Mujahedin Khalq Organization

MKO’s Outlook on Democracy and Government

The methodology and worldview of MKO as well as the picture Rajavi depicts of the world is fundamentally in conflict with the principles of civility and its components like reason, rationale, interaction, forum and relativism in thought. In fact, he considers the truth as an absolute concept monopolized in the ideology of his organization. In other words, truth for Mojahedin is not a relative concept but a kind of dogmatic notion that has its roots in empirical sciences and ideology.

As a result, only one group, trend, worldview, and ideology has perfect legitimacy and there is no room for other ideologies, trends, and doctrines. Based on these understandings,

Rajavi came to the conclusion that his ideology could auto dynamically eliminate the outside forces to assume its hegemony and dominance step by step. He even criticized the structure of western knowledge and derided their offspring like liberalism and individualism as well as the theories of the intellectuals and theoreticians of capitalist world and American pragmatism in order to prove his philosophic and ideological inferences that were based on the principle of polarity.

Taking a look at the doctrines and principles of the organization extracted from the theoretical book “The way of Hussein” may give us a better understanding of the real viewpoint of the organization and its leadership on democracy and other manifestations of civility.

It will give us other instances of MKO methodology to prove the fact that Rajavi has temporally deviated from the organizational principles of Mojahedin that the organization strongly adhered to. Unlike the past, now Mojahedin pretend to move on the same line with Western-favored concepts like private ownership (equal to robbery in the doctrines of MKO), open-market economy, and capitalism in recent years to win the support of westerners and the US in particular. In the book “The Democracy Betrayed” that includes answers to the accusations of the declaration of the US State Department, it is claimed that the founders of the organization had no objective but modeling the American society. In other words, Rajavi seems to have yield to capitalism,

American democracy, as well as all its cultural and ideological accomplishments based on liberalism and pragmatism.

Of the challenges facing Mojahedin in the US State Department’s statement is that they are accused of ideological inclination toward a totalitarian government and supremacy of the minority: the ruling of minority over majority is an indication of the direct effects of Communism on Mojahedin. These concepts having their roots in historical materialism and the principle of polarity, are opposed to Imperialism and consider modern concepts like democracy as well as social and individual freedom mere slogans for deceiving the masses.

The following excerpt may prove that Mojahedin refrain to believe in democracy, the vote of majority yet consider these concepts as the main enemies of their ideology. On the other hand, Mojahedin believe in the rule of minority over majority and refusal of democracy and the freedoms promoted by liberalism. An important point is that Mojahedin rely on a dynamism without which there is no possibility for understanding Qur’an. This is the boundary drawn between the interpretations made by MKO founders from Qur’an and the classic ones from their early years. The following is an excerpt from the book “The way of Hussein” based on which the ideology of the organization is to be analyzed:

By accepting the dynamism of the Qur’an and understanding its attitudinal basis, we will find no justification to adapt it to capitalism or separate it from government. Particularly, it has to be pointed out that the Islamic government is rich in respecting freedom and the will of man yet has no similarity to the democracy promoted by the West that is mere superstition. On the other hand, it promotes a kind of power enforcement and council leadership and in general, the ruling of the pious is its final manifestation. In this frame, the pious who are recognized by their more awareness of social issues lead the society and move it toward the fundamental of Qur’an.1
It is concluded that Mojahedin recognize no legitimacy for democracy or election for choosing the type of government. More importantly, in contrast to what they propagandize on the separation of the state and religion, they fundamentally believe in an ideological system rooted in the religion and consider religion and government as two inseparable issues in opposition to the belief of capitalism and modern societies. They also believe that performing the dynamism of Qur’an is impossible but by grabbing at the combination of the state and religion on the one hand and negation of democracy on the other. It has been pointed out that they believe in the ruling of a particular group rather than election and democracy.

They refrain to see ruling based on the vote of majority of people and consider it based on the doctrines deducted from this dynamism and take its legitimacy from their ideology.
The only difference between the ideology of Mojahedin and Marxism is the substitution of common terminology of Marxism with new ones. Both are based on disagreement to election, social and individual freedom, rationale, reason, consensus, civil law, etc. A brief look at the history of Marxism in recent decades may give us a better understanding of the belief system of MKO in which modern concepts like separation of government and religion, election and democracy, respecting social and individual rights, freedom and other democratic concepts are considered superstition and nothing more.

References:
1. The Way of Hussein, MKO Publication, Tehran, 1980, p. 22.

