Europe: Safe Haven For Terrorists
The European Union routinely accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorism for their support of the military wings of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, forgetting to mention that these are the armed wings of legitimate and democratically elected political parties, who have a legal right to resist Israeli occupation under internationalal law, and are only designated as terrorists organisation by the EU for political reasons – i.e. the EU supports Israel. But what is rarely reported is the extent to which the EU supports terrorist groups. It has reportedly been agreed by EU states to remove the anti-Iranian Mujahedin Khalq Organisation (MKO) from the designated terrorist organisation list in the near future, which makes an absolute mockery of the EU supposed objection to terrorism.
The MKO cult is notorious for committing countless atrocities in Iran and Iraq. In Iran alone, their terrorist attacks have claimed over 12,000 deaths and in Iraq, as well as committing war crimes against the Kurds under the Saddam Hussein regime, they are accused by the current Iraqi government of carrying out terrorist attacks and destabilising the country, despite supposedly being in US custody. The Cult also stands accused of assassinating and torturing dissidence and human trafficking. They have also used self-immolation (suicide bombing!) as a tactic to protest against their designation as terrorist organisation in Europe.
This is why America, Canada and the EU have previously refused to remove the MKO from their terror lists, and as recently as the 12 of this month, Condoleezza Rice announced that the MKO group would remain on the US terror list. So why the change in the EU position now?
Since 2003, Camp Ashraf, the MKO HQ, which is located in Iraq’s Diyala province, along with its 3,400 inhabitants have been under American military control – the Bush regime wanted to protect the 3,400 known anti-Iranian terrorists from being taken into Iraqi custody, so granted them protected status – but since beginning of January control of the base and its inhabitants legally passed to the Iraq government, who have ordered the base closed and all MKO cult members to either return to Iran or select a third country to be deported to.
Obviously it would be politically difficult, if not impossible, for any EU state to open up its borders and welcome 3,400 designated terrorists cult members with open arms, and Obama defintely isn’t going to do it. So quietly the EU has been dropping its resistance to MKO under the pretense that the cult has been disarmed. And the group has one a series of barely contested legal cases. Now that they no longer have a presence in Iraq, it will be easy to argue that they pose no threat to Iraq or Iran, and that might well be true, but this terror cult will be a much bigger threat to Europe than al-Qaeda ever was.
The MKO is committed to the violent overthrow of the Iranian government and enforcing their own brand of fascism, despite the fact that Iranian government was democratically elected (a point often forgotten) and the MKO is universally loathed in Iran and has a long history of anti-western violence as well.
stephiblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/europe-safe-haven-for-terrorists
The MEK and the Iranian People
MKO with blood on their hands to be tried in Iraq and in Iran, Camp Ashraf to close within two months
Rubaie: Iraq to Extradite MKO Terrorists
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iraq plans to extradite members of an anti-Iran terrorist group who have “Iranian blood on their hands,” Iraq’s national security adviser said Friday during a visit to Tehran.
“Among the members of this group, some have the blood of Iraqi innocents on their hands (and) we will hand them over to Iraqi justice, and some who have Iranian blood on their hands we can hand over to Iran,” said Muwafaq al-Rubaie.
He was referring to the terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO).
“Over 3,000 inhabitants of Camp Ashraf have to leave Iraq and the camp will be part of history within two months,” Rubaie reiterated in a joint news conference with Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
“The only choices open to members of this group are to return to Iran or to choose another country,” Rubaie said.
“We are acting under international humanitarian regulations and international laws. These people will themselves choose where they want go.”
“Iran’s security cannot be threatened by any factor inside Iraq. Iran’s security is our own security,” the Iraqi official underlined.
His words were translated from Arabic into Farsi by an official Iranian interpreter.
Rubaie said that 914 MKO members had a “passport or residence of a third country” and could leave Iraq for these countries.
“Some 914 of them have dual nationalities and others who want to return to Iran will be allowed to do so,” Rubaie said, adding he would discuss the issue with officials from 12 countries to see if they would accept MKO members.
“They will leave Iraq in a non-forcible way,” he said. “Terrorist groups have no place in Iraq.”
The Iraqi government announced on December 21 it planned to close the Ashraf camp north of Baghdad and close to the Iranian border, where around 3,500 MKO members are held.
On January 1, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said he would expel the MKO from the country.
The MKO was created in 1965 with the aim of overturning the regime of the Shah of Iran, but now is seeking the overthrow of Iran’s current government.
It was supported by Iraq’s late dictator Saddam Hussein, and it had carried out deadly raids on Iran from Iraq.
Despite being listed as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, the MKO receives wide support from Washington and London.
The European Court of Justice last month overturned an EU order freezing its funds.
Group members fought alongside Iraqi forces in the 1980-1988 war between Iraq and Iran and then settled in Iraq.
