Mujahedin Khalq Organization’s Propaganda System

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Relocation, A Humanitarian Concern or An Assets Dispute

The humanitarian issue of relocation is different from the material assets dispute

The Iraqi government is reported to have evacuated the fifth group of 416 members of the The humanitarian issue of relocation is different from the material assets dispute Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) from Camp New Iraq, Camp Ashraf, and transferred them to a Temporary Transit Location (TTL) near Baghdad. Unlike the four past groups transferred, overwhelming majority of this convoy were women, 350 out of 416.

In a bid to escape from any accusation of refusing to cooperate to peacefully speed up the process of evacuation, MKO announced it “showed utmost cooperation and agreed to the transfer upon the requests of Mrs. Maryam Rajavi”. But the unnecessary interval of 19 days between the transfer of the fourth and the fifth group was mainly because of MKO’s providing of unreasonable impediments and invention of excuses. In its latest statement delivered a few days prior to transfer, MKO offered new suggestions which clearly indicated that it was walking on a path of delaying the process of relocation and prolonging its stay at Ashraf.

The suggestion it intended to impose on the Iraqi Government stressed on moving a big bulk of utilities and instruments from Ashraf to TTL and selling the unmovable at a big price. However, the Iraqi Government disregarded MKO offers and disappointed it in what the group refers to as “two weeks of negotiations and repeatedly changing the draft agreement with Ambassador Kobler”. The Iraqi Government seems to have learned how to deal with petulant demands of the group and the utility vehicles MKO had prepared to take were stopped at the gate and returned back to Ashraf. Like the previous convoys supervised by the UN monitors nothing but the personal belongings, as stipulated in the MoU signed between the Iraqi Government and the UN, were permitted to pass the inspectors at the gate.

The agreement reached at the present is relocation of Ashraf residents to TTL. The question of properties and holdings MKO claim to possess and insists to take is not so simple an issue to be negotiated simultaneous with the relocation process. The humanitarian issue of relocation is different from the material assets dispute.

May 7, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Ashraf Properties; Has MKO A Right to Claim?

MKO plans to leave Iraq with abundant sums it has hardly any right in its claiming

The first backlashes of Mojahedin Khlaq Organization MKO against the Iraqi Government’s decision to close camp Ashraf and expel its residents from the country were a variety of violent behavior and threatening tone. The first practical approach was to provoke the Iraqi forces, not acquainted with the group’s self-destructive tactics, to show a violent reaction to the residents’ protests. That was enough for the group to run a propaganda atmosphere in which they could express the members as oppressed victims and accordingly get some global support to put off the deadline for the closure of the camp and expulsion.

Despite inflicting casualties on the both sides, the violent approach proved to be a complete failure. But it did not take long when there came the news that MKO agreed to relocate to a temporary center near Baghdad “to prove genuine goodwill gesture for a peaceful solution”. Of course, it was the beginning of another story, a new round of inventing unreasonable excuses to delay relocation. However, on January 31, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative, Martin Kobler, announced the readiness of the Temporary Transit Location TTL, the new camp, for the transfer of the residents and it was confirmed that the camp met human rights and humanitarian standards to house them. So far nearly half of the Ashraf residents have been transferred to TTL.
And MKO’s devise of the ploys change from day to day. These days it is heavily engaged in making and delivering a variety of statements in a new attempt to have its full control over Ashraf even after the evacuation of the residents. In a new statement, MKO has offered new suggestions which mean forging a compromise rather than making a threat. In a paragraph of the suggestions we read; ”It is necessary that, until arriving at a final solution of the issue, a multitude of individuals remain at Ashraf to safeguard the existing assets and belongings”.
No doubt, under this new pretext Rajavi intends to extend the control over Ashraf to the last days and have it in his possession. The solution of properties and assets at Ashraf is a legal issue to be solved under legal procedures as agreed in the signed MOU in 25 December 2011 and it is not bound to the conditions of agreement to relocation. Under the agreement, “The Government of Iraq permits the residents of Camp Ashraf to bring their individual belongings”. Assessing the real value of properties and belongings of MKO, for which MKO accuses the Iraqi government of not resolving the transferal of property that belongs to the residents of Ashraf, is not so simple an issue as the group has done beforehand. It is a secondary issue to deal with after relocation of residents.
To arrive at a solution of properties it requires interference and supervision of the UN and other concerned international bodies as well as representatives from among the Iraqi people. Not all the claimed properties and assets have a function of legal and civil purpose. Besides, many of the vehicles, instruments and machineries allocated to the group by the ousted dictator belong to Iraqi army and people living in the vicinity. The group should be reminded that it brought nothing when it came to Iraq and all it claims to have owned is out of the bundles of dollars Saddame allocated to it from the pocket of the poor Iraqi people when they needed the sums more than any other time.
It is not fair to let a terrorist cult long fed on Iraqis money accuse their government of seizing millions of dollars its sources and whereabouts are clear. It is not fair to let perpetrators of violence and mercenaries of a fallen dictator have their pockets filled by dollars of oppressed people when expelled and leaving the country. It is typical of the group to get the upper hand in any case. The relocation will end soon but it is already preparing for the next stage, to leave Iraq with abundant sums it has hardly any right in its claiming.