August 18, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

The raid to Ashraf could leave Iran cheering

Iran-Iraq Alliance?
Yesterday, Iraqi troops stormed a camp of Iranian exiles. The Daily Beast’s Reza Aslan on why the raid could signal Iraq’s shift away from the U.S.—and toward its former enemy.

Reports out of Iraq say government troops have raided the camp of an Iranian exile group, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. Though the MEK has long been recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, its members housed in Camp Ashraf just north of Baghdad had been placed under U.S. protection since the Iraq invasion in 2003.

U.S. military officials, including Gen. Ray Odierno, commanding general of the U.S.-led Multi-National Force in Iraq, insist the raid was carried out without their knowledge. Considering that the Iranian government has been clamoring for years to have the camp disbanded and the MEK members extradited to Iran to stand trial on terrorism charges, the action by the Iraqi government may indicate a shift in Iraqi policy away from Washington and toward friendlier relations with Tehran.

The MEK’s support for Saddam Hussein during the horrific eight-year war with Iran has made it perhaps the group Iranians detest .

A Marxist paramilitary organization formed in Iran in the 1960s, the MEK was an integral part of the anti-imperialist coalition that overthrew the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah in 1979. Its guerrilla tactics, which killed dozens of the shah’s supporters as well as a number of American soldiers and civilian contractors working in Iran at the time, were instrumental to the revolution’s success. After the formation of the Islamic republic, however, the MEK lost favor with the clerical regime and was promptly outlawed. Its members were forced to flee to Iraq, where they were provided protection from Saddam Hussein in exchange for their assistance during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq.

After the American invasion of Iraq, members of the MEK were rounded up at Camp Ashraf and detained, as negotiators in Iran and the United States began mulling over a prisoner exchange. The Iranians had dozens of captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters that they were willing to hand over to the U.S. in return for members of the MEK who had been charged with terrorist activities in Iran.

The interim Iraqi government encouraged the prisoner exchange. Indeed, it wanted all of the MEK members expelled from Iraq and prosecuted for the active role they took in assisting with Hussein’s massacre of the Kurds and Shiites after the first Gulf War. But as negotiations were under way, the Bush administration suddenly changed course and granted the MEK protected status under the Geneva Conventions—something it had yet to grant Iraqi prisoners of the war.

There was, at the time, a simple reason for the shift in policy, as the conservative commentator (and professional Islamophobe) Daniel Pipes wrote in 2003. The MEK, Pipes claimed, offered the Bush Administration “an excellent way to intimidate and gain leverage over Tehran.”

Put another way, the MEK may have been a terrorist organization with what the State Department insists is “the capacity and will to commit terrorist acts in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.” But with the proper assistance it could become our terrorist organization.

Since then, the MEK and its Paris-based political wing The National Council on Resistance in Iran has been increasingly viewed as the most viable alternative to Iran’s clerical regime: the Iranian equivalent of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. That explains why the MEK/NCRI is the only internationally recognized terrorist organization with offices in D.C. and an open line to some extremely influential people within the federal government. Indeed, the group has been championed by more than a few powerful personalities on Capitol Hill, as well as by neocon avatars like Pipes and Richard Perle.

Rep. Bob Filner, a Democrat of California, has called the MEK “our best hope to counter the [Iranian] regime.” Last month, Filner, who is chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, along with his fellow California Democrat, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, called on the Obama administration to actively assist the MEK/NCRI in its attempts to bring down the Iranian regime. (In 2002, more than 150 members of Congress signed a letter to the State Department demanding that the MEK be removed from its terrorist list; this year the European Union caved to pressure and removed the group from its own terror watch list.)

Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, echoes Filner. When I spoke to him a few years ago for a related story, Brownback told me: “There are serious questions to be raised about [the MEK’s] terrorist designation, particularly in light of the intelligence they have provided on Iran’s nuclear program.”

The MEK/NCRI has indeed provided both Israel and the United States with a trove of intelligence about Iran. Unfortunately, as was the case with the Iraqi National Congress, a great deal of that intelligence is not only uncorroborated but unquestionably tainted by the organization’s own personal interests.

Even some of the most ardent opponents of the Islamic Republic are wary of the MEK’s influence in the U.S. government. Michael Ledeen, founder of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran and one of the most vocal supporters of regime change in Iran, bluntly dismisses the possibility of cooperating with MEK.

“I do not think we should have anything to do with the MEK,” Ledeen once confided to me. “They are a terrorist organization despised by most Iranians.”

