ISLAMIST, MARXIST, TERRORIST

By Amir Taheri

Art lovers know Auver-sur-Oise, north of Paris, as the backdrop of Van Gogh's most famous paintings. The French anti-terrorist police, however, see it as the nerve centre of the Iranian Mojaheedin Khalq (MKO or "People's Combatants"), an Islamic-Marxist sect. Last week, the picturesque village was encircled by troops backed by helicopter gunship. In scenes out of a war movie, special forces raided 40 houses and rounded up 150 people.

"The group was creating a terrorist base north of Paris", said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the judge in charge of counter terrorism. Among those arrested was Maryam Rajavi, whose ex-husband, Mas’oud Rajavi, is the sect's "Supreme Guide." (Mrs. Rajavi is regarded by the sect as "President of the Republic of Iran", although she never won an election and has not set foot in Iran since she fled into exile in 1981.)

Better known by its acronym, MKO, the group has been trying to topple the Iranian regime since 1981. It was classified as a terrorist organisation by President Clinton in 1997, part of his forlorn attempt at fence mending with Tehran's mullahs. Last year the EU, yielding to U.S. pressure, put the group on its terrorist list.

The Auver-sur-Oise raids are the latest in a recent series of MKO setbacks. U.S. forces in Iraq captured 20 bases used by the Organisation for operations against Iran, and more than 5,000 MKO guerrillas were placed in "protective custody." Coalition forces also captured 100 tanks and 80 pieces of long-range artillery.

Now the MKO has lost its oldest sanctuary, France. Rajavi fled Tehran for Paris in 1981 by hijacking an Iranian aircraft. Among those with him was Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic who had just broken with Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead of arresting Rajavi and Bani-Sadr as hijackers, the French rolled out the red carpet. Claude Cheysson, then foreign minister, persuaded them to work with Iraq -- then at war against Iran -- to topple Khomeini.

At a meeting arranged by Mr. Cheysson, Rajavi and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz signed a deal in which the MKO would receive cash and backing from Baghdad in exchange for help in the war against Iran. Between 1982 and 1985 Rajavi visited Baghdad six times and formed a relationship with Saddam Hoseyn, who helped the group set up camps in Iraq to train Iranians for sabotage.

The MKO was founded in 1965 after a split in a Marxist-Leninist movement that had waged a guerrilla action in northern Iran. Its ideology emerged as a mix of Islam and Marx, with ingredients from the Iranian religious sociologist Ali Shari’ati, who advocated an "Islam without a clergy". The MKO, with KGB help, engaged in a campaign against the Shah, and sent cadres to Cuba, East Germany, South Yemen and Palestinian camps in Lebanon to train as guerrillas.

Vladimir Kuzishkin, a former KGB head in Tehran, reveals in his memoirs that the MKO became a major source of information on Iran for Moscow. It also helped Moscow in its efforts to thwart U.S. influence in Iran. In 1970 and 1971 the MKO murdered five American military technicians working with the Iranian army. An MKO team tried to kidnap U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur III in Tehran. The attempt failed and their leader, Rajavi, was handed a death sentence, later commuted thanks to a plea to the Shah from Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny.

During Iran's 1978-79 turmoil the MKO played an active role in helping Grand Ayatollah Khomeini to power. Its squads burned cinemas, restaurants, hotels and bookshops, and murdered policemen. After Khomeini seized the reins, it did all it could to radicalise the regime, supporting the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Yet within a year the MKO -- now led by Rajavi, who had come out of prison during the revolution -- decided that the Khomeinist regime was not revolutionary. It had to be toppled; so there ensued a terrorist operation against the regime, that still continues.

Support for the MKO remained a bipartisan policy of France until this week. In 1987, Jacques Chirac, then prime minister, signed an accord with the MKO granting them protection in exchange for a promise not to kill Iranian officials on French soil.

Over the years the group organised an asylum seekers' racket -- 40,000 Iranians to Europe on bogus claims and in exchange for "voluntary contributions" of up to $10,000 each. Now a personality cult built around blind devotion to Rajavi, it has recruited its adepts mainly from relatives of people executed by the Khomeinist regime. Individuals are brainwashed, and not allowed to develop normal relationships outside the organisation. They refuse to send their children to school, insisting that they be educated at home.

By 1988, the MKO had created a 10,000-strong fighting force in Iraq, which helped Saddam in his genocidal campaign against the Kurds, and also to crush the Iraqi Shi’ites in the south in 1991. Many Iraqi Kurds and Shi’ites want MKO leaders tried for crimes against humanity. But the MKO has support in the US Congress.

More than 300 U.S. legislators from both parties have at one time or other signed petitions in support of the MKO, and the group’s spokesmen say they have offered the sect's services to the U.S. in case of war with Iran.

But there is little possibility of the U.S. accepting the services of an organisation that it classifies as "terrorist." The French, however, seem to have additional reasons. With Saddam gone, France has no friends left in the Middle East and seems to have decided to score points with Tehran by dismantling the MKO.

Editor’s note: Mr. Amir Taheri is a veteran Iranian journalist and author of several books on Iran and the Middle East. His last book, "L'Irak: Le Dessous Des Cartes" was just published by Editions Complexe, Paris.

The Wall Street Journal published the above article on 23 June

Highlights, editorial work and phonetisation of names are by IPS