May 6, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

A Lobbyist or a Messenger to Mankind

The predicament of residents at temporary location shouldn’t be tied to MKO’s terrorist tag

I always wondered how the survivor of a human tragedy could be abused for the justification of The predicament of residents at temporary location shouldn’t be tied to MKO’s terrorist tag another human tragedy just taking place before the eyes of the world. Just last year on April 27, Elie Wiesel, a survivor of Hitler’s death camp at Buchenwald, was invited to make a speech at a conference in Paris organized by Mojahedin Khalq Organization ,MKO to denounce a tragic event at Camp Ashraf. In fact, the Ashraf residents had the strict order to provoke bloody attacks since the group needed fresh blood and a few martyrs and wounded people to feed its new round of propaganda against the Iraqi government to maintain the blanket of secrecy surrounding the camp. The provoked attack, however, resulted in thirty-six death and tens more were wounded.

As reported by Washington Times, Mr. Wiesel once more spoke at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last month. There he illustrated a new profile of himself that besides being a “messenger to mankind” was also on the list of some other American colleagues lobbying for the removal of MKO from the State Department’s list of FTO. In his speech he said: “The thing to do now when it comes to Ashraf and Liberty camp residents in Iraq is simple: Remove the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) from the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. It just takes some principle and spine”.

Mr. Weisel is quoted he had vowed that whenever a human being is persecuted, “I shall not be silent.” But he claims he didn’t know about Ashraf until shortly before the attack, as he asked at the conference, “Why didn’t the world know?” it is our question as well. Why didn’t the world know about hundreds of people enslaved against their will within the bastion of a terrorist cult in the middle of a wasteland in Iraq? And now that you and the world have come to know, why nobody feels a responsibility to help them regain their freedom?

The predicament of residents at Ashraf and temporary location, as they call it Liberty camp, has nothing to do with the removal of their group from a terrorist list. It is not the question of an organization, it is a humanitarian issue. The problem of the members relocated to temporary location has to be dealt with regardless of the group’s entity. The problem is not MKO’s terrorist tag; to remind, it has already been removed from the EU terrorist list but still none of the EU member countries has accepted to receive the residents as the refugees.

And Mr. Weisel has a great responsibility as a “messenger to mankind” to fulfill as he has already vowed that “I shall not be silent.” We deeply believe that he and the world shall not remain silent. Instead of working all your lobbying power to delist a terrorist entity, become the voice of suffering souls crying for freedom, to convince the world to have open arms for them. Nearly half of the Ashraf dissidents have been transferred to temporary location near Baghdad, but none has been relocated since no third country has yet consented to take them as refugees.

By M. Nelson

May 3, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Take MEK claims of Iran’s nuclear capability with a grain of salt

Alireza Jafarzadeh’s recent commentary ("Iran’snuclear genie is out of the bottle," April 16) is eerily reminiscent of the manipulations of Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi who shamelessly fed the US government false information with the express aim of advocating a military invasion of Iraq in Take MEK claims of Iran's nuclear capability with a grain of salt 2003 in order to promote his own personal political and economic fortunes.

Just as Mr. Jafarzadeh openly sides with the exiled Iranian terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq, Mr. Chalibi lived in London while leading an umbrella Iraqi opposition group (the Iraqi National Congress) pushing for U.S. militaryintervention to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. Among many illicit activities, including financial fraud, the INC provided gullible senior U.S. government officials and pundits with fabricated and bogus intelligence reports concerning Iraq’s (non-existent) WMD programs. Mr. Jafarzadeh’s unsubstantiated allegations from an exiled group with a self-serving political agenda stand in direct contrast to the official assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.

