Page 268 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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246———Mujahideen

Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MEK). With an by world leaders, including Iranian president
ideological blend of Marxism and Islam, the MEK Mohamed Khatami and U.S. president Bill Clinton. He
originally sought to work against Western cultural and was foiled by a routine screening of his application.
economic influences that the group’s founders felt During MEK’s Operation Great Bahman in February
pervaded their country. After the revolution of 1979, 2000, the group claimed that it had launched more than
the MEK developed into Iran’s largest and most active 12 attacks against Iran. Later that year, the MEK regu-
armed dissident group, opposing the mullahs’ control larly accepted responsibility for mortar attacks and
of the country. hit-and-run raids along the Iraq-Iran border; these
Although the U.S. State Department has declared attacks targeted Iranian military, police, and govern-
the MEK to be a terrorist organization, others consider ment units. It also accepted responsibility for six mortar
it to be a grassroots movement opposing a tyrannical attacks on government and military buildings in Tehran.
theocracy. The MEK has also been described as a
See also SADDAM HUSSEIN; IRANIAN HOSTAGE CRISIS
group of stooges for Saddam Hussein’s military gov-
ernment in Iraq, where its organization of several Further Reading
thousand fighters is based.
During the 1970s, the MEK worked to overthrow Amjad, Mohammed. Iran: From Royal Dictatorship to
Theocracy. New York: Greenwood, 1989.
the Shah and his backers. The group engaged in
Buchan, James. “Princess Leila of Nowhere.” Irish Times,
terrorist attacks against Western interests in Iran,
June 16, 2001, 61.
killing several U.S. military personnel and civilians;
Davies, Charles, ed. After the War: Iran, Iraq, and the Arab
the MEK also supported the takeover of the U.S.
Gulf. Chichester, UK: Carden, 1990.
embassy in Tehran in 1979. After the Shah fled in Thompson, John C. “Terrorism Is as Terrorism Does: Old
January 1979 and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Terrorists Never Die; They Just Become Irrelevant.”
returned from French exile during the Islamic revolu- Ottawa Citizen, March 7, 2000.
tion, the MEK fought against the ayatollah’s support-
ers in street battles in an enduring struggle for power
over governmental control. MUJAHIDEEN
During the 1980s, Iranian security forces per-
secuted the MEK’s leaders and forced them to flee to
France. MEK members and other dissidents were The mujahideen were a loose alliance of Afghan
killed or abducted, and many were tortured; the MEK traditionalists who in the late 1970s rebelled against
accused the government of holding up to 140,000 the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan. The
political prisoners. By 1987, most MEK leaders reset- term mujahideen (“holy warriors”) is the plural of
tled in Iraq, where the group has been based ever since. mujahid, which means fighter who defends his coun-
According to the State Department, the MEK is largely try, honor, or religion. The mujahideen overthrew the
supported by Iraq, and fought for that country in the government in 1992 before being largely conquered
1980–1988 war. The group also depends on front orga- themselves by the Taliban a few years later.
nizations to raise donations from expatriate Iranians. The mujahideen emerged in 1978, after the leftist
In the 1990s, the MEK carried out and claimed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)
responsibility for a number of attacks in Iran, includ- seized power in a military coup. The PDPA allied
ing a bombing in a Tehran public building that killed itself with the Soviet Union and quickly began reshap-
two children. In April 1992, in a large-scale attack, the ing Afghan society along Marxist lines. The effort
MEK targeted Iranian embassies in 13 different coun- quickly provoked a backlash: tribal leaders saw their
tries. When the U.S. State Department first designated authority threatened, and many Muslims saw an effort
the armed wing of the MEK, the National Liberation to destroy Islam. By the end of 1978, rebellion broke
Army, a terrorist organization in 1997, more than 100 out, and by the summer of 1979, the mujahideen con-
members of Congress signed a statement criticizing trolled much of the countryside.
the administration of President Bill Clinton. They said In late December 1979, Soviet forces entered
that the administration was labeling a group of free- Afghanistan to defend the PDPA government.
dom fighters as terrorists. In 1998, a member of the Although the Soviets initially tried to broker a com-
MEK tried to gain access to a U.N. meeting attended promise, the invasion threw more popular support