Ledeen is right. The MEK’s support for Saddam Hussein during the horrific eight-year war with Iran has made it perhaps the group Iranians detest.

Yet for a great many of the group’s detractors, it is not so much its terrorist designation that is of concern but rather the bizarre devotion its members have for their husband and wife leaders, Maryam and Massoud Rajavi. Scholars and human-rights activists have long accused the organization of functioning like a religious cult, employing brainwashing techniques, ideological cleansings, forced celibacy (except when it comes to the Rajavis themselves), and even torture to condition its members to absolute obedience.

When French authorities arrested Maryam Rajavi—whom the group considers Iran’s president in exile—in 2002 for her alleged involvement in terrorist activities, several of her followers immolated themselves on the streets of Paris in protest. According to Human Rights Watch, members who have criticized the Rajavis or their organization have been detained against their will—and some have committed suicide to escape. Those who refuse to be rehabilitated were sometimes forced to make videotaped confessions of their disloyalty, then handed over to Saddam Hussein as Iranian spies to be tortured.

None of this fazes supporters like Filner, who has declared that since an invasion of Iran is not a viable option at the moment, the U.S. should just “get out of the way” and let the MEK do the job for us.

“We should not stand in their way of trying to get rid of the present regime,” Filner said.
In other words, the enemy of my enemy…

It is difficult to know how to read the sudden decision by the Iraqi government to raid and disband the MEK camp. Does the move imply increased tensions between the Iraqi and U.S. military? Is Iraq betting that, with American troops soon departing, warmer relations with Iran—which, after all, is not going anywhere—may serve its interests better than relations with the U.S.?

Thus far, it seems that no decision has been made about what to do with the MEK members rounded up in the raid. Will they be extradited to Iran, where they will surely face execution? Would that not drive a wedge between the U.S. and Iraq?
Stay tuned.

Reza Aslan, a contributor to The Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.

August 11, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

A report of purges within Mojahedin Khaq

Massoud and Maryam Rajavi the cult leaders

Once in a letter addressed to Christopher George of Human Rights Watch/Middle East entitled Human Rights Abuse in Rajavi’s cult, Nowrooz Ali Rezvani, a disaffected and former member of MKO, presented documented reports of many physical and psychological mistreatments of the members by the leaders within the organization. The following is a detailed and proven list of engineering operations plotted in years 1981 to 1994 in an attempt to liquidate some members for certain organizational reasons.

The confessions by Mr. Rezvani well indicates the potentiality of the organization in subjecting the life of those in Camp Ashraf to severe jeopardy through a preplanned scenario and under the cover of defending the camp against the lawful interference of the Iraqi police to take the control in its hands.

Aggressive reaction of Camp Ashraf residents to confront the Iraqi police, that in the first look may seem to be inevitable in such occasions, demonstrates covert plots that were suspended until a golden opportunity could frame all together. The warning bells had been already rang and the least the Iraqi government can do is to decrease the costs which requires considerable and deliberate prudence when dealing with such a conundrum and odious organization. Now soon after the attacks the organization has started a new round of propaganda blitz mainly focusing on the killed members; a probe into the past thirty years clarifies that it has been typical of the organization and the Rajavis to advance cultic causes by moving over the victims whose death remains a matter of obscurity. The members who are claimed to have died in clashes between Iraqi police and Ashraf residents follow the same craftily plotted scenario that grants the opportunity of helping the organization to get rid of its dissidents.

Facts revealed by former members indicate that a number of MKO members committed suicide because they were prevented from leaving the organization and that suicide was also claimed as the cause of death for recalcitrant members who had to be erased. Once more, we forewarn the international organizations and bodies of the repetition of past incidents that can be best judged by the members themselves; does it sound believable that the members’ death in any form has merely been accidents? Mr. Rezvani’s references to some of these deaths within MKO can provide some answer to some degree.

The first floor in Camp Shafaee located in Kirkuk
A woman called Nahid dropped to her death falling out of the first floor of a building of Camp Shafaee located in Kirkuk, Iraq. She was announced to have committed suicide. According to MKO, she was psychologically ill and her suicide was identified the result of her nurse’s negligence.

Baghdad, Iraq, 1976
A woman named Zahra was designated to work as a kitchen porter in Camp Saadati after she was demoted of her organizational rank. Later, her frozen body was found in the refrigerator.

