On MEK Cult

From Harry's place: Daniel Pipes is the director of Middle East Forum, a think tank designed to “promote American interests in the Middle East,” and a founder of its journal, the Middle East Quarterly. He is a columnist for both the New York Sun and the Jerusalem Post.

With such a record, one might think that his opinions are worth reading, agree or disagree. This is not the case. I could barely contain myself when I saw his recent column in the Jerusalem Post.
Pipes focuses on Iran. He wants to put pressure on the ayatollahs. There is nothing objectionable about that. What is truly shocking is that Pipes speaks in admiration of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) or the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) – which, in his own words, stands “accused of being a superannuated Marxist-Islamist terrorist cult.” And here is the rest of it.The MEK wants to overthrow the Iranian regime. According to Pipes, “no other opposition group in the world can mount so impressive a display of muscle as does the MEK, with its thousands of supporters, many young, and a slate of dignitaries.” So Pipes offers some suggestions:
[T]he Bush administration needs to take three steps. First, let the MEK members leave Camp Ashraf in a humane and secure manner. Second, delist the organization from the terror rolls, unleashing it to challenge the Islamic Republic of Iran. Third, exploit that regime’s inordinate fear of the MEK.
The rationale, presumably, is that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” But championing MEK takes things a little too far. As Nigel Brew commented in a research note for the Australian parliament:
During the 1970s, the MeK was accused of conducting several assassinations of US military personnel and civilians working in Iran, and of actively supporting the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979... The US designated the MeK as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) in 1997, on the basis that it kills civilians… The MeK has now lost three appeals (1999, 2001 and 2003) to the US Government to be removed from the list of FTOs, and its terrorist status was reaffirmed each time. The MeK is a banned terrorist organisation in both the UK and the US. The European Union listed the MeK as a terrorist group in May 2002.
As recently as this January, the Council of the European Union stated that MEK should be placed on the list of persons and entities subject to restrictive measures.
The MEK is led by a husband and wife, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, it “has increasingly come to resemble a cult.” During the 1970s, the Council adds, MEK supported “killings of U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran” as well as “the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries.” In 1991, MEK assisted “Saddam Hussein’s suppression of the 1991 Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish uprisings.” In other words, the group collaborated in genocidal massacres.
The MEK claims to seek a secular and democratic Iran; it promises free elections. The truth is much more sinister. Elizabeth Rubin emphasized the cultist nature of the organisation in a detailed report (New York Times Magazine , July 13, 2003):

[D]espite its rhetoric, the Mujahedeen operates like any other military dictatorship. Mujahedeen members have no access to newspapers or radio or television, other than what is fed them. As the historian Abrahamian told me, “No one can criticize Rajavi.” And everyone must go through routine self-criticism sessions. “It’s all done on tape, so they have records of what you say. If there’s a sign of resistance, you are considered not revolutionary enough, and you need more ideological training. Either people breakaway or succumb.”
Salahaddin Mukhtadi, an Iranian historian in exile who still maintains communications with the Mujahedeen because it’s the strongest armed opposition to the Iranian regime, told me that Mujahedeen members “are locked up if they disagree with anything. And sometimes killed.”
Afshari, who fled the group 10 years ago, told me how friendship was forbidden. No two people could sit alone and talk together, especially about their former lives. Informants were planted everywhere. It was Maryam’s idea to kill emotional relationships. “She called it, ‘drying the base,’” Afshari said. “They kept telling us every one of your emotions should be channelled toward Massoud, and Masssoud equals leadership, and leadership equals Iran.” The segregation of the sexes began almost from toddlerhood. “Girls were not allowed to speak to boys. If they were caught mingling, they were severely punished.”
Though Maryam and Massoud finagled it so they could be together, they forced everyone else into celibacy. “They told us, ‘We are at war, and soldiers cannot have wives and husbands,’” Afshari said. “You had to report every single day and confess your thoughts and dreams. They made men say they got erections when they smelled the perfume of a woman.” Men and women had to participate in “weekly ideological cleansings,” in which they would publicly confess their sexual desires. It was not only a form of control but also a means to delete all remnants of individual thought.

Apart from totalitarian controls so extreme that married members were compelled to divorce each other, Human Rights Watch has stated:
Human rights abuses carried out by MKO [MEK] leaders against dissident members ranged from prolonged incommunicado and solitary confinement to beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture that in two cases led to death.
Even for his admirers, Pipes’s article may seem somewhat bizarre. The current editor of his own journal is Michael Rubin, who wrote an article for the conservative site Frontpage that concluded:

Many “monsters of the left” use the rhetoric of democracy to realize their ambition. Masud and Maryam Rajavi, and the organization over which they exert dictatorial control, are no exception. The Islamic Republic of Iran victimizes its people and threatens U.S. and regional security. The solution to the problem rests, not with empowering a group or individuals just as bad, but rather in supporting the Iranian people in their quest for liberty, freedom, and democracy.

Supporting the overthrow of the President of Iran and his regime is all well and good. But that hardly justifies helping the Pol Pots of Persia. Has Daniel Pipes lost his marbles?