The MKO is behind a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, a number of EU parliamentarians said in a recent letter in which they slammed a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list. The EU officials also added that the group has no public support within Iran because of their role in helping Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988).
Many of the MKO members abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the camp are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.
A May 2005 Human Rights Watch report accused the MKO of running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations.
According to the Human Rights Watch report, the outlawed group puts defectors under torture and jail terms.
The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.
TEHRAN – Iraqi National Security advisor Muwafaq al-Rubaie said on Friday that Baghdad plans to close down the Ashaf military camp where the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) members are held under house arrest.
Iraq is also seeking to extradite the Mojahedin Khalq members who have taken refuge in Iraq since early 1980s, Rubaie told reporters in a joint news conference with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili in Tehran.
The Mojahedin Khalq launched a campaign of assassinations and bombings in Iran immediately after the Islamic Revolution.
The group was supported by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war but was disarmed after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Saddam also used the terror group in suppressing Shiite and Kurdish dissidents in southern and northern Iraq.
Rubaie said, “Among the members of this group, some have the blood of Iraqi innocents on their hands and we will hand them over to Iraqi justice, and some who have Iranian blood on their hands we can hand over to Iran.”
“The only choices open to members of this group are to return to Iran or to choose another country,” he stated.
The Iraqi envoy said “Some of the MKO members have expressed interest to return to Iran and we are making the arrangements for this.”
“We are acting under international humanitarian regulations and international laws. These people will themselves choose where they want to go.”
Rubaie said that 914 MKO members have a passport or residence of a third country and could leave Iraq for these countries.
He said on his return to Iraq he would discuss with the ambassadors of the United States and a dozen European countries to see if they would accept MKO members.
The top Iraqi security official stated that hundreds of MKO members have already returned to their families with the help of the Red Cross organization.
The Iraqi government announced on December 21 it planned to close the Ashraf camp north of Baghdad and close to the Iranian border.
On January 1, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki went further and said he would expel the MKO from the country.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Rubaie said Iraq is ready to take control of its domestic affairs even sooner than the 16-months deadline set by U.S. President Barak Obama.
Iraq and the United States have signed a security deal that calls for the U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. However, Obama, during his campaign for presidency vowed to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months from taking office.
Iraqi people and security forces are more than ever ready to take care of the country’s affairs and currently 95 percent of domestic issues are controlled by Iraqis, Rubaie said.
Jalili also stated that Iraq’s repeated announcements that it is ready to take control of the situation inside the county leaves no excuse for the continuation of occupation by foreign forces.
Turning to diplomatic relations with Iran, Rubaie said Iraq has signed a highly important agreement with the Islamic Republic after receiving “positive responses” from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“We are leaving Tehran by achieving a very important deal because we raised important issues in our negotiations and received positive, strong and documented responses,” he explained.
Rubaie, however, did not elaborate on the content of the agreement
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=187569
“An Iranian resistance group that has been living in exile in Iraq for decades is no longer a welcome guest in the country’’ ,Anita McNaught the correspondent of Fox News in Iraq reported on January 12th.
Ms. McNaught has based her documented report on evidences made by Iraqi Kurds who were victims of MKO’s atrocities while their cooperation with regime of Saddam Hussein to suppress Kurdish uprisings. Although, as McNaught reports “MKO denies involvement in the repression”, she cites the testimonies of Kurds including a Kurd military commander of Pishmerga who lost many forces of his battalion that was attacked by MKO, and a Kurdish researcher assured her that he has handed many secret documents of Baath Intelligence Service to Human Rights Watch; the documents show that MKO helped the Ba’ath forces to occupy Kirkuk province to resist Kurdish forces.
This two-page report of Anita McNaught gives some evidences on the terrorist nature of the MKO and as she quotes from Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group MEK “acquired its reputation as the ruthless tool of a thuggish regime.”
Finally she concluded with the viewpoint of a Western diplomat:”there is nothing we lose from Camp Ashraf except a huge headache and taxpayer dollars.”, as the reason of MEK’s expired role for the West.
Now that Fox News has too much evidence on the terrorist activities of MKO agents at least in Iraq. There is a question: why does Fox News hire AliReza Jaafarzade, the official member of MKO, as the foreign affair analyst?
Jaafarzade has never denounced his membership in MKO and has always advocated MKO’s cause in his so-called analysis on Fox News programs.
Why such a contradiction in Fox News’ policy?
Mazdak Parsi
As an organization designated FTO by the Department of State and as it is no more useful for the West, the only use of Jaafar Zade’s propaganda on FoxNews is to deceive the MKO members who are captured in Camp Ashraf, Iraq and Camp Maryam, France. Because they have no free access to the mass media, they only can view the Medias filtered by the cult leaders.
