December 11, 2002 12:45

Don't Confuse This Group with Freedom Fighters

By Tom Knowlton

On surface, it seemed like a reasonable proposal to promote pro-democratic circles inside our longtime antagonist, Iran.

Last month, 150 members of the U.S. House of Representatives released a bipartisan statement supporting the National Council of Resistance (NCR) of Iran and the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI).

The Nov. 14 statement calls for a "reevaluating of democratic opposition in Iran" and characterized the NCR and PMOI as a "legitimate resistance movement," an "anti-fundamentalist organization adhering to a tolerant Islam," and a "major player" in confronting terrorism. The 150 co-signers, which included 30 committee and subcommittee chairs, further called for the Bush administration to remove the organizations from the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a vocal proponent of humane treatment for captured Taliban and al-Qaeda "fighters" at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a main sponsor of the statement on Iran, declared, "Those who are willing to go to the front line for democracy are not to be attacked for being terrorists or seeking to undermine a government, but they should be respected as those who believe in the deepest of their heart that freedom sometimes is more important than many other things." Jackson Lee added that there is a need to "push this issue of freedom and justice in Iran and for the people of Iran."

But it turns out that Jackson Lee and her fellow members of Congress are actually endorsing a violent terrorist organization that has long included Americans as a target.

Despite representing the support of nearly one third of the House of Representatives, the November statement garnered 78 fewer signers than a similar statement in October 2000. The decline in support is evidence of the growing realization that both the NCR and PMOI, as well as the National Liberation Army (NLA) - which was not mentioned in the statement - are in fact fronts for the Iranian terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK).

There exists a tremendous misconception surrounding the listing of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, and its various sub-entities, on the State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization list. The Nov. 14, 2002 statement cites "a senior government official" quoted in The Los Angeles Times on Oct. 9, 1997, who explained that the Clinton administration classified MEK and its sub-entities as "terrorists" as a "goodwill gesture to Tehran".

Judging by the manner in which the Clinton administration bungled through Middle Eastern affairs for eight years, it would not surprise me if that were an accurate characterization of how MEK landed itself on the FTO list. However, the fact of the matter is that not only is MEK a terrorist organization, and should be and stay on the FTO list, but competent analysis of Middle Eastern affairs would have dictated the group be placed on the list even years earlier.

MEK has from its inception been ideologically and militantly at odds with the United States. Formed in the early 1960s, MEK advocated the creation of a classless Muslim society in Iran by implementing an Islamic Marxist form of government.

The terrorist group fiercely opposed the regime of U.S. ally Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and what it perceived as excessive Western influence in Iranian politics. It received significant amounts of weapons and supplies from Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization as well as training in PLO camps in Lebanon and Jordan.

In the 1970s, MEK assassins were responsible for the murder of two U.S. military attaches and several American civilians working on defense projects in the Iranian capital of Tehran. During the 1979 Islamic Revolution, MEK soldiers fought alongside the forces of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. They supported the seizing of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the subsequent holding of the American citizens on the embassy's staff hostage for 444 days.

In 1981, the lack of popular support for Islamic Marxism caused MEK to become increasingly marginalized in Iranian politics. The organization responded by launching several waves of bombing attacks against government targets, including the Islamic Republic Party headquarters resulting in the death of almost 100 senior Iranian officials. The ensuing government crackdown on the organization prompted the MEK leadership to flee to Paris.

After the continued terrorist attacks in Iran led MEK to be expelled from France in 1987, they moved their headquarters to Baghdad. During the Iran-Iraq War, MEK allied itself with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and provided combat troops in campaigns against Iranian forces.

In 1991, MEK military forces further assisted Saddam Hussein's government in putting down the Kurdish and Shi'a uprisings that occurred in the wake of Iraq's defeat in the Persian Gulf War. In the eleven years following the Gulf War, MEK has continued to serve the Iraqi government and the ruling Ba'ath political party as a brutal internal security force in return for use of military bases and support.

MEK regularly utilizes its Iraqi bases to make cross-border raids into Iran to attack military installations and target military leaders for assassination, resulting in the killing of the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces in April 1999.