Readers should beware of being duped yet again by those seeking another costly foreign intervention under false premises.

Christopher Bolan, Carlisle, Pa. / Baltimoresun

April 24, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The Contradictory Image of MKO

The contradiction between claimed position of MKO and its real image exposed to the world

Perhaps nowhere in the world can you ever find a political or ideological organization with so many embedded contradictions and paradoxes as Mojahedin Khalq Organization MKO (aka. MEK, MKI, PMOI, NCR, NLA). The difference between its claimed ideal position and its real, active image is amazingly unorthodox as it is obvious in its theory and action.

In theory, it claims to be the sole and prime enemy of capitalism, the only organization to establish a universal classless society, an unequalled current, as Rajavi believes, that like a sharp arrow has pierced through any barrier to accomplish the victory of the man’s will over the historical determinism, to be the unparalleled liberator of man from exploitation and slavery, an unrivalled pattern in methodology and theory to achieve ideal ends and which recognizes no legitimacy for any other group or organization, an organization that believes has fathomed the mysteries of the universe and existence. For sure no other organization but MKO can you encounter to make such big claims, to say no road leads to Rome but mine!

In the course of its forty seven years long life MKO has stubbornly dwelled on its strategically made mistakes, failures and dogmatism believing to have achieved huge successes, habitually making a mountain out of a molehill. And just at this time when the organization is facing its critical phase and condition of uncertainty, its leader in hideout, Massoud Rajavi, has begun to talk big and claims to be entering a phase of change and starting to reach the apex of its struggle. Of course, it is not clear how he plans to achieve the ideal point but the explicit challenge before his organization at the time being seems to be inappropriate health conditions at the Temporary Transit Location TTL, where the residents of Ashraf are being relocated. In fact, the prime struggle at the moment against which he uses all the international and global leverage is focused on fundamental and strategic barriers of non-standard bathrooms and health services at the transit camp.

The question is not to grasp the seriousness and importance of such deep and strategic challenges for the leader and what is his purpose in raising them. The fact is that the leader’s scope of understanding and mind capacity for making excuses to deter evacuation of Ashraf fails to go beyond such funny, childish issues. Nobody ever thought that the ideological leader of an organization that boasts of enjoying the support of millions and thousands of sympathizers and international personalities would one day refer to defying sanitary shortages as a strategic phase of struggle. Besides, Rajavi refers to the members of his organization as ready-to-launch missiles. Then, what will be his answer if asked what kind of missiles are they that cannot tolerate some temporary, non-standard sanitary deficiency?

For the organization that claims to have the ability of solving the most difficult challenges of the world and its ontological problems, it is a real misery and disaster to be unable to solve such ordinary problems. Furthermore, other prominent European and American personalities are called to help solve these problems. And it raises many questions in the minds of people familiar with the history of the organization: what has happened to it and its leadership to have sunk into mediocrity of being desperately struggling to overcome simple, unimportant matters when they survived big crises like that of once being displaced in Kurdistan? That is the point one encounter the truth about the claimed ideal position of MKO and its real image exposed to the world. Funny as it may seem, the mentioned strategic challenges well approve that there is an astronomical distance between the reality of the world today and retardation of MKO’s ideological leadership.
Mojahedin.ws
April 10, 2012

April 12, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The Hired Recruits of a Terrorist Cult

MKO hires businessmen to start a bargain over the suffering residents of Ashraf

Once the Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, said “The rank and file are usually much MKO hires businessmen to start a bargain over the suffering residents of Ashraf more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly… it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”. And it is really a recipe for disaster if a terrorist cult clings onto this Nazi precept in its propaganda activities.

The recent revelations concerning the speaking fees paid to the former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell as a supporter of a designated terrorist group MKO, only one of a group of senior former American officials and military commanders walking on the same line, are sad news to hear especially when you come to realize that these advocates have been a part of an administration that voiced a global war on terrorism. It is hard to believe that they did not know how a military base, Camp Ashraf, emerged out of a desert in the dictatorial reign of Saddam and how it was turned into a cult bastion. And both sides know well what the other side needs and demands.