Sardasht, Kurdistan, 1986
In Sardasht zone, a man from southern Iranian province named Abbas was shot deliberately by his commander as reported by eye-witnesses. He was an old member of the organization and opposed to inter-organizational relations. He had long been watched and sent to the military section as a punishment where he was then liquidated through a plot.

Kirkuk, Iraq, Debs Prison
Mohammad Gamoush imprisoned in section 200 of Debs Prison was found hanged. The organization buried his body behind the walls of the section 200 of Debs Prison.

Kurdistan, Iran-Iraq borderline, 1987
Hassan Muhammadi, a member of MKO, is suspiciously drawn in the border river Zab. He had been condemned to death by the inter-organizational court located in Iraqi soil. Suffering long days in a prison located in Kurdistan, Iraq, he was transferred to Mesbah Prison in Suleymanieh where he managed to escape in an attempt to make contacts with the organization’s rankings and even the leader himself in Baghdad to inquire why he had been condemned to death and imprisoned.

For the second time in Camp Saadati in Baghdad he stood trial and again Abbas Davari and Muhammad Hayati condemned him to death and imprisonment. On Rajavi’s order his death verdict was commuted and he was employed in a transportation stock as a simple worker where he had to stay day and night. Two times he was violently attacked and beaten by Mojahedin thugs, two of whom can be named as Hassan Tahmasebi and Mashaallah from Tehran. Muhammadi was then dispatched to the organization’s military section where he was ostensibly drawn in the River Zab overnight. He was an old member of MKO and imprisoned in the Pahlavi’s regime. His brother was a ranking member and had detached from the organization in 1978 after being released from the prison.

Khalis Province, Iraq, Camp Ashraf 1991
A man was found smothered with a handkerchief in his mouth in a resident prison in Camp Ashraf. His body was found while they were checking and inspecting residential.
Two other women died in suspicious and the organization announced they had committed suicide by taking cyanides while access to such toxic substances was impossible in Camp Ashraf. The two were dissidents who intended to leave and had refused the ideologically enforced divorces.
A recalcitrant member had announced his separation; his head was crushed between two military IFA trucks in regiment 96. The organization announced his death an accident as a result of cloud and the darkness.

In 1991, nearly 1000 dissident members ran a hard life in the camps’ jails as well as Saddam’s notorious prisons where they spent weeks and months in solitary confinements. At the end it was the awful camp in Romadi that awaited the dissident, a fearsome place where Rajavi had sworn to banish the dissident, where they would pray one thousand or one million times a day to die and would see and touch death in any moment.

And so it was that a dissident named Javad failed to tolerate the rough condition dominating the camp and hanged himself before the Office of the Refugees’ Affairs just before the eyes of his comrades. Many reports have been so far directed to you concerning the act and I deem it necessary to unveil some facts about a number of murders committed by MKO.
In May 1984 in Paris, a woman named zhale commits suicide by jumping before a train to show her opposition to MKO’s internal ideological revolution and Masoud Rajavi’s leadership. She had been under psychological pressure by her organizational supervisors.

In 1984 in Kurdistan, Iraq, a MKO’s military commander, called Abbas, shots a dissident back in the head causing his immediate death. The murderer is still in the organization.

In 1984 in Kurdish zone of Iranian Sardasht-Baneh, for three times the injured, captive forces of Iranian army were machine-gunned on the command of a MKO’s commander named Nasser Gestapo.

In 1983 in Kurdish zone of Iranian Sardasht, Zamziran Village, a wounded POW was machine-gunned by a commander of MKO named Yahya from Zanjan.

In 1983 in Kurdish zone of Iranian Sardasht, Kavalan Village, two wounded POWs were machine-gunned by a commander of MKO’s operation team named Hadi Gestapo.

In 1984 in Kurdish zone of Iranian Bukan, two wounded POWs were machine-gunned by a commander of MKO named Reza Sanandaji.

In 1986, Baghdad, Iraq, Mojtaba Mirmiran, a member known to be poet working in the propaganda section of the Voice of Mojahed, was found hanged in Camp Mirzai located in Baghdad, Al-Saadun St. He was one of those recalcitrant members strongly opposed to Rajavi’s leadership. The organization announced his death another case of suicide.

