Untitled Document
The U.S. Government is now openly supporting the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian
resistance movement designated as terrorist organization by the US State Department.
On June 20th of this year, the Mujahideen-e-Khalq held a conference at the Palestine
Hotel in Baghdad, which is where many foreign journalists stay and is under the
full protection of the U.S. Army. I was in the area of the hotel that day, and
saw at least 10 U.S. tanks heading in the direction of the hotel to provide additional
security. I knew of the conference in advance, because of a report issued to all
NGO's working in Iraq, which mentioned that the conference would take place. The
report warned of an increased danger of attacks against the hotel, as anti- U.S.
insurgents were likely to attempt to disrupt the conference [1].
The Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) is a Marxist oriented Iranian resistance organization
founded in the 1960's to topple the pro- western regime of Reza Shah. Since
that time, MEK has carried out scores of attacks and assassinated a number of
Iranian government officials. MEK killed several American military and civilian
personnel in Iran during the 1970's, and assisted in the occupation of the US
embassy in Tehran in 1979 where American civilians were held hostage. Though
MEK participated in the 1979 revolution, which toppled the Shah, once the Ayatollah
Khomeini consolidated power in Iran, MEK moved their headquarters to Paris and
continued resistance activities against the Islamic Republic. In 1981, MEK bombed
the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, killing 70 high-ranking Iranian officials.
MEK established its military headquarters in Iraq in 1986, where Saddam Hussein
became their main source of funding and protection. In return, the MEK fought
alongside Iraqi forces during the war against Iran in the 1980's, and assisted
Saddam's security forces in putting down the Kurdish and Shiite revolts after
the first Gulf War in 1991. The majority of Saddam's recently discovered mass
graves are filled with the Shiite and Kurdish dead from this uprising. MEK military
operations against Iranian targets continued through the 1990's. The U.S. Department
of State added the MEK to its official list of terrorist organizations in 1997,
and shut down the organization's Washington, DC office in 2003 [2].
During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, MEK forces in Iraq surrendered to U.S. forces
and turned over their military hard wear, including several thousand tanks,
armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft guns, and other vehicles. Despite
denying suspected terrorists from Afghanistan and elsewhere prisoner of war
status under the Geneva conventions, the US granted this status to detained
members of MEK in Iraq [3].
Support for the MEK reveals one of the advantages the U.S. has acquired by
occupying Iraq. The country can now be used as a staging post for carrying out
attacks against regimes hostile to U.S. interests in the region, whether through
proxy organizations such as MEK, or by attacking such countries directly by
dispatching U.S. forces based on Iraqi soil. U.S. planners are currently somewhat
constrained from using the latter option due to the difficulty they face in
pacifying Iraq, so the first option, namely supporting terrorist organizations
that are trying to destabilize the Iranian regime, will likely be their preferred
course of action until U.S. control of Iraq is fully consolidated.
So when Paul Wolfowitz promised Iraqis in 2003 that the US would hunt down
the "monsters" that assisted Saddam in digging the mass graves in
1991 [4], the Bush administration was in fact just beginning its support for
some of the direct perpetrators of these crimes. Also revealing is U.S. criticism
of the new Iranian president elect, due to his alleged involvement in holding
U.S. embassy personnel hostage in 1979. Though the U.S. admits the MEK was involved
in the same incident, White House support for this terrorist organization continues.
This kind of hypocrisy reveals much about what the global "war on terror"
is really about. It's not a war against terror as such, but rather a war of
terror to subdue resistance to the US designs in the region.
Sources:
[1] The organization which provides these security reports does not allow them
to be cited publicly, and thus I cannot indicate the name of the source. The
report for June 19th, 2005 stated the following: "A large conference involving
the mujahadeen kalk and sponsored by the Iraqi Government is scheduled to take
place in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad 20th June, this may lead to insurgent
attempts to disrupt the conference, HOM are advised to advise their staff to
avoid this area."
[2] US State Department, Patterns
of Global Terrorism 2002 (pdf). See specifically Appendix
B: Background Information on designated foreign terrorist organizations,
pg. 115 for information on the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq
See also this description
of the group from Globalsecurity.org.
[3] Why the US granted 'protected' status to Iranian terrorists, The Christian
Science Monitor, 07/29/2004.
[4] New York Times, July 20th, 2003.