MKO is looking for the middlemen and businessmen to start a bargain and voice what has been gone unheard for its inclusion in the terror list. The leaders of MKO living in Paris have a low opinion of Ashraf residents as the members of the organization but the best levers to bargain. Being the victims of a terrorist cult for at least 25 years, now the residents enslaved in Ashraf are hostages for a bargain to impose the will of being removed from the terrorist list and the American and European paid middlemen have volunteered to voice it. In fact, the cliché phrases and sentences they parrot in arranged conferences and rallies are exactly what their employers, and the manageresses in particular, have dictated to them. They are confined to two points; “remove MKO from the terrorist list, help Ashraf residents”.

Out of presenting justifications for receiving huge sums of easy money or being conned by an incredible MKO lobbying effort carried out through a series of front groups, none of these nearly two dozen high-profile speakers can justify how they happened to volunteer for bargaining the lot of some hundred suffering souls. Through any taken opportunity in the past, there has been an attempt by ex-members and other experts to tell the world of the concerns about the members not living but enslaved and held in Camp Ashraf against their own will. Maybe the world couldn’t but they could see how the organization was exploiting insiders as human shields to safeguard its own entity rather than being the least concerned about the members themselves.
There has come an opportunity for these enslaved residents to taste freedom after their relocation from Ashraf cult bastion to Temporary Transit Location TTL. But the power of money along with the cultist tactics of MKO is impeding their freedom. The very those people who claim to be a defender of human rights, oppressed people and women in particular are now turning their back on suffering residents and walking against their principles and slogans. Somehow they seem to have been influenced by the brainwashing mechanisms of MKO, demands and principles instilled into them by the force of money. The job was done. They had nothing more to do but to mount the propaganda stage of MKO to enthusiastically repeat and repeat the words put into their minds and months. Under such influence, nobody is ever permitted nor thinks of the predicament of whom, under the hollow slogans of being the pioneers and heroines of freedom and democracy, suffer crushing physical and psychological pressures even worse than those enslaved in the outside world. It is a pity that the so-called advocates of freedom and democracy chant anti-human, pro-cultist and pro-terrorist slogans under the dollar shower of a terrorist cult.

March 18, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

What’s Up With All the MEK Ads?

The Prospect takes on the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq ads playing nonstop during campaign coverage.

If you’ve been watching cable news lately, there’s a good chance that you’ve noticed some out-of-the-ordinary adverts. Namely, a 30-second spot done in the grainy style of a spy-thriller flashback calling for the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group, to be taken off the official U.S. terrorist watch list. It’s a conspicuous outsider in the typical ad roster filled with car commercials and cholesterol meds, which might have led some viewers to wonder, “What’s up with that?”

Ask and ye shall receive.

What does the MEK purport to be?

As tabloid editors who traffic in celebrity divorces and teen-idol feuds well know, there are two sides to every juicy story. In the words of the commercial mentioned above, the “MEK is Iran’s democratic opposition working for a nuclear-free Iran founded on human rights.” The ad employs cinematically ominous music and a narrator whose vocal stylings are more stress-inducing than a pelvic exam, all to great effect. It closes with pictures of U.S. politicians and officials who have publicly supported the group, along with the imperative, “Secretary Clinton, for democracy and freedom in Iran, delist MEK.”

This sentiment is well in line with how supporters of the MEK portray the group—as a political movement with freedom-fighting roots going back to the overthrow of the shah. The MEK didn’t mesh well with Iran’s new Islamic government, however, (Marxist leanings appear to terrify powerful imams just as much as they do senators from Wisconsin), and its members were booted from the country in 1981.

Most MEK loyalists moved into a camp on the Iran/Iraq border and were materially supported by Saddam Hussein until his ouster. Over the course of the last three decades, they have been linked to attacks on Iranian embassies abroad, along with assassinations within Iran itself.

How does the U.S. government characterize the MEK?

As a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the official bad-guy label that the group earned from the State Department in 1997, the U.S.’s feelings about MEK are pretty clear. According to the official State Department report listing the MEK as a terrorist organization, which was obtained recently by NBC news, the group’s actions during the Iranian revolution were anti-American: “As part of that struggle, they assassinated at least six American citizens, supported the takeover of the U.S. embassy, and opposed the release of the American hostages.”

