War Story: Female-driven army on Iraq/ border gets bombed by the Bush Administration, snubbed by anti-war activists Last updated May 27, 2007

ost in the debate over Iraq troop pullouts and the carnage of civilians in that country is the murky status of a little known army that has been con- Lfined to base ever since the United States invaded in 2003. The soldiers represent an Iranian opposition group called the Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, which has battled the Islamic re- gime across the border for the past 27 years. In what may be a first for modern warfare, about a third of the MEK’s combatants, and some Calm Between the Desert Storms. British author of The Olive Readers Christine 70 percent of its commanders, are Aziz (right) met with members of the Iranian opposition army and their tanks in Iraq in female. Those demographics are 2004. probably not so incredible when you consider that Iranian women With several camps set up along , as the compound is have suffered the brunt of perse- the Iran/Iraq border, the opposi- known. Filmed sometime before cution under Sharia Law. That’s tion army’s 300 tanks and experi- the start of the second Gulf War in the draconian penal code imposed ence battling Islamic militants 2003, the video shows platoons of on the nation in 1979 when Islamic could have been deployed to stop young women marching alongside fundamentalists took over in the Al-Qaida and other foreign jihad- their male counterparts in a large chaotic aftermath of a national ists from infiltrating Iraq after the square, with a huge statue of a rebellion that deposed Shah Reza American invasion. lion in the background. Pahlavi. Instead, the Pentagon autho- The CNN segment then cuts to the Even though the MEK helped rized U.S. and British jets to bomb desert to follow the tanks on field overthrow Pahlavi, the group sup- the main MEK compound outside maneuvers. After that, we see ports a return of secular govern- of Baghdad, killing or injuring female recruits performing routine ment to Iran. As a political party, about 50 soldiers out of a force of maintenance on armored vehicles. it opposed the adoption of the 3,800. They’re dressed in khaki trousers Islamic constitution, which led The situation there has been and shirts, combat boots, and the Ayatollah Khomeini to outlaw touch and go ever since. (being Muslims) matching Khaki its members from politics. The headscarves. MEK says tens of thousands of Welcome to Camp Ashraf Through an underground its supporters were executed or network operating within Iran, imprisoned during the years that In April of this year, CNN broad- the MEK first reported the in- followed. cast some exclusive footage of continued stallation of nuclear centrifuges Like the CNN video, the strange discuss arrangements for using in the country a few years ago. scenario that unfolded before the compound. The Iranians sur- The International Atomic Energy Aziz’s eyes seemed like something prised the Americans by serving Agency verified the claim during out of Alice in Wonderland. a chicken dinner. The resistance a surprise inspection, prompting “Ashraf is 14 square miles of movement seemed prepared to ac- the U.N. Security Council to adopt impeccable tidiness,” Aziz re- cept the Americans, but made the sanctions. ported. “The first impression is point it was their compound and Before that, the MEK briefly of a holiday camp rather than a that they eventually expected to grabbed headlines within the military base. Eucalyptus trees line get it back.” Islamic state when it attacked the long driveways, men and women heavily fortified headquarters of tend gardens, and there’s the smell Terrorists or Bargaining Chips the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, of bread from the bakery.” a special military wing controlled The article continued: “Several Since the Iran-Contra scan- by the ayatollahs. weeks after the fall of Saddam, dal in the mid 1980s, successive By early 2003, the opposition the U.S. General Ray Odierno of American administrations have army had consolidated its person- the 4th Infantry division entered either shunned the MEK or acted nel into its two largest camps in Ashraf camp to negotiate the to criminalize it as part of secret Ashraf City. Althought it notified disarming of the NLA [National deals with the Islamic regime the Pentagon of the locations prior Liberation Army - the MEK’s which later became public. to the March 20th invasion, the air armed forces]. He found himself The U.S. State Department went strikes proceeded, and sometime in a room lined with cream Re- so far as to declare the opposition later, the Army’s 4th Infantry ar- gency furniture and Persian rugs, group a “foreign terrorist organi- rived to negotiate a “ceasefire”. drinking coffee from white and zation” in 1997. Officials within The U.S. commanders on scene gold china cups and eating home- the Clinton Administration said noted in their reports that MEK made sweetmeats with a group of the designation was meant to re- soldiers never fired a shot at any female army commanders consid- ward Iran for electing a moderate, Coalition