Therefore , the systematic propaganda of MKO on TV channels including FoxNews is an effort to keep the members hopeful to an uncertain future.
Mojahedin-e Khalq rewarded for cooperation against Iran?
The State Department has again decided to keep the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MKO) with all its aliases on the US terrorism list. There are a growing number of people who are calling for the US to have done with the group once and for all. Commentators on several blogs and articles suggest the leaders be ‘tried in internationally approved courts and let the membership go home.’ But this ignores the heavy price that has been paid for the group both politically (Iran has constantly accused the US and Europe of double standards on terrorism for their palpable support for the MKO) and financially (one of the key indicators of the actual irrelevance of adding the MKO to western terrorism lists is the tens of millions of dollars, euros and pounds the group has been able to spend on legal challenges and propaganda to keep itself alive – money which must come from somewhere).
With MKO personnel permanently camped-out in most of Europe’s parliaments for the past two years it should come as no surprise that the group will be removed from Europe’s terrorism list when it is announced on January 15. In July 2008, the EU announced that there were “no grounds” to amend the list of terrorist organisations, which includes 48 groups, and EU officials insisted that the decision to keep the MEK on the list of the terrorist groups is not related to the Western efforts to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program.
What is behind this peculiar change which will redefine the group as non-terrorist in Europe?
As with removal from the UK terrorism list in June 2008, no material difference will accrue to the MKO. In his book on the Mojahedin Dr. Ronen A. Cohen says the MKO “does not have the characteristics of a classic terror organization as it does not initiate terror against innocents” – although the indiscriminate nature of many of its attacks mean 12,000 civilians have been killed in MKO operations inside Iran over two decades.
The most pertinent explanation for why removal from the lists is irrelevant is because the MKO even at the height of its military prowess in 1988 and with the full backing of Saddam Hussein and the west was unable to fulfil its aim of replacing the Islamic Republic with its own rule. Massoud Raajvi’s long term premise that such change would come about as a result of a popular uprising has been pragmatically replaced in the past five years with the conviction that regime change would be imposed on Iran from external powers – the USA, Israel – and that the MKO could reap the benefit of being there as a viable alternative when that happened.
Of these two, perhaps the latter version is currently more possible and perhaps probable even with a new US Administration in place.
So, what use do the MKO’s backers envisage for the group?
The protection of a uniformed anti-Iran mercenary group in Camp Ashraf in Diyali province for five years has been intentional. The price paid has been too great to allow jettisoning the group now, both politically and financially. However, it is important to note that even if it is removed from the UK, EU and perhaps US terrorism lists, the MKO does not enjoy governmental recognition or legitimacy anywhere in the world. Nor does any country need to give the group legitimacy in order to make use of it.
Essentially the use of the MKO is, as Rajavi himself has used them, as perpetrators and victims of violence. The MKO’s talent is that they are trained to kill and be killed according to Rajavi’s order. That they will do this to fulfil a western agenda without needing western approval is the group’s unique selling point and is enough to justify not continuing to label them as terrorists.
There is no doubt that for many observers the removal of the MKO from the European list will clarify the European position toward terrorism. Public opinion in the Middle East has never regarded western terrorism lists as about terrorism per se but as lists of enemies of western interests.
Inclusion of the violently anti-Iranian MKO along with groups which are genuinely anti-western has been a major discrepancy of all the western terrorism lists, a glaring error of political judgement. The MKO may have begun life as an anti-imperialist group with armed struggle its core value, and continued this path under the patronage of Saddam Hussein. But, since its forced disarmament at the hands of the US army, the group has been able to beguile western powers, including Israel, into believing it shares common cause against Iran and is a friend and ally of at least some in the west.
After spending hundreds of millions of dollars on propaganda and legal fees to keep the MKO alive, these backers are now obliged to use this blunted tool in any way they can, perhaps to justify the expenditure, perhaps because they really believe the MKO can be an effective tool against Iran.
Anne Singleton, an expert on the MKO and author of ‘Saddam’s Private Army’ explains, “With a new Administration in the White House a pre-emptive strike on Iran looks unlikely. Instead the MKO’s backers have put together a coalition of small irritant groups, the known minority and separatist groups, along with the MKO. These groups will be garrisoned around the border with Iran and their task is to launch terrorist attacks into Iran over the next few years to keep the fire hot.
“The role of the MKO is to train and manage these groups using the expertise they acquired from Saddam’s Republican Guard. The price the MKO has had to pay is to accept their removal from their main base Camp Ashraf and relocate to other bases not their own. The inducement will be to remove the group from the terrorism list in Europe.”
Once the MKO has been declared in Europe as ‘no longer terrorists’, the group’s overt backers, Lord Corbett, Struan Stevenson MEP, Paulo Casaca MEP, and others who see the world, and in particular Iran, through neoconservative/Zionist tinted glasses will move to promote this coalition in their various circles.