August 9, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

Rand: The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq – A policy conundrum

… A RAND study examined the evolution of this controversial decision, which has left the United States open to charges of hypocrisy in the war on terrorism. An examination of MeK activities establishes its cultic practices and its deceptive recruitment and public relations strategies. A series of coalition decisions served to facilitate the MeK leadership’s control over its members. The government of Iraq wants to expel the group, but no country other than Iran will accept it. Thus, the RAND study concludes that the best course of action would be …

___________________

Link to the PDF File

The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq

A Policy Conundrum

by Jeremiah Goulka, Lydia Hansell, Elizabeth Wilke, Judith Larson

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, coalition forces classified the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), an Iranian dissident group dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Iranian government, as an enemy force. The MeK had provided security services to Saddam Hussein from its camps in Iraq and had been listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the Secretary of State. After a cease-fire was signed, the U.S. Secretary of Defense designated this group’s members as civilian “protected persons” rather than combatant prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. A RAND study examined the evolution of this controversial decision, which has left the United States open to charges of hypocrisy in the war on terrorism. An examination of MeK activities establishes its cultic practices and its deceptive recruitment and public relations strategies. A series of coalition decisions served to facilitate the MeK leadership’s control over its members. The government of Iraq wants to expel the group, but no country other than Iran will accept it. Thus, the RAND study concludes that the best course of action would be to repatriate the majority of its members to Iran, which in 2003 granted amnesty to the MeK rank and file and appears to have upheld its commitment. The coalition’s experience with the MeK also offers lessons for dealing with unusual militias in future military actions and for providing better training for field commanders and enlisted personnel.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

The Mujahedin-e Khalq: A U.S. Policy Conundrum

Chapter Two

The MeK During Operation Iraqi Freedom

Chapter Three

Options for Relocating the MeK

Chapter Four

Unexpected Challenges, Unintended Consequences, and Lessons Learned

Appendix A

A Brief History of the MeK Prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom

Appendix B

Cultic Characteristics of the MeK

Appendix C

Timeline of MeK Activities

Appendix D

What Is a Foreign Terrorist Organization?

Research conducted by

RAND National Security Research Division

To View The Full Document Click Here

Link to the source

August 6, 2009 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization

A letter to the “Friends of a Free Iran”

I would like to directs your attention for a few moments in order to give you a different view of the Mojahedon-e Khalq of Iran and why we think that they should stay in the EU terror list.

For the exile Iranians living abroad, and for those who have fought for democracy and the separation between state and religion it is a regrettable day when a terrorist leader can be so enthusiastically received by a number of the EU parliamentary Members.

The MKO (Mojahedin-e Khalq) or NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran) has in our view a dark history in regards to fighting for democracy and human rights. They are responsible of killing thousands of Iranian civilian with acts of terror and bombings of public places. They were regarded as the trusted partners of Saddam Hussein. In the rebellion of the Kurds in 1991, the Mojahedin in support of Saddam Hussein were responsible for the killing of tens of Kurdish citizen of Iraq. Many of our organizations members were members of the Mojahedin at that time and will never forget the famous words of Maryam Rajavi who gave these orders to his army: “do not waste bullets on the Kurds but rather roll over them with your tanks”.

The Mojahedin, under the leadership of Massoud Rajavi oppressed the Kurds in north of Iraq, and gave Saddam Hussein the opportunity to gather his forces and crush the Shi’a uprising in the South of the country.

Maryam and Massoud Rajavi, controls the organization with iron fists and look upon themselves as god-like figures sent to rescue Iran and Iranians and are only accountable directly to god. They have turned Mojahedin into a religious cult. They forced every husband and wife to get divorced and made sure that any feelings directed towards family, friends, mothers and children became a crime in of it self. The only “legal” feeling of love was to be held for the Rajavis.

In our view, there is no pride in supporting of a organization and individuals who have no belief in human rights and resort to torture and murder of those who believe differently then themselves.

In order to better understand the Mojahedin-e Khalq cult status, we remind you that after Maryam Rajavi’s arrest on 17 June 2003, over 10 member and followers of the Mojahedin set themselves on fire in protest to the arrest. This action can only be attributed to a cult where individuals are brainwashed and made to believe that their lives mean nothing and can be used as a tool.

I hope you would be able to find the time in order for us to sit down and talk about this in greater detail.

We are delighted that you spend time from your busy schedule to pay attention to the current situation in Iran and what’s happening in and around the Middle East. We hope that you will continue to show your interest in this very troubled area of the world.

As you know there are two sides to any story, and now that you have heard the Mojahedin’s side, you should also make an effort to listen to our side of the story. As both victims of the Iranian regime and the Mojahedin-e Khalq, it is necessary to get to know both perspectives.

With best regards

Karim Haggi

Iran Peyvand Association

April 10, 2007 0 comments

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