forces. ered to be terrorists by his govern- Mohammad Khatami, as president A year later, British author and ment.” that year. journalist Christine Aziz visited Michael Gordon of the New York Yet had been implicated the camp to interview the women Times related a similarly cordial just the year before in directing soldiers there. Her article “Tank meeting in June of 2003. “The and financing a group of Hesbol- Girls: The Frontline Feminists”, Spartan Brigade’s commander, lah fighters who bombed Khobar was subsequently published in The Col. David Perkins, met with a Towers in Saudi Arabia. The Independent, a British news journal. woman who is one of the Iranian attack killed 19 U.S. air men and group’s military commanders to injured 400. It seemed an inauspicious time to let bygones be bygones. In 1999, the geopolitics turned positively bizarre when the State Department designated a second Iranian opposition group as a terrorist organization. This time it was the National Council of Re- sistance of Iran (NCRI), a broad- based coalition of Iranian expatri- ate groups who formed an Iranian Parliament in exile in 1985. NCRI President Maryam Rajavi presides over a council of 530 members, not all of whom support the armed resistance at Camp Ashraf. Mrs. Rajavi, who is married to

An MEK soldier services an armored vehicle at Camp Ashraf, Iraq. continued MEK leader , says that in the event the MEK were to dislodge the Islamic dictatorship from Iran, she will serve a six- month interim term, followed by Democratic elections. Her hus- band, however, has not been seen since the U.S. invasion. Questioned about the addition of the NCRI to the terrorist list, former Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk told Reuters, “The Iranian Government had brought this to our attention. We looked into it and saw that there were good reasons for designating the Photo: NCRI NCR[I] as an alias for the MEK.” President Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resisance for Iran (center) arriving The admission that a hostile at the Council of Europe in April of 2006. foreign government long associ- incident, suddenly found herself ated with terrorism itself was now or People’s Mujahhedin, a major shackled and led away along shaping American policy prompt- group opposing the Iranian gov- with 167 other Iranian dissidents. ed U.S. Congress people on both ernment.” In return, it’s alleged Among those detained, Moham- sides of the aisle to scratch their that Iran agreed to secure the bor- mad Mohaddessin, the group’s heads in amazement. Nearly 200 der and turn over any Iraqi troops foreign affairs spokesman, de- representatives have signed onto attempting to flee the jurisdiction. scribed the raid afterwards as a petitions asking for the terrorist Relations between Tehran and gigantic publicity stunt aimed at designation of both the MEK and Washington cooled in 2004. Af- helping French corporations get NCRI to be revoked. ter an 18-month review by the contracts in Iran. However, it wasn’t until Ameri- F.B.I. and other federal agencies There were enough police, he can legal and human rights or- found no links to terrorism among told the Wall Street Journal, “for a ganizations that interact with the any MEK soldier living at Camp coup in an African country.” NCRI filed a lawsuit that a judge Ashraf, the U.S. Central Com- A search of the group’s head- revoked its terror tag. mand announced that it would quarters did not turn up any Secretary of State Colin Pow- comply with a determination by evidence to support the CIA’s ell ignored that ruling two years the International Committee of claim of imminent terrorist attacks later when he ordered the arrest the Red Cross that the MEK was a in Europe or anywhere else, and a of the group’s representatives legitimate party to a civil war. The judge ordered Mrs. Rajavi released in Washington and Los Ange- ICRC - and more recently, the U.N. from jail. (The other detainees les, along with the freezing of its High Commissioner on Refugees were freed shortly after the raid.) assets. While subsequent litiga- – has stipulated that the Geneva At this point, American news tion reversed those actions, seven Conventions preclude the expul- organizations began investigating Iranian American fundraisers are sion of the MEK from Iraq or its the phenomenon of a War on Ter- currently in jail awaiting trial on forcible repatriation back to Iran. ror turned on its head. The Wash- charges stemming from the teror- On hearing of the U.S. decision ington Post reported in the summer ist designation. to protect the rebel base, Iran’s of 2003 that Iranian officials had Across the Atlantic, the NCRI/ former president Khatami (the met regularly with representa- MEK wasn’t faring much bet- moderate) ranted to reporters that tives of the State Department in ter. Acting on a tip from the CIA, the MEK were among “the biggest the lead-up to the Iraq war. Ac- French President Jaques Chirac terrorists in the world…” and ac- cording to the Post, “At one of authorized a raid on the NCRI cused the United States of exercis- the meetings, in early January, headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise, ing a double standard in fighting the United States signaled that it a sleepy, upscale suburb north terrorism. of Paris. Mrs. Rajavi, who has would target the Iraq-based camps lived there for 18 years without of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), continued In fact, the Bush Administration combatant at now found itself caught in its own Camp Ashraf. lie. While U.S. military personnel More re- were regularly escorting an MEK cently, articles contingent to Baghdad on supply appearing runs, back in Los Angeles seven online have Iranian-Americans were facing up tied the MEK to ten years in prison for aiding to an alleged and abetting a terrorist group. Pentagon plot Members of Congress again to invade Iran tried to intervene on the MEK’s for the pur- behalf. In 2005, California Con- pose of “re- gressman Brad Sherman co-signed gime change”. a letter with Colorado Republican Citing the White House photo: Eric Draper group’s role Tom Tancredo demanding that the The next Khomeini? In December, President Bush met with the State Department retract the ter- in exposing Ayatollah Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the rorist designation. In the summer Iran’s nuclear Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a group closely tied to Tehran. of 2006, a summit on Capitol Hill centrifuges, the bloggers suggest the MEK is reiterated the call. Ironically, said in his memoirs that Khome- providing the WMD excuse that the bi-partisan lobbying effort nie’s constant diatribe against the President Bush will use to justify seems only to have made matters west was more theatrical than an attack. worse for the MEK. Progressive heartfelt. While in exile during This past November, The Wall political organizations, which the 1970s, the imam first chose the Street Journal asked the Pentagon’s normally support indigenous pro-western Iraq, then Paris, to former third highest-ranking civil- resistance movements worldwide, live while in exile, rather than an ian official, Douglas Feith, about have remained surprisingly silent Islamic state like . the possibility of a military collab- on the subject of Iran over the Following his return to Iran, oration between the United States years. Henry Kissinger and David Rock- and the MEK. Since the Independent ran Aziz’s efeller urged then President Carter “The idea that we would use story in 2004, a steady drumbeat to admit the recently deposed them against Iran is fantasy,” Feith of blogs and articles have ap- shah into the United States for replied. peared, accusing the Iranian op- cancer treatment. That triggered And yet the rumors persist. position of a “bloody track record” the embassy hostage crisis and Journalist Seymour Hersh has of terrorist activities, functioning what came to be known as Cart- published two articles in the New as a “cult”, and of carrying out a er’s October Surprise, in which the Yorker, claiming the Bush Admin- massacre against Kurdish people President lost re-election due to istration has undertaken a “redi- after the first Gulf War. the unresolved crisis. rection” in its foreign policy and This last accusation originated Held for 444 days, the 52 hos- plans to go after Iran’s govern- in a State Department human tages were released January 20, ment militarily. rights report issued in 2001. Sev- 1981, the day President Reagan The premise defies the reality of eral NGOs who conducted sub- took the oath of office. Several an ongoing relationship between sequent inquiries were unable to years of missile sales to Iran fol- the CIA and Iran’s ayatollahs that substantiate the claim. lowed, spearheaded by Reagan’s dates back to 1953, when a coup Even the American rights group campaign manager turned CIA deposed Iran’s popular President Human Rights Watch joined the director Bill Casey. The secret mis- Mohammed Mossadeq and re- chorus of detractors in 2005, accus- siles-for-hostages deal culminated turned the first Shah Reza Pahlavi ing the MEK of torturing its own in the Iran-Contra Scandal of 1987. to power. soldiers. Yet the evidence was In 2005, two of the embassy Events surrounding the 1979 apparently based on little more hostages claimed umambiguously transfer of power to the Ayatollah than telephone testimony. One of that Iran’s newly elected president Khomenie also point indirectly to the “credible witnesses” identified Mahmoud Adhmadenijad was the western involvement. Bani Sadr, in the HRW report turned out to Islamic student leader who pre- be a high-ranking Iranian intel- the first civilian president elected ligence operative posing as former under the new Islamic regime, continued sided over their captivity. March 8th, International Women’s Although both men were U.S. Day. All were imprisoned in the military advisers at the time of notorious Evin Prison and charged their capture, the Pentagon, how- with “acting against national secu- ever, insisted this was a case of rity”. mistaken identity. In May, reports surfaced that at That Ahmadinejad has friends in least three Iranian Americans have such high places may explain his been imprisoned