Although it is tempting to cast this move into the sphere of betting both ways on the new Obama Administration’s Iran policy, the key trigger for this move has been the Iraqi government’s insistence on the removal of the MKO from Iraq and the handover of Camp Ashraf to Iraqi sovereignty. This has not been an unreasonable request of US forces over a five year period. However, it is only since the agreed handover of control of Camp Ashraf on January 1 that this became an inevitable outcome. For over a year, MKO backers in western parliaments have lobbied for the MKO to remain in Camp Ashraf on the grounds that the group would be massacred by vengeful Iraqis or forced back to Iran to face certain torture and execution. The falsity of this position has become exposed as the Iraqi government has continued to protect the group and has given repeated assurances that no one will be forced home against their will. Beyond this, the Iranian government’s own position on prosecuting leading members has made it impossible to send anyone back that Iran does not want.
The reason for the insistence on maintaining the MKO in Camp Ashraf – and now in new border based garrisons alongside other armed groups – has been because the only use for the group is to act as an irritant against Iran. If a full scale military attack could not be manufactured which would involve them, then small scale terrorist attacks are the next best alternative.
What all this overlooks, of course, is the human aspect of this group. For years former members of the MKO have warned of severe human rights violations perpetrated against the members. Human Rights Watch conducted its own investigation into the group’s recent history in 2005 and published a damning report titled No Exit. But more recently, those who escaped the camp since its capture by American forces in 2003 and who have managed to reach Europe, are alleging continued cruelties including unnecessary hysterectomies imposed on women to rob them of any hope of having children.
For five years the American army has effectively prevented any independent investigation into these allegations. The primary task of the Iraqi military now in charge of the camp must be to allow humanitarian agencies to access the camp’s residents and individually assess their mental, physical and emotional status. Anything less than this is to condemn 3,250 people to being part of an illegal paramilitary group without their active consent.
This still leaves the fundamental question of what the west will get from its investment in the MKO. It is looking likely that the US will cherry-pick whoever it wants from the MKO to perform in its new coalition strategy. The old, sick, disabled and disturbed will be left for the Iraqi government to deal with.
In view of western patronage of this group, albeit largely covert in nature since it does not acknowledge that it is the group’s willingness to die that is its main use, then it is western countries which ultimately have a responsibility, if not an outright duty, to rescue the group from Iraq. If the group’s membership is indeed moved to other bases in Iraq to continue involvement in acts of violence, then any blood shed will be on western hands not those who are defending their country’s security.
The non-Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), since the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, is seeking another alternative in the west. The MKO strove under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to become the Iraqi MKO and now is striving to become the Israeli MKO.
Since 1985 when the Internal Ideological Revolution and the Divine Leadership of the Rajavis were introduced within the MKO, and the cultic characteristics reached their full development, and since 1986 when the leadership of the MKO moved to Iraq under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and participated in the war against Iran and as well as suppressing the people of Iraq as Saddam’s private army, the organization not only had no presence inside Iran but it was also much hated as far as the Iranian people were concerned.
Since then until the fall of Saddam Hussein, the activities of the MKO against the Iranian regime included border assaults and sabotage activities and sending terror teams from Iraq inside Iran with the aid of the security forces of Saddam Hussein as well as political propaganda in the west. The assaults and terrorist activities were of course ceased when the dictator was toppled in Iraq and the organization was disarmed by the American forces in 2003, and therefore the activities of the MKO were limited to political propaganda in the west; the sort of propaganda of course which would pave the way for terrorism in the future.
Hence since that point up to now the MKO and its leadership have relied not on the Iranian people but on foreign powers to gain rule in Iran and at the present time they are seeking an alternative for Saddam Hussein (this time in the west of course) and have based their strategy on gaining support from potential enemies such as the US, Israel and the UK in place of the previous toppled enemy.
Therefore the presence of the MKO now is merely in the form of the Ashraf garrison (the MKO base in Iraq) and the Maryam garrison (the European base of the MKO in France) which initially is the problem of the newly formed government of Iraq and then the western countries, and is by no means the concern of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As far as the Iraqi government is concerned, this government knows the MKO as a terrorist group and one of the many miseries left from the era of Saddam Hussein for the people of Iraq and a threat for Iraq’s internal security; and therefore the Iraqi government is demanding that the Ashraf garrison be closed forever, and righteously expects the western governments who have had their use of the organization against Iran to accept them in their countries for their retirement stage.
The political process to de-proscribe the MKO in the EU was begun some time ago. As the UK initiated the proscription of the organization (for any reasons), now the UK is again stepping forward to remove their name from the EU list of terrorist groups, and most likely this will be done in the very near future.