Most recently, the MEK has been accused of coordinating with Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, in the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in January in the midst of busy downtown Tehran traffic.

Why is there talk of delisting?

In July 2010, a federal appeals court in D.C. ordered the State Department to reconsider the MEK’s place on the terrorist watch list. The court ordered the State Department to revise the MEK’s delineation as a terrorist group on the grounds that it was categorized without proper evidence brought by the government. The ruling mandated that Secretary Clinton come back with sufficient evidence and a ruling on the MEK designation within 180 days. Two years later, no such announcement has been made. In 2009, the European Union removed the MEK from its watch list.

The MEK sounds sketchy! How’d it get support from all those politicians in the pro-delisting TV ads?

The short answer is, to quote the inimitable Coolio, because of the “power and the money.”

Basically, through its Paris-based political wing, The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the MEK has been on a PR blitz as of late. The poster girl for the movement is Maryam Rajavi, who, along with her husband Massoud (whereabouts unknown—how glam!) runs the MEK’s operations. The current TV ad features her wearing a matronly suit and a purple hijab, smiling winningly for the cameras.

The quest for legitimacy in recent years has consisted of paying prominent U.S. political figures thousands of dollars to appear at pro-MEK speaking engagements. Payments are made through speaking agents with money from pro-MEK Iranian community organizations. Videos of Howard Dean, Patrick Kennedy, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and former National Security Adviser Jim Jones promoting the delisting of the MEK can all be found in the multimedia section of the NCRI’s website. Other delisting proponents are retired General Wesley Clark, former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, and former Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson.

Mitchell Reiss, Mitt Romney’s special adviser on foreign policy is another Washington pol who has publicly advocated for the MEK over the years.

Should we be weirded out by this whole campaign?

Yes. Very much.

First of all, the MEK is not well liked by the majority of Iranians because of the numerous acts of violence it has committed within the country. This means that it’s not really a viable regime-change option—which is the reason Washington insiders have been lining up on behalf of the group.

More disturbing is the fact that the MEK is basically a cult. In a 2009 report on the group, the Rand Corporation characterizes the MEK’s practices as “cultic” and their recruitment tactics as “deceptive,” noting that the group practiced “near-religious devotion to the Rajavis…public self-deprecation sessions, mandatory divorce, celibacy, enforced separation from family and friends, and gender segregation.” It goes on to describe efforts to attract new members with false promises of employment and marriage, and the confiscation of passports once recruits reached the MEK stronghold.

In her 2011 opinion piece in The New York Times, Elizabeth Rubin, who spent an extended amount of time in Camp Ashraf, the MEK stronghold by the Iran/Iraq border, echoes these sentiments and expresses dismay at the support from U.S. officials. Her basis for concern came largely from the conditions she witnessed at the camp and the former MEK members with whom she talked: “Friendships and all emotional relationships are forbidden. From the time they are toddlers, boys and girls are not allowed to speak to each other. Each day at Camp Ashraf you had to report your dreams and thoughts.”

What do these commercials mean for primary-campaign season?

Combined with the machismo “bomb Iran” rhetoric that has been bandied back and forth in this year’s GOP race, the airing of the pro-MEK ad during marquee events like the GOP debates is part of a disturbing trend. There have been MEK advocates in Washington for years, namely the Iran Policy Committee led by Raymond Tantur, a Georgetown University professor and former staff member of the National Security Council, but the hawkish leanings of the group meant that it wasn’t really part of the mainstream discourse. The spate of appearances by high-profile, mainstream public officials from both sides of the aisle is a whole different story—it lends a loud microphone to the MEK and bestows legitimacy by osmosis; coasting off of the reputations and connections of their paid supporters in Washington is a shrewd move by the group, one that could very well pay dividends.

Ramped-up talk about Iran from GOP candidates, including Romney, who lacks any real foreign-policy experience (the Olympics don’t count), coupled with the clever pro-MEK ad campaign could mean a softening of ground when it comes to public opinion of the group. There’s nothing like good polling numbers to sway a candidate with an immature foreign policy. After all, if a picture’s worth a thousand words, a cable ad is sure to pack a punch.

By Clare Malone – American Prospect

March 11, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

MKO’s weapon: nonstop propaganda campaign in media

“Dirty, unusable, water shortage, power outage, highly controlled prison equipped with espionage cameras”; these are the alleged imperfections of Temporary Transit Location that are widely launched in the Mujahedin Khalq Organization’s hues and cries, these days. The first group of 397 members of the MKO moved to TTL on February 18.

