The new round of Saddam’s trial on charges of killing thousands of Iraqi Kurds in a series of events under the code name of Anfal has already started. It is the second file of Saddam’s atrocities against the innocent Iraqi people. His previous file accused him and a number of his regime’s official of slaughtering about 148 Shiits of Dejil in 1982. The second file accuses Saddam and other defendants of destroying hundreds of Kurd-residing villages and killing the inhabitants using mass destruction chemical weapons.
A rereading of Saddam’s crimes against the Iraqi Kurds will reveals facts on Mojahedin Khalq (MKO) whose hands are dabbled with the blood of the Kurds. As mercenaries of Saddam, in cases they have referred to their role in these crimes and have tried to make justifications over them. The coalition forces that attacked Iraq to end, as they state, Saddam’s rule of tyranny and free the nation have to be faithful in their claims and let the truth on Saddam’s crimes and Iraqi Baath Party be exposed.
The US state Department is now facing a paradoxical state because in 1994 it published, required by the Congress, a documentary report of the group’s terrorist evidences. The report contained minute details on the group’s terrorist activities and its share in Saddam’s brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion that consolidated its position and other aliases in the State Department’s list of terrorist groups in 1997. The unassailable facts in the report corroborate reciprocal dealings between MKO and Saddam. In a part we read:
In return for weapons and the use of approximately 232 square miles of Iraqi territory, the Mojahedin provide Iraq with political support. Disregarding the casualties inflicted upon Iran after Saddam’s 1980 invasion and overlooking his 1990 assault of Kuwait, the Mojahedin remain staunch supporters of Saddam Hussein. *
Quoting the Iraqi media revealing facts on Saddam-Rajavi contact, it states:
Government-controlled Iraqi media accounts of recent Saddam-Rajavi contacts provide further insights into the MKO’s current relationship with Baghdad. Meeting between the two are announced to buttress Saddam’s isolated position…
In respect to MKO’s assistance in suppression of the Iraqi Kurds and insurgents the report elaborated:
The Iraqi Kurds also claimed the Mojahedin had assisted the Iraqi army in its suppression of the Kurds, a claim-substantiated by refugees who fled near the Iranian border. The leader of the patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, told reporters that "5,000 Iranian Mojahedin joined Saddam’s forces in the battle for Kirkuk”.
Quoting a Wall Street Journal report, the report exposes more information on Mojahedin’s Liberation Army wholly equipped and financed by Saddam:
A recent Wall Street Journal report stated that the NLA’s "only major offensive in the past six years came in 1991, just after the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein ordered Mr. Rajavi to help quell a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq, participants in that operation say."
Rajavi’s insolent collaboration in slaughtering the Kurds evolved as a cause for many members to separate from the organization:
A former MKO member who was in Iraq said his trouble with the Mojahedin leadership, began when he questioned the MKO’s operation against the Kurds.
Too sure of Mojahedin’s terrorist nature, the report makes it clear that no other state in the world could support such a terrorist entity unless it advocated violence and terror. The presence of the group in Iraq well defined the true nature of the Iraqi regime:
It is no coincidence that the only government in the world that supports the Mojahedin politically and financially is the totalitarian regime of Saddam Hussein.
No doubt, so close joint cooperation between Saddam and terrorist Mojahedin has never been alluded to by the coalition forces after Saddam’s fall. It has to be noted that all these allegations is attributed to Mojahedin by no other country but the US State Department. The organization has also implicitly accepted the allegations for it took not more than one year to publish a 384-page book entitled Democracy Betrayed as a response to the US State Department’s report.
In spite of many controversies among the Congressmen, the State Department, and other politicians about the group’s future, one fact should never be overlooked; Saddam committed crimes against the Kurds with the connivance of Mojahedin. Now Saddam’s second round of trial is a good opportunity for the US to prove the degree of its sincerity in recognizing MKO sharing crimes with Saddam. A restudy of the State Department’s report as a reliable evidence at the present will shed light on other accomplices who have the blood of the massacred Kurds on their hands.
*. All quotes are excerpts from the US State Department’s report on The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran; Library of Congress, Doc. call no.: M-U 42953-1 no.92-824F.
Mojahedin.ws – Omid Pouya – August 28, 2006