What consequences will arise if the MKO is kept in or removed from the EU list of terrorist groups?
As far as Iran is concerned, the MKO is a matter for the past and whether they are designated as a terrorist group or not would not have the smallest effect. Neither when they moved into the list were any facilities created for the Iranians and nor when they move out will any problem arise in their way. The opposite of course applies for the MKO.
As far as the European countries are concerned they know best how to deal with a terrorist cult in their own territory regarding their national security. If the EU is convinced that the organization is no longer a terrorist group so be it, and we do hope that their judgment is right and the MKO and its leader have truly put aside terrorism; although we do not have any indications for such assumptions.
From the Iraqis’ point of view, who demands that the MKO (who have cooperated with Saddam Hussein in killing innocent people) leave Iraq, de-proscribing the MKO in Europe is good news since the west has no excuses for not accepting them in their countries any more. In the last meeting we had with the Iraqi ministry of foreign affairs they explained that the ministry had invited all European ambassadors in Baghdad to a meeting and urged them to accept the members of the MKO in their countries as political refugees, but they all rejected the request and their excuse was that the group has been designated as a terrorist organization by the EU. But now the Iraqis can of course put their demands forward again.
But the only side who would really suffer from de-proscribing the MKO in Europe is of course the prime victims of such a destructive cult, meaning the members who will be more mentally manipulated when this is shown to them as a victory of the cult and will ensue their continued mental captivity; and therefore their families must pay the price by being away from them and have no news from their beloved ones.
On the issue of closing the Ashraf garrison in Iraq, the MKO is trying hard to make it an entirely Iranian concern. The west is also following the same pattern and demanding an increase in the price of the MKO supposedly for a deal with the Islamic Republic, and perhaps the policy of de-proscribing them in Europe which has started sometime ago is in this line. The MKO is pretending in its propaganda that it is a major issue for Iran and they claim to the world that Iran is striving to get hold of the inhabitants of the Ashraf garrison to take them to Iran and put them on trial and torture them and eventually kill them. Anyone who has the least of knowledge of the MKO surely knows that the claim made by the MKO is somehow ‘escaping forward’ [farar be jelow]. The MKO is merely trying to create such an atmosphere in order to falsify the main issue. Certainly the Islamic Republic is not seeking to get back dead bodies which the owners don’t want anymore. On the contrary Iran logically is trying to smartly use the dissidents of the MKO against it (refer to the quotations made from a western diplomat in Iran in an article written by Geroges Malbrunot in Le Figaro dated December 23) and it is obvious that the Iranian regime is more eager that they are moved to Europe in order to send back the products of a terrorist cult in the shape of human robots to their original place. It is also worth mentioning that in the time of Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq, Massoud Rajavi the leader of the MKO did not send the group’s defectors to Europe and instead handed them over to the Iranian regime. He said clearly on many occasions that the Iranian regime would not do anything to the members of the MKO who have no arms in their hands.
The leaders of the MKO claim that if the US forces move from the Ashraf garrison and leave the posts for the Iraqis, they would not have security in Iraq. This could be true since many Kurdish and Shiites groups in Iraq know this organization as their ruthless enemy who cooperated with Saddam Hussein to suppress them and would wish to take revenge. The solution of course is not for the US to keep their forces there for their security forever. The answer to this problem is that the western governments take them back to their own countries in order to preserve their security. It is worth pointing out that most of these people were political refugees in the west and have been recruited and sent to Iraq from there to join in the National Liberation Army.
Whether the MKO is designated as a terrorist entity or not and whether the US forces stay outside the Ashraf garrison or not makes no big difference to anyone and we are not much concerned about it. As far as the Sahar Family Foundation in Iraq is concerned and we have focused our attention on it, the inhabitants of the Ashraf garrison must enjoy free meetings with their families in some place outside the garrison and without the presence of the MKO authorities and they must have the benefit of having contacts with the outside world and also to have the mental pressures and thought controls lifted from them; and we will stay firm in Iraq and continue our activities until we reach this very important humanitarian goal.
The armed struggle is mostly defined as Guerilla warfare which is considered as the unconventional warfare in which the guerrilla army uses mobile tactics (ambushes, raids, etc) to fight a larger army or enemy.
According to Wikipedia this term (guerrilla) means “little war” in Spanish and the concept acknowledges a conflict between armed civilians against a powerful nation state army. Also, as Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionist, writes in his book “Guerrilla Warfare”:
”the guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves “
In China, the Maoist Theory of People’s War believes that the guerrilla earns population’s support by distributing propaganda. To answer the question “why does the guerrilla fighter fight?” Ernesto Che Guevara responds:
”the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors.”
