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THE QUEST FOR IRAN'S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT.
Testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
By Abbas William Samii, Ph.D.
…One side of the opposition spectrum is represented by the Mujahedin Khalq
Organization (MKO or MEK) which the U.S. State Department designated a
"foreign terrorist organization" in 1997. Still identified as a terrorist
organization, the MKO also is known as the National Liberation Army of Iran
(the militant wing of the MKO), the People's Mujahedin of Iran, National
Council of Resistance, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and
Muslim Iranian Student's Society (a front organization used to garner
financial support). The EU designated the MKO's military wing as a terrorist
organization in May 2002.
The MKO was created in the 1960s and its ideology combines Islam and
Marxism. It was involved with anti-U.S. terrorism in the 1970s, and it
initially supported the 1978-79 revolution. In June 1981, it staged an
unsuccessful uprising against the Islamic regime; many members were
imprisoned while others fled the country. The MKO transitioned from being a
"mass movement" in 1981 to having "all the main attributes of a cult" by
mid-1987, Professor Ervand Abrahamian writes in his 1989 book, Radical
Islam: The Iranian Mojahedin. The MKO refers to its head, Masud Rajavi, in
religious terms, calling him the rahbar (leader) and imam-i hal (present
imam).
From its Iraqi exile the MKO attacked the Iranian regime's leadership: a
1981 bombing killed President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister
Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, in 1992 it attacked 13 Iranian embassies, and it is
behind other mortar attacks and assassination attempts in Iran. Former
President Saddam Hussein granted the MKO refuge in Iraq, and it helped
Saddam Hussein suppress the 1991 uprisings of Shia in southern Iraq and
Kurds in the north, so it is not very popular in Iraq. The MKO fought
Iranian forces in the Iran-Iraq War, and this has discredited the
organization among the Iranian public.
In May 2003, after Operation Iraqi Freedom, the MKO agreed to turn over its
weapons to U.S. forces, and over time most of them have been restricted to
one location, Camp Ashraf. In July 2004, MKO members in Iraq were granted
"protected status" under the Geneva Conventions. The Iranian government has
repeatedly offered an amnesty to rank-and-file members if they return to
Iran, but the amnesty does not extend to the organization's leadership. A
reluctance to return is understandable: many MKO members who were imprisoned
in the early 1980s were tortured into recanting, and for a few months in
1988-1989 thousands of MKO and leftist prisoners were executed. Iranian
state media sporadically reports on groups of former MKO members who have
returned, but it is not clear how they are treated.
Some U.S. commentators have recommended removing the MKO from the terrorist
list and using it as an armed resistance movement against Iran. There also
are suggestions that MKO personnel should be cultivated as intelligence
assets that might re-energize the reform movement in Iran. It is unlikely
that MKO members would be trusted, since some reformists fought MKO
personnel in the war, others created the security institutions that hunted
them down, and most are part of the current political system. Furthermore,
information provided by the MKO, which does not have the same objectives as
the U.S., is likely to be self-serving and unreliable. Using MKO personnel
as a partisan force is appealing, but association with them will discredit
the U.S. in Iranians' eyes.
…In conclusion, there are steps the U.S. can take to hasten Iran's becoming
a democracy. The belief that there is a pre-existing democratic movement or
even an effective opposition group, however, is inaccurate. And although
most Iranians undoubtedly favor independence and self-determination,
assisting individuals rather than organizations without proper planning will
be neither efficient nor effective.
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