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The roots of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) reach back to the early 1960s formation of the Liberation Movement of Iran, a nationalistic, liberal party formed by supporters of then Prime Minister Mohammed Mossaddeq. The failed June 1963 uprising in Iran prompted younger members of the party to start considering violent means to challenge the Shah, and a discussion group, formed by some of these younger members, became the nucleus of the MEK. From 1963 onward, development of ideology and study of contemporary Iran proceeded, and then the organization started to send members to train in PLO camps in Lebanon and Jordan. The group increasingly sought to counter what it perceived as excessive Western influence in the Shah's regime. It suffered greatly when the Iranian secret police, SAVAK, arrested over half of its active members in 1972 after two abortive attacks.
The group developed into the largest and most active armed Iranian opposition to the present government after playing a major role in the urban warfare that brought down the Shah's regime, including launching terror attacks against the regime through the 1970s. Their ideological position, not fully aligned with the mullahs, led to harassments and attacks against the group during the series of elections in 1979-80. It became clear that despite their popular support and their de facto status as the main counterweight to the clerics, they would not be allowed to function as a "loyal" opposition, as the election process denied the group seats despite having much of the popular vote. Facing this marginalization, the group called for a demonstration on June 20, 1981, which at first drew tens of thousands onto the streets. The reaction from the clerical government was swift; the demonstrations were broken up and thousands of MEK members killed. The group's leaders were forced to flee the country for Paris in July 1981. The organization lost its mass character and became a movement focused on a prolonged armed struggle. In Paris the organization took on more and more of the attributes of a cult, with rigid central control of members' lives.
In 1987, the MEK was driven from its headquarters in France and moved its base to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein gave the group shelter. From that time, the group continually conducted raids, bombings and mortar attacks in Iran. These attacks were mostly carried out by the group's military wing, the National Liberation Army (NLA) of Iran, which was formed in June 1987. At least four cross-border attacks were mounted by the NLA into Iran in the late 1980s, including one after the cease-fire between Iraq and Iran in July 1988, which ended with a large MEK force being destroyed west of Kermanshah.
These cross-border attacks continued into the 1990s, with some being unreported. One reported series of incidents in mid-1992 started on April 4, 1992, when the MEK launched a raid. The raid was quickly followed by an Iranian reaction, as a crucial parliamentary election was less than a week away. Eight Iranian aircraft bombed an MEK base inside Iraq; conflicting reports disagree over whether one plane was shot down. In retaliation, the MEK conducted attacks on Iranian embassies in 13 different countries, from Ottawa to Bonn. Over the remainder of the 1990s, however, the MEK claimed credit for an increasing number of operations inside Iran.
What differentiates the MEK from virtually all other organizations on the State Department foreign terrorist organization list is that it has its own conventional military force. The MEK in Iraq is estimated to possess approximately a division's worth of heavy equipment (tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery). This equipment is manned by the NLA, which has large numbers of women in its ranks. The authoritative yearly Military Balance, published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, assesses the NLA's strength at 6,000-8,000, subdivided into brigades, with perhaps 250 plus tanks and infantry fighting vehicles captured from Iran. The NLA also has artillery and helicopters. Although its headquarters is in Baghdad, the NLA has a number of bases in Iraq split between Abu Ghareb and Al-Andules Square. In October 2001, the leadership of the MEK was assumed by Moshgan Parsaii, a 36-year-old U.S.-educated woman, for a two-year period.
Recent attacks inside Iran have included three explosions in Tehran in June 1998 that killed three persons, and the assassination of Asadollah Lajevardi, the former director of the Evin Prison. In April 1999, the MEK assassinated the chief of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff, Gen. Shirazi. The U.S. Department of State said that the group launched numerous attacks in Iran during 2000. In return for financial, logistical and material support from Saddam, MEK forces have assisted the Iraq regime in the repression of Kurds and other minorities in northern Iraq. There have even been reports in November 2001 that the MEK was hiding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in their camps, which they always resisted opening to UN weapons inspectors until the inspectors departed in 1998. Such reports, which appear credible, may well make any future weapons inspection in Iraq even more difficult.
Sources
"Support for the Mujahedin-e Khalq," U.S. Department of State.
Ervand Abrahamian, The Iranian Mojahedin, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989.
John Bierman, "Libya latest example of U.S.'s hypocracy." The Financial Post (Toronto), April 10, 1992.
"Armed Iranian opposition movement elects new chief," Agence France Presse, Oct. 18, 2001.
Aaron Sands, "Saddam's Deadly Secret: The Gulf War allies spared the camps of 'pro-democracy' Iranian rebels based in Iraq. Now they are concealing Saddam's arsenal of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, a dissident says," Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 17, 2001.
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