Therefore, as the most revolutionary guerrilla leaders believe the support of the population is of great importance to guerrilla fighters to provide shelter, supply, finance and intelligence for them. So having the base of the people guarantees the success of a guerrilla movement and this is what the MKO lacks. Instead they could operate by enjoying the protection of the friendly regime of Saddam Hussein that provided them with funds, weapons, military training and bases, but the support of Baath regime for MKO just made their situation among the masses of Iranian population worst because their cooperation with the enemy of Iran turn these freedom fighters into traitors who have been Saddam’s mercenary forces for 3 decades. The experts think that relationships with civil populations are one of the most important factors in the guerrilla fighters’ success or failure.
MKO lost its public support in three phases. The first phase happened following their use of terror after the Islamic Revolution, when they launched terror operations in civil targets and assassinated a large number of their compatriots. Like the communist forces in the Philippines and Malaysia, these strikes helped turn civilian opinion against the so-called freedom fighters. Such tactics had no result except the withdrawal of the support of Iranians for MKO terrorists.
As mentioned above the second phase of the withdrawal of public support for MKO was after their cooperation with Saddam dictatorship during the eight years of Iran- Iraq war in which the MEK served as Saddam’s private army, provided intelligence for Baathist Intelligence services. MKO bases donated by Saddam Hussein were mostly located near Iranian border of which is an important factor in guerrilla warfare but after the fall of Saddam, their bases were reduced to the one in the Northern part of Baghdad, Camp Ashraf, in Diala province. Thus after the American invasion to Iraq and the take over of Camp Ashraf by the US army, the MEK were restricted to their only remote base, Ashraf.
The third phase of the public hatred toward MKO was as recent as the visits made by the families of captured MKO members in Camp Ashraf. Families of MEK/MKO members were the only people who were considered as sympathizers by MKO leaders but they are also turning to their enemies because they are seriously seeking the visit of their beloved ones who are captives of MKO cult in Camp Ashraf. The best example is their former supporter, Mustafa Muhammadi who has appealed for the arrest of Camp Ashraf leaders who have kept his daughter for years.
Another important element in guerrilla warfare is weapon of which the NLA had plenty of, due to their ex-master Saddam Hussein’s donations .But they had to submit all their weapons to the US army that disarmed the group after the seizure of Camp Ashraf in 2003.
Nowadays the MKO lacks public support ,weapon and also border but their only last resort includes Camp Ashraf that itself is supposed to be handed over to Iraqi Government and eventually to be shut down.
MKO leaders find no way except prolonging their stay in Camp Ashraf, Iraq since their vital need is now awning a location where they can survive as a coercive army.
This shows the importance of Camp Ashraf while MKO has no public support to rely on, no weapon to fight with and no border to launch cross border attacks.
Naturally, for those who consider public opinion as the criterion for their legality or those who pretend as so in their propaganda, the legality of their struggle is due to the people’s support either direct or indirect.
It’s obvious that in societies where people can freely declare their idea the legality comes out of vote boxes but they don’t stop declaring their idea when the situation is not provided. The historical experience during all eras and in all nations has proved that if the people trust you, they declare their sympathy and support in any possible way. And, about this issue Lenin (if I’m not wrong) says:”while choking condition people vote with their feet.”
Therefore, if you are popular and if there is no way for declaration of public support, at least they whisper about you.
But there have been individuals and movements whose struggle against current regime has had no link to people’s opinion and their supposed legality came from their ideology and belief. Whenever the methodology of the ruling regime opposes their principals, that individual or movement needs to fight. Again if I’m not wrong ,Hassan Sabbah [the leader of Assassin cult who struggled against Arabic and Turkish occupiers of Iran] says:” the majority does not prove the legality”. here I want to protest against some of my dear friends who defected from Rajavi’s cult. Perhaps because of some apparent similarities between Hassan Sabbah’s group and a mercenary of Saddam or a low-ranking agent of foreigners [MKO], they compare them together. Even according to the confessions of the enemies of Hassan Sabbah, he was doubtlessly a great person looking for the independence of Iran from under the York of bondage of Caliphs of Bagdad and Turkish Seljukian.
At what I’m protesting is the proper “comparison”, since this comparison without regarding what its conclusion is, credits a servant whose serving role in two recent decades has been proven. So I have to say that: Hassan Sabbah whether rightly or wrongly ,”castrated” his followers in order to expel the foreigners but the servant “castrated “ in order to bring the foreigners and this is the substantial difference that no similarity can remove it.
Mujahedin does not fit any of the two parties (which both were in Iranian history) not the party that views legality as a fruit of majority and not the party of which the struggle is resulted by some principals based on an ideology and a doctrine.
MKO is neither Stalin nor Che guevara.
MKO is MKO. They are hypocrites since their main characteristic is working for foreigners so hard that they can’t seem to live without foreign support. Thus the main reason or factor that has made a hypocrite movement of them is their services to foreigners not for example their power seeking ambitions.
