combined with growing doubts about the MKO’s military capability and political skill, led many other members to question the leadership and eventually quit. Banisadr’s suggestions and criticisms were met with indifference and public personal con­demnation, so much so that he began to doubt his own character. Unlike others who ended up attempting suicide or in Abu Ghraib prison for their criticisms, Banisadr was able to leave with relative ease, because he spent much of his time abroad and still had an extended family, including his ex-wife, living in Britain.

Masoud does not fully explain why Banisadr joined the MKO, as opposed to another political party, or why he left when he did. Nor does it offer an alternative politics to the one offered by the MKO. Like many autobiographies, it is too self-reflective to take these analytical steps or challenge the teleology of the narrative. Instead, Banisadr paints a picture of an organization that, over time, corrupted its members’ idealistic vigor and organizing acu­men into a means for self-abnegation with the only relationship of any significance being that between the individual member and the two-headed Rajavi beloved. After reading Masoud, it is difficult to imagine, as Pipes and Clawson apparently do, that the MKO will be able to mobilize its small, psychologically frag­ile membership or recruit more Iranians in order to overthrow the Islamic Republic, let alone establish a transparent political regime and foster a pluralistic society.

Reviewed by Arang Keshavarzian

MIDDLE EAST REPORT No:237

http://www.banisadr.info/MER.htm

Download Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel
Download Masoud: Memoirs of an Iranian Rebel

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