You can’t tell the players without a program
Of course supporting terrorism is not something that is new to the Bush Administration, nor American foreign policy. Just last year it was revealed that another terrorist group called the MEK (Mujahedeen-e Khalq) was being used by the DoD to attack Iran.
One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which is being “run” in two southern regional areas of Iran. They are Baluchistan, a Sunni stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of recent attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in the last three months.
One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.
MEK leader with SaddamIf you will recall, the MEK was one of the original backers of the Islamic Revolution in Iran whose ideology is a weird mix of fundamentalist Islamism, feminism, and Marxism. They actively supported the 1979 embassy occupation in Tehran and had conducted several assassinations against U.S. civilians working in Iran during the 1970’s. The MEK was chased out of Iran in the 1980’s, when thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) were simply executed by the Iranian government. The MEK joined with Saddam’s Iraqi government shortly before the 1988 massacre, and assisted in crushing the Shia revolt in 1991. The MEK is our leading source of information about Iran’s alleged "nuclear weapons program".
The MEK is currently lobbying to have it taken of the list of terrorist organizations, and it has friends in both the Bush Administration and in Congress.
Reps. Bob Filner, D-Calif., Tom Tancredo, R-Col., Ted Poe, R-Texas, Dennis Moore, R-Kan., and staffers for Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, and James Talent, R-Mo., spoke to MEK supporters at a convention hall just four blocks from the White House.
The MEK has been listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department since 1997, but some in Congress and close to the Administration want the group to be removed from the terrorist list. Even President Bush has called the MEK a "dissident group."
Of course that is only two of the terrorist groups fighting the Iranian government that the Bush Administration supports. Probably the most active group is the Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, PJAK). Last November Seymour Hersch wrote about this issue.
In the past six months, Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership, as "part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran." The government consultant said that Israel is giving the Kurdish group "equipment and training." The group has also been given "a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S."
PJAK’s ideology is democratic liberalism and traces its origin to non-violent student movements. It is considerably less radical than the PKK, but its leader, Haji Ahmad, is a member of Kongra-Gel (formerly known as the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK). The PJAK is listed as a terrorist group by the American government. It is reported that the PJAK killed 120 Iranian security forces members in 2005 alone.
Of course the Bush Administration’s support for terrorist groups don’t stop here. They also back violent Azeri rebel groups and yet another Kurdish group called Komala. There may be others that I’m not aware of.
Saturday, 07 April 2007 – Written by Garrett Johnson