As I mentioned before, their propaganda claims that they have great support among people to deceive public thought and as they have always claimed “returning the right of governing to people is their main cause for struggle”.
The last time, one of the she-mercenaries of cult’s supreme leader, noted this case was yesterday.
The servant’s wife, as a deputy of him, declaring her satisfaction and appreciated the authorities for the ruling of British court based on removal of MKO from terror list, and also appreciating some parliamentarians (Lords or Commons) said that the terror label is an “injustice” against Iranian “people” and their ‘’resistance’’.
From the other side, she claimed that the principal solution for the West and Israel to achieve their strategic goals in the region and Iran is the removal of terrorist label from MKO.
The words of that low-ranking servant, makes this question in our minds that how it is possible that MKO is in terror list and this act is an “ injustice “ against Iranians but that nation not only protested this “injustice” but also they (about 70 million) didn’t say a word about it.
Can the Iranian Regime prevent people from whispering? if it is so , as the servant’s wife pretends, today that the court ruled that MKO is not terrorist ,we should witness the Iranians’ cheers of happiness because of the removal of the only obstacle in the way to freedom…not 70 millions people, should 7 million of them do that? How about 120 thousands people of 1.2 million Iranians living in the United States, I mean about 10 percent? How about 1 pecent, 12 thousand Iranians? Although the number is too small to show the attention of 70 million Iranians population for the destiny of “their” resistance, if even this small number in reality didn’t witnessed Aunt Maryam’s words we should ask that what kind of legal, just resistance it is that even a very tiny part of Iranian population pays no attention to its being or not being in terror list. The truth is that the majority of Iranians don’t know any thing about it.
Did the same nation remain un- informed when Mosadeq [the Iranian prime minister who nationalized Iranian Oil Industry during Pahlavi ‘s period] won the judgment in Den Haag Court?
Aren’t they the same people who declare their ideas and discuss President Bush or President Ahmadinejad’s speeches or Iranian Nuclear programs in their parties inside or outside Iran?
Why don’t the people discuss the denunciation made by MKO (spies!) as an “honorable” position taken by the ‘’righteous’’ resistance?
The Iranians talk about everything such as mark or type of toilet paper but not even a word about MKO and even if a person starts talking of MKO they will just insult it. So what kind of link is between a nation and an organized resistance with a forty-three year old history? It is a link that can only be seen by Rajavi.
But what is viewed by the others is that the resistance takes the signature of Western citizens using any kind of deceit and lie in order to solve Iranian problems!
If there was such a link, was it hard for the Iranians to show the world their support for their resistance?
Of course if there was really such a link and support, MKO wouldn’t need to lobby British court and parliaments and Iraqi cafés to look for support. The same nation could fund MKO thousands times as much as the money given to it by Western and Iraqi Intelligence Services. They could also dedicate their lives to MKO and Maryam.
Given, according to what MKO says there is a choking situation in Iran, how about abroad? Where are the people, who came to the streets in America and Europe while students’ uprisings in Iran in 1998, where are the people who called the TV and Radio stations and cried or shouted cheerfully …
Why don’t they come out for MKO?
Why don’t they show any sympathy for the disappearance of resistance leader?
But they actually have a feeling towards MKO and those who are like MKO, The feeling of hatred to a mercenary.
The Tude Party which was perhaps the biggest political socialist establishment in Iran during an especial period of time lost its base among people, because it didn’t engage to people. It is dead and it’s not important how late its dead body is wondering. MKO is the same as Tude. Their historical flight to Iraq graved a significant date on their tomb. Now, if not only 35 members of British parliament but also all members and all western countries including Israel (for whom the MKO is doing its best) gather together to shout hooray for MKO, the Iranians have no sympathy for them. If not only Fox News but also all American Israelis, Bengali… Medias publish propaganda for MKO, the Iranian people hate them. They can make no change in the hearts of Iranians who once gave their beloved children to MKO.
The people may forgive crime but they won’t forgive treason and betrayal.
Therefore whenever we witness that Iranians (at least a part of Iranians) have sympathy for MKO, then they can link their words to them…
But there is no more sympathy for MKO since wherever a nation had sadness Mujahedin cheered happily and wherever a nation had happiness they were sad. [After September 11th tragedy ,the mko terrorists shouted cheerfully in camp Ashraf! ]
While Saddam Hussein was killing and bombing Iraqi and Iranian people, MKO was cheering hooray and gathering intelligence for him.
Whenever they came to the streets cheering and dancing for their soccer team, MKO did its best writing letters for the removal of the team and prayed for the enemies of the team.
When the poor Iranians worry about financial sanctions MKO sends congratulations to those suffering people. When the people hear that the relations with western government are becoming normal and no war is on the way, they become happy while the MKO goes to a deep depression.