The MKO’s slanderous statements on the so-called defects of the new location soon came after their resettlement. The group primarily accused the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) which in January said Liberty (Temporary Transit Location) met” international humanitarian standards “ of misrepresenting conditions there, according to AFP.[1]

AFP calls the MKO’s propaganda campaign in the media as “statement issuing ire”. W.G Dunlop of AFP writes,“the PMOI[MKO]’s focus on public relations campaigns marked by frequent statements to the media and cultivating well-known western politicians to speak on its behalf differs dramatically from its past activities,”.[2]
The report states that the MKO’s spokesman Shahriar Kia sends emails accusing the UN of telling ”lies" and filing “unrealistic report” on condition of TTL as well as forcing residents of Ashraf to move to it.

It is far and wide known that TTL (formerly called Camp Liberty) had previously housed 5000 American troops and as Martin Kobler the UN representative ,told AFP” it should be possible to have the infrastructure ready for these 400 persons who are now living there.”[3]

But, it seems that the MKO’s “flurry of statements” speaking of conspiracies, aims to acheive something extra.

On March4, Assasicated Press also reported of a statement issued by the MKO that proposed “to temporarily move to the Jordanian border instead of Camp Liberty near Baghdad.” The group once more criticized the alleged poor conditions of TTL.”None of the minimum assurances that Ashraf residents had sought has been met”, the statement said. And, Maryam Rajavi offered her golden suggestion: “camp residents are ready to relocate temporarily to the Jordanian border this month in an area once set up as a tent city to house asylum seekers after the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003”, AP reported. [4]

According to the group’s statement, it would handle expenses for the move. [5] What motivation makes Rajavi to propose such a suggestion?

The history of the MKO’s foreign relations includes Jordan as one of the allies of the group especially during Saddam Hussein’s era. In 2008, some members of the House of Representatives of Jordan accepted the group’s invitation to attend its conferences in European capitals. [6]

A day after Rajavi proposed her impudent plan, Jordan authorities in their turn rejected the suggestion.”Jordan is committed in its obligation that it should not interfere in the affairs of other countries,” a source in the Jordanian Interior Ministry told AL Arab Alyawm Newpaper. [7]

It seems promising to conclude that the MKO leader is highly confused about how to handle her cult of personality after the closure of camp Ashraf. She hopes to be able to gather her forces together in a tent city but out of Iraqi control. She might hunt for building another “Camp Ashraf”, this time in Jordanian territory!

By Mazda Parsi

References:
[1] Dunlop, W.G, Iran exiles in Iraq do battle using press release, AFP, March 5, 2012
[2]ibid
[3]ibid
[4]Associated Press, Iranian opposition group eye Jordan relocation, March 4, 2012
[5]ibid
[6]BBC, Jordanian MPs advised not to attend PMOI conference, December 11, 2008
[7]Kuna, Jordan confirms rejection of building a camp for MEK to its territory, March 5, 2012 (Originally Arabic, Translated by Iran-interlink)

March 8, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

MEK terrorists in Iraq battle using press releases

An Iraq-based Iranian opposition group that is fixated on conspiracy theories allegedly carried out attacks in Iran and elsewhere for decades, but now relies on a different weapon: the press release. UNAMI has been the latest target of MEK's statement-issuing ire.

The United Nations mission here, which has been attempting to facilitate the exit of some 3,400 members of the opposition People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (PMOI) from Iraq, where they have been based for decades, has been the latest target of the group’s statement-issuing ire.

Iraq wants the PMOI out of its territory, and signed an agreement with the UN in December to that end.

On February 18, the first group of 397 exiles moved from their long-time base of Camp Ashraf in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad to Temporary Transit Location (Camp Liberty), a former US military base near the Iraqi capital, as part of that process.

But soon after arriving, the group began complaining about conditions in Camp Liberty and accusing the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), which in January said Liberty[Temporary Transit Location] met “international humanitarian standards,” of misrepresenting conditions there.

The PMOI’s focus on public relations campaigns marked by frequent statements to the media and cultivating well-known western politicians to speak on its behalf differs dramatically from its past activities.