However, MEK attacks have not been limited to military targets. In April 1992, the group attacked thirteen Iranian embassies worldwide. Two years later, MEK bombed the Mahsad Shrine in Tehran and Iranian oil facilities. Most recently, during "Operation Great Bahman" in 2000 and 2001, MEK attempted to assassinate the commander of the Nasr Headquarters and launched mortar attacks on several government buildings.

Moreover, the group's war crimes against civilians have not been limited to Iran and Iraq. MEK forces had militarily been active in Afghanistan under the former Taliban regime of staunch al Qaeda ally Mullah Omar. It maintained a sizeable military base at Shukor Khan, near the city of Khandahar, from which it deployed in support of Taliban forces in an effort to ethnically cleanse selected areas of non-Pushtun tribes. Most notably, MEK forces took part in the deliberate genocide against Hazaras, ethnic Persian Afghans, in the city of Mazar-e Sharif after an Aug. 8, 1998 offensive against the Northern Alliance.

As Greg Sullivan, a spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recently pointed out, "These people are responsible for the deaths of civilians - premeditated, politically motivated attacks against civilians. And these are attacks that have killed Americans. That constitutes terrorism."

It is significant to note that the Aug. 8, 1998 offensive against the Northern Alliance occurred the day after al Qaeda truck bombs destroyed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people. We see this correlation between Taliban offensives against the Northern Alliance coinciding with the 9/11 al Qaeda attacks against the United States, when on Sept. 7, 2001, suicide bombers killed Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massood.

Despite its popularity among Iranian expatriates, MEK does not enjoy a large base of support among the Iranian population. This is largely attributed to the minimal appeal of Islamic Marxism in the 21st century, the public distaste for MEK's terrorist tactics against Tehran, and for its active military support of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.

Moreover, MEK's use of terrorist violence only serves to undermine the efforts of legitimate opposition forces trying to advance a reform agenda through democratic means. Iran's ruling hard-line Guardians Council has capitalized on MEK violence to implement stringent internal security measures that the Iranian government utilizes to quell and stymie legitimate reformers.

While MEK's Washington liaisons spend a great deal of time and finances trying to persuade politicians such as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee that it represents "democratic opposition" to the hard-line regime in Iran. There is no substantive evidence to suggest that the organization has abandoned either its terrorist ways or anti-American sentiments.

Congressional leaders need to recognize that MEK's anti-Tehran agenda does not necessarily equate to a pro-American stance. Similarly in Afghanistan, we have witnessed how former Hezb-e Islami militia leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was markedly anti-Soviet in the 1980s and anti-Taliban in the 1990s, marked the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by labeling the United States as the "mother of terrorism" and calling on Afghans to take part in a jihad against American forces.

MEK's decision to use, and how to use, violence is the product of strategic thought. The violent action is weighed against the risk and reward of the operations outcome. While MEK could employ military operations to damage a Iran's governing infrastructure without expressly targeting civilians, it has shown a pattern of attacking non-military targets, such as government offices and embassies, which are generally "softer" targets than their military counterparts, and combine a high probability of success with minimum risk and maximum carnage.

The decision to pursue such indiscriminate acts of violence against civilians is a deliberate, rather than necessary, act that has no relevance to the underlying cause of the Iranian opposition movement.

The dividing line between a "freedom fighter" and a "terrorist" is characterized by the methods that the group chooses to employ. MEK's campaign of terrorism has very little to do with the "issue of freedom and justice in Iran and for the people of Iran." Its members have chosen to utilize violence as a counterbalance to their failure to garner widespread support for their message among the Iranian population.

While support for their anti-Tehran stance has led some American politicians to view MEK operatives as "freedom fighters," the Bush Administration recognizes that the methods these "freedom fighters" choose to employ necessitates characterizing them as a "terrorists."

As Council on Foreign Relations regional expert Richard Murphy noted, "directing terrorism against a government entity with whom the United States has differences does not exclude an organization from the designation as a foreign terrorist organization."