MKO is now polishing the boots of westerners instead of ruling over Iranians. They are so poor that if a retired sanitation worker from the west supports them, they put the news in three locations on their websites. None of these Lords, commons and courts equals the support of an Iranian Sanitation worker and if it was so the Mujahedin were not trying in vain.
Thus, when not only one person; only one person is ready to gather signatures for MKO or to come to the streets. Does MKO think that even after a war against Iran and after supposedly the removal of Islamic Regime, Iranians will welcome them?
Hamid Zartoshtnya
Translation: Nejat Society
It is something clear that no nation advocates traitors’ claims for democracy as what MEK has long been doing, since the 1980s they collaborated with Saddam Hussein during Iraq-Iran war parading in tanks that had been donated to them by Saddam Hussein, until now that their slick lobbying and propaganda machine operates in the West.
Alireza Jaafarzade, MEK’s spokesman in the US and the foreign affairs analyst of Fox News(!) says that he supports sanctions against Iran but he also wants to see that sanctions are coupled with political pressure.
While many in both US and Iran governments are looking for diplomatic solutions to normalize the relations, the MEK traitors are making a lot of efforts to destabilize the Iranian regime by duping the West claiming to represent a democratic alternative to regime of Tehran.
To achieve their goals the “MEK have always been able to rent a crowd for the benefits of TV cameras and Naive Western commentators.”; Kenneth.R.Timmerman said in his article “ No Second Marriages in Iran” in Front Page Magazine (July13,2007)
For sure democracy is welcomed all over the world, but Mujahedin-e-Khalq is not the opposition to establish it as it claims. MEK may be able to dupe the Western governments by its pro-democratic slogans, statements but not Iranians who have long been victims of the terrorist attacks of the group as well as its close cooperation with Saddam as his main accomplice against Iran.
Timmerman introduces MEK as “an Iranian terrorist organization that has murdered Americans “which “is once again trying to launder its past and to convince Western governments that it can provide an effective alternative to the regime of Tehran.”
Today MEK’s main focus in their activities is to pressure the European and American parliament members to remove them from the list of terrorist organizations.
But given the MEK’s history of violence and its willingness to act as a proxy force against Iran, it is not wise to remove them from the list because such an action would increase the hostilities between the United States and Iran and also it would influence Iraq and then the whole region.
The experts and scientists are trying to build human-like robots that would be able to express feelings, emotions and love, meanwhile there are some people who are trying to turn human beings into robots. They definitely have to empty the individual of his feelings so as he would lose his will and individuality and then his control over his activities. In such a condition in which they commit any inhuman act to change the individual into a machine, the way is paved for further exploitation. It’s clear that some others are always ready to abuse these robot-like humans (as it’s obvious in the MEK-Israel relations)
Since the MEK found out that their bases in Iraq and France are under special focus, they have been launching further efforts to increase the number of their European bases. Maryam Rajavi’s trips to Italy, Germany and other European countries might be partly to achieve such goals.
It seems reasonable that foreign elements view the MEK as an opportunity (not an alternative), something that caused the Rajavis to remain in this illusion that the MEK appears important to West! The foreign side acts cautiously to use the MEK to pressure the regime of Tehran; between the both sides, there are the forces who have been taken as hostages by the MEK. They are the toys in the hands of Western politicians and the selfish Rajavis and if they are released of their mental and physical prisons, they will join those who criticize MEK policies, fighting the inhuman acts of the cult trying to stop the machine making factory of the Rajavis in Camp Ashraf and Auver Sur d’Oise.
Mental capture = psychological manipulation = Mind control = crimes against human beings
Although the number of cults mounts to a large quantity, they follow a unique regulation in their internal and external relations. According to the recent manipulation techniques, they deny the individual identity, instead they consider an organizational (cult –like) identity for the individual. The MEK try to deny their cult-like entity by attacking the others!
They claim it as a label and can not accept the fact that they represent a cult; however they have to work according to their cult-like regulations. They continually chant the slogan:”contradiction is not tolerated.” The Stalinism of Rajavi and his cult-like machiavelism does not prevent the defection of a lot of members.
Given the facts around MEK nature, does the foreign element receive Maryam Rajavi? Does he ever ask about the violation of basic human rights in MKO? Do they ever ask Maryam Rajavi why she ordered the hysterectomy surgery on women? Do they ever ask the Rajavis according to which rules the marriage is forbidden in MKO? Do the European parliamentarians who claim to be democratic, ask Mrs. Rajavi about the catastrophic situation of children of MEK members? It was better to ask her, while she was visiting Holocaust museum, why she came to such a museum despite her participation in the massacre of Kurdish Iraqis? Is there any other definition for the instrumental abuse?
Davood – London