The leftwing group was founded in the 1960s to oppose the shah of Iran, but took up arms against the country’s new rulers after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The U.S. State Department, which blacklists the PMOI as a terrorist organization, says it has carried out attacks that killed a number of Iranians, as well as American soldiers and civilians, from the 1970s into 2001.

Now-executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein allowed the PMOI to establish Camp Ashraf in Iraq after he launched the 1980-88 war with Iran in which the group reportedly fought alongside his forces, and provided financial backing to the group.

But the PMOI said it renounced violence in 2001 and its members in Iraq were disarmed following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, leaving it in need of other tactics.

It successfully campaigned to be delisted as a terrorist organization in Europe and is working to do the same in the US too.

However, it is not always clear what the group aims to accomplish with its media campaigns.

A day after the first group of the exiles moved to Liberty, PMOI spokesman Shahriar Kia sent a statement by email alleging a U.N. expert who assessed the camp told “lies” and apparently “was compelled to file an unrealistic report,” with “necessary modifications” made by “political authorities” from UNAMI.

“The bungalows and toilet facilities” were “dirty and unusable,” and “there is serious water shortage and electricity is cut off, as in prisons, after 10.30 pm.”

A statement emailed the next day described Camp Liberty as “a highly controlled prison,” referring to the presence of Iraqi security forces in the camp.

Iraqi forces carried out two deadly raids on Camp Ashraf in 2009 and 2011, leaving dozens of people dead.

But the statement continued: “Everything shows that at the behest of the Iranian regime, the Iraqi government has turned this camp into a prison and regretfully, UNAMI and (U.N. envoy) Mr. Martin Kobler himself … assist in this prison-making by confirming it as a refugee camp.”

Another email from Kia on February 27 referred to the “lies that Martin Kobler made to the residents of Camp Ashraf for a forcible relocation to Camp Liberty.”

When asked about the PMOI statements, Kobler told AFP that Camp Liberty “was host of 5,000 American soldiers, so it should be possible to have the infrastructure ready also for these 400 persons who are now living there.”

“I do not think that the infrastructure problem is the problem,” he said.

“If there is garbage, the garbage can be removed and should be removed, and the government of Iraq stands ready … to have garbage trucks available, but they have to enter the camp to remove the garbage,” he said.

“The aim of the whole exercise is to have the … refugee status determination moving,” he said, referring to a process which must be completed before the exiles can be resettled.

The PMOI meanwhile says it is facing “conspiracies.”

“The whole plan for the relocation of the residents of Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty is an Iranian plan, and the mullah’s regime’s plan, and nobody else,” Kia said in a telephone interview with AFP, referring to the cleric-led government in Tehran.

He also said in the interview that “espionage cameras and … eavesdropping devices” in Liberty give information “to the Iranian embassy and to the agents of the Iranian regime.”

When asked about the purpose of the flurry of statements on the U.N., Kia referred to demands over Camp Liberty.

These include the removal of Iraqi armed forces from Liberty and freedom of movement for residents, but also, despite numerous statements accusing the U.N. of lying about conditions there, a demand for around-the-clock U.N. monitoring.

By W.G. Dunlop

March 5, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

The MEK’s Propaganda Machine

The National Interest will be running on Monday a response to Raymond Tanter’s missive on behalf of the Iranian cult/terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. Given that Tanter goes out of his way to raise my name a couple of times, it would be appropriate for me as well to point out a couple of the more glaring misdirections in his piece.

Tanter’s premise, as reflected in his title, is that anything bad you ever heard about the MEK is a product of propaganda from the Iranian regime. Evidently this means that anyone, either inside or outside of Iran, who has ever been critical of the group must have been brainwashed by the propaganda. If that were true, those responsible for U.S. public diplomacy have a lot of valuable lessons to learn from the Iranians; their propagandists must be doing something right.

The Iranian regime flings propaganda as freely as any other regime. And it certainly has had a lot of unfavorable things to say about the MEK. Some of those things may be exaggerated or even outright lies. But one could erase completely everything the Iranian regime has ever said on this subject, and there would remain the large, long, sordid record of what the MEK has done, what it has stood for, and the abhorrent cult it still is. The record extends from the days it was killing Americans while opposing the shah, through when it was in league with the clerical regime and supporting further anti-American acts such as the hostage-taking at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, through the long period during which it was working for the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. The record is not based just on what is said by the State Department or an intelligence agency or any governmental component with a policy to support, much less on anything the Iranian regime might say. If you want a recent independently reported portrait of the group, see, for example, this article by Elizabeth Rubin.