in Iran, includ- unwavering defiance about Iran’s ing , the 67-year- nuclear enrichment program old director of the Middle East despite the presence of nine U.S. Iran’s latest crackdown on women. program at the Woodrow Wilson warships now on station in the According to the BBC, the government has International Center for Scholars Persian Gulf. James Surowiecki, arrested hundreds for violating the Islamic in Washington, DC. Esfandi- dress code. The dragnet also affected for- who writes on financial issues, eigners and tourists. ari was visiting her 93-year-old has even alleged that all the war mother when she was arrested posturing has helped the Islamic increasingly commonplace. and charged with plotting to over- regime. To combat its loss of prestige, throw the government. Wall Street traders, Surowiecki the regime ordered a “vice” crack- says, up the price of oil to what’s down in April, targetting young Iraq quagmire the result of bad called the “risk premium” when- women who wear bright colors, judgment or by design? ever it looks like Iran’s oil might show off their figures or display come off the market soon. With too much hair under their scarves. the second largest reserves in the Under Islamic law, women may A year after the ceasefire went world, the country has been pick- only wear somber colors and must into effect at Camp Ashraf, the ing up an extra $20 million dol- cover themselves with a shawl or U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry con- lars day in crude oil revenues as coat down to the knees. fiscated the MEK’s tanks, 2,000 a result of all the saber rattling in According to the BBC, Iran’s other vehicles and 10,000 small Washington. Ministry of Information arrested arms. The munitions cache was In the last four months alone, 33 women’s rights activists ahead destroyed. the price of gas at the pump has of their annual protest rally on continued gone up a dollar throughout the United States. “The economic consequences of this are not trivial,” Surowiecki writes in the February 19th issue of The New Yorker. “In the past few years, the inflated risk premium has given Iran tens of billions of dollars that it would otherwise not have had.” By contrast, Iraq endured more than a decade under a crippling economic embargo prior to the 2003 invasion. Moreover, any U.S. attack against Iran would more likely serve to bolster the Islamic regime at a time of growing unrest. Those Iranians born after 1979 tend to reject Sharia Law and prefer closer ties to the West. although seldom The Ties that Bind. Lt. Col.Oliver North testifies to Congress about the Iran-Con- tra Affair in 1987. The U.S. sold missles to the Islamic regime in exchange for freeing reported by the western press, hostages kidnapped by . Money raised from the sales was laundered through demonstrations organized by Pakistan into London banks, then used to finance a campaign to destabilize Nicaragua. university students have become George H.W. Bush was vice-president at the time. By this time the Pentagon ian relief administrators. had already disbanded the Iraqi As early as May, 2003, U.S. national army. The U.S. Central military commanders knew it had . “The real importance of Command issued a press release a problem. “We have seen a rather this army has been over- stating “The voluntary, peaceful steady increase in Iranian activity looked. In Iraq, many resolution of this process by the here, which is troubling,” For- MEK and the Coalition significant- mer Secretary of Defense Donald women were able to go to ly contributes to the coalition’s Rumsfeld casually explained at school and university, to mission to establish a safe and one press conference. “What you work and to wear what secure environment for the people see at the most benign end of it they wanted. Now, they of Iraq.” is Iranian efforts to sort of repeat Yet taken together, the two the formula which was used by are being intimidated in policy decisions may have func- Hizbollah in Lebanon. [They] the streets for not cover- tioned more as the Islamic militant send in people who are effectively ing their bodies, or for just equivalent of waving the green guerrillas and have them get into flag at Daytona. the country and try to set up social being outside their homes. According to the MEK, Tehran services and decide that these Groups of men strongly capitalized on Iraq’s internal secu- social services are their ticket to influenced by Iranian rity vacuum and sent thousands popularity. And then they start to fundamentalists, who are of paid, covert operatives over arm themselves and you wind up the border to foment insurrec- with a serious problem if you let it apparently supporting tion. Each team was assigned to go too far.” some political and religious a specific province, toting all the However, not until August of groups in Iraq, are making necessary accoutrements for wag- 2006 did the Pentagon issue orders their lives miserable.” ing jihad - bomb-making materi- to round up the Iranian militants. als, weapons, American currency Up to 500 men were detained at and firebrand clerics to stir up any one time, one news agency re- - Anne Land, Danish human insurgency in local communi- ported, but many of the men were rights lawyer ties. Members of Iran’s elite Quds released, citing their employment force, which takes its orders di- with Iranian humanitarian relief rectly from the Ayatollah Khame- organizations. likewise been manufactured across nei, took charge of the operation. In December, Coalition forces the border. Other Iranian militants entered captured six members of the Quds In addition to the deaths of Iraq under the guise of humanitar- Force Corps, including its top about 4,000 Coalition forces in commander in Iraq, Mohsin Chiz- Iraq, a staggering 655,000 civil- ari. Tehran vehemently protested ians were killed between 2003 and when it received word of their 2006, (By comparison, 200,000 peo- “We, as Iraqis who value detention, insisting the men were ple have been reported killed in our independence, feel we government diplomats and that the genocide taking place in Dar- must speak out as strongly the United States had destroyed a fur.) According to an investigation as possible against this new consulate office. In addition conducted by the Johns Hopkins to freeing its nationals, the regime University’s Bloomberg School of undeclared war by Iran on demanded compensation for the Public Health. The United Na- our people and quasi-oc- damaged building. tions says that 15 percent of Iraq’s cupation of Iraqi territories The MEK has issued a report population of 26 million have gone into exile. by Tehran through their documenting more than 31,000 Iranian Islamists, Iraqi militia The Daily Telegraph of London surrogates.” members, clerics and Iraqi politi- has reported that the pending cal officials who collect a regular departure of the British army from - Sheikh Ali Al-Shammari, a paycheck from Tehran. Basra will almost certainly open Shiite tribal leader from south- On April 11th, Major General up the floodgates for more vio- ern Iraq, at an April 2005 press William Caldwell said explosive lence in the south. The army said recently it had broken up several conference in Baghdad. devices capable of piercing ar- mored vehicles (called EFPs) had continued death squads operating in the nis to stop fighting and unite in area. a nationalist vein, opposing the With so much circumstantial U.S. occupation. Curiously, he evidence to draw upon, most also demanded that the Bush Americans still appear as confused Administration set a timetable for as ever about who is doing what withdrawing troops, a move sure to whom in Iraq. Press coverage to embarrass the Congressional from the region generally attri- Democrats. butes the unabated violence to a On the economic front, in civil war involving Iranian-backed September, Mariam Karouny of Shiite militias attacking Sunni Reuters reported that Iran and “strongholds” backed by Saudi Iraq had agreed to a plan in which Arabia. However, U.S. military Iraqi crude oil would be processed spokesmen admit that Iran has by Iranian refineries. The two na- been arming both Sunnis and tions also announced a joint ven- Shias. ture to build new oil infrastructure There have also been few re- projects inside Iraq. ports of gun battles actually Not surprisingly, the disman- taking place between the factions. tling of Camp Ashraf also figures Civilians, Iraqi police recruits, prominently at the top of both and Coalition forces represent countries’ to-do list. the primary targets of bombings, Even though a petititon signed kidnappings and other attacks. A by several million Iraqis in 2005 spokeswoman for the MEK in Eu- asked that the MEK be allowed rope told the Daily Telegraph that to re-arm and engage the Islamic by maintaining an atmosphere militants, the government wants of chaos and slowly bleeding the the army to decamp. occupation armies, Iran hopes to “We gave this organization a establish a sister Islamic state in six-month deadline to leave Iraq, Iraq. and we informed the Red Cross,” The strategy appears to Iraq’s national security minister have worked. Secretary of State Shirwan al-Wa’eli told CNN in Condoleeza Rice announced early April. “Presumably, our recently that the United States friends the Americans will respect will now “negotiate” with Tehran our decision and they will not stay about the future of Irag. on Iraqi land.” Late last year the Bush Admin- istration welcomed to the White Note: As this article was going to House the leader of the Supreme press, the U.S. military had with- Council for the Islamic Revolution drawn its police from Camp Ashraf in Iraq, the Ayatollah Abdul-Aziz and assigned a 150-man Bulgarian Al-Hakim, as someone making a unit to guard the MEK combatants state visit. Rumors were abuzz instead. that Aziz might eclipse both Prime Minister Nuri Kamel al-Maliki and the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as top dog in Iraq politics. How- Copyright 2007 ever, in May, Hakim checked into The City Edition of San Francisco hospital in Iran with lung cancer, www.thecityedition.com causing Muqtada al-Sadr to come out of exile (in Iran) and make his first public speech in Iraq in four months. Sadr called on Shias and Sun-