Tanter tries to smear critics and criticism of the MEK, including some of the contents of an open letter to which I was a signatory, by saying it “resembles regime propaganda against the MEK.” The MEK has conducted terrorism and other violent acts against U.S. interests and against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Is it any surprise that some of the critical things said about the group from the standpoint of U.S. interests resemble some of what the Iranian regime puts out? (And if it’s not brainwashing, then just what is Tanter suggesting is the reason for the resemblance?)

One of the respects in which Tanter’s piece diverges most widely from reality is his attempt to argue that the MEK has any support to speak of within Iran. He notes that the group was the source of some revelations about Iran’s nuclear program. True—and we ought to remember our reliance on the accident of this weird sourcing when we think about how much confidence we ought or ought not to have in our knowledge of this program—but what does that have to do with popular support? It only takes one person to serve as a source. The most telling indication of the MEK’s unpopularity in Iran, as pointed out in the aforementioned open letter, is that the Iranian regime uses that unpopularity as a way to discredit the democratic opposition in Iran, by trying to associate it with the MEK. For the same reason, the leaders of the Green Movement have emphatically said that they want nothing to do with the MEK. Tanter also mentions attendance at pro-MEK rallies in the United States as a measure of support, without mentioning that the MEK campaign has resorted to such measures—used in a rally outside the State Department this summer—as padding attendance by busing in homeless people who don’t know squat about the MEK or Iran but come for the free food.

Tanter precedes a reference to me with the odd statement that “Intelligence communities are targets of Iran’s disinformation.” Odd because I have been out of the intelligence business for more than six years, and anyone who views my thinking as having any connection with judgments that an intelligence agency would reach today will be disappointed and wasting their propaganda resources. Tanter later mentions me again as someone who ought to be concerned about the “political motivation” for having the MEK on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, or FTOs. It is true that the listing process is not immune to policy considerations, but that has been much more a matter of avoiding the listing of a group that really ought to be on the list (the Provisional Irish Republican Army of fifteen years ago is the example that comes to mind), than of including on the list a group that should not. Not listing someone means simply not initiating the listing process. Listing a group requires a lengthy process of review by the Departments of State, Justice, and Treasury and the intelligence community, according to the criteria specified by law.

Tanter seems to believe that a group has to have committed terrorist acts within the previous two years to be kept on the list. Not true. (Having been directly involved in the laborious process of compiling the required administrative records for the initial listings after enactment of the law in 1996 that created the FTO list, I know a thing or two about this subject.) Two years used to be the interval between recertifications of listed groups, and it is now the period after which a group can petition for delisting. But no terrorist acts have to have been committed during that period; retaining the capability and presumed intent to commit them is sufficient to stay on the list. If performing terrorist acts recently was a requirement to stay on the list, many of the 49 groups currently on the list would have to come off. Lebanese Hizballah, for example, probably would be one of them. I expect that many of the pro-MEK campaigners would be among the first to scream if that happened.

There is indeed a large amount of political influence that is being exerted in an effort to affect a decision about the FTO list, and it is almost all coming in the form of the large and well-funded campaign to delist the MEK. In fact, the campaign is extraordinary, and nothing remotely resembling it has ever been waged on behalf of any other group on the FTO list. Whatever is being said in the opposite direction is only a modest reaction to the pro-MEK campaign itself. Here is what I said on the subject two months ago, after that rally outside the State Department:

The secretary of state should pay no heed to what Melvin Santiago and the other hungry homeless outside her office window are saying, or to what the high-paid hired guns are saying, about the MEK. Nor does she need to pay any attention to what people like me are saying about the group. She should keep the windows closed and just pay attention to the terms of the law and to what officials in the departments and agencies involved say about whether the terms of the law still apply in this case.
If Raymond Tanter really wanted to inform us about political influence being exerted on what ought to be administrative and legal decisions, he could shed more light on the campaign of which he is a part. In particular, he could help us understand where all that funding is coming from. It evidently is coming from quarters who would like to stoke ever more tension and animosity between the Iran and the United States. I have a guess who that might be, but so far it is only a guess.

Paul R. Pillar, The National Interest